A TIF That Provides Public Benefit

Here is a Tax Increment Financing District that makes sense.

It does not just provide a subsidy to a developer.

It is aimed at providing a mass transit line.

“Funds would be pulled from property tax revenue increases up to a half-mile from the current Red Line between Madison Street and Pershing Road under the city’s proposal.”

Proposed Red Line Extension.

$950 million is the goal sought.

Sending increases in real estate taxes to finance a nearby infrastructure is close to the site value assessment plan promoted by American economist Henry George.

Read the story here.


Comments

A TIF That Provides Public Benefit — 5 Comments

  1. Those aren’t Chicago’s version of the Colorado foothills, blocking your view of Lake Calumet from the Expressway.

    It’s decades of Chicago’s trash piled there and that entire area the proposed line runs west of the Expressway.

    Is where the Sherwin-Williams paint plant once stood.

    This has been and no matter how much some EPA Superfund spends, will always be, one of the most toxic, polluted places on the planet.

    So the CTA wants to spend a billion on one of their people movers, through an area people don’t live and shouldn’t ever?

    Shrewd.

  2. But why are real estate taxes going up?

    Is it because the owners of the properties made improvements making them more valuable or is just because the government raised taxes irrespective to the values of the properties?

    I think you might be misrepresenting Henry George.

    Not only that but Henry George wanted to do away with all taxes except the one.

    Let us know when Chicago wants to do that.

    New Hampshire, by the way, has property taxes but no income or sales tax, so we might think New Hampshire is closer to George’s ideas than Chicago is, where there are many taxes and some of them (like the sales tax) are quite high.

  3. Henry George did not believe improvements, e.g., buildings, should be taxed, just land.

  4. i thought that was the case but was not 100 percent sure. Illinois unemployment at 4.5%, higher than national average.

    The Department of Employment Security (IDES) has published preliminary Illinois unemployment-rate numbers for June 2022.

    Unemployment was 4.5% in June, below recent pandemic-affected levels but significantly higher than comparable unemployment rates published in neighboring states in the same month.

    In addition, the 4.5% Illinois unemployment rate was 90 basis points higher than the U.S. national rate of 3.6%.

    Compared to the pandemic-affected June 2021 jobs picture, overall Illinois nonfarm employment was up by 245,700 jobs statewide.

    The Leisure and Hospitality sector, which includes restaurants and other places that sell prepared food, led the way by creating 79,900 net new jobs over the twelve-month period.

    The high-paying Professional and Business Services sector created 51,100 new Illinois jobs.

    However, job creation was even healthier in states around Illinois, with many of these states noting record-low unemployment numbers.

    In Indiana, the June 2022 unemployment rate was 2.4%; in Iowa, 2.6%; in Kentucky, 3.7%; in Missouri, 2.8%; and in Wisconsin, 2.9%.

    Looking at specific Illinois metro areas, several areas continued to post unemployment numbers in June 2022 that indicated widespread unemployment and local recession conditions in some sectors. Examples were Danville (5.5%), Decatur (6.5%), Kankakee (5.3%), and Rockford (6.6%).

    Hard-hit Illinois metro areas continued to be those with a traditional reliance on manufacturing.

    thank you for pointing that out, but i still think your premise is flawed cuz it sounds like the gov just raised taxes.

    the land did not suddenly become more valuable tho which was my point.

    tif is kind of just like earmarking/lockboxing a certain portion of tax for a specific purpose.

    i dont see a tif by itself as moving people towards or away from georgist ideas when property taxes already exist and the people pushing the tif claim your property taxes won’t be higher, just allocated differently.

    if chicago wanted to eliminate sales tax and shift the burden to property taxes then maybe i would agree with what you are saying, but as is i am not seeing what this has to do with george at all. idk..

    maybe im wrong but it seems like a stretch what you are saying.

    doesn’t a non-georgist government also send increases in taxes (including property taxes) to public improvements?? lol.

    i think henry george would be appalled if he saw the tax complexities of chicago hahahahaha

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