Good thing he supposedly reformed it.
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He told us to think of it as investment. Instead of using those tax dollars for teachers or police, he vowed to shrewdly and strategically invest them in various projects that would transform the South Loop into a promised land of redevelopment yielding more property tax dollars for our schools and cops when the TIF expires in 2013.
Alas, here we are in 2013, and the war against South Loop blight has not been won—even after 24 years of shrewd and strategic mayoral investment of economic development dollars.
Having proposed to extend the TIF, the mayor needs the city council to give him a new budget for spending the money he continues to divert into the Michigan Cermak TIF.
After which it will move to the Chicago City Council, the rubber-stamp champs. The only issue is whether the aldermen will pass it without realizing what they’re passing, as they did when they gave the mayor eminent domain authority to seize land for this fiasco.
There’s $25 million for “property assembly,” which presumably means buying up the land needed to build the basketball arena.
