The bad news arrived in the mail the other day: my property taxes went up.
And of course I’m not the only one being asked to pay more. Folks on the west and south sides are facing even steeper increases. It’s what the Cook County bean counters call “tax-scream time” again. That’s when folks all over the city get their tax bills and start screaming.”
The following year, usually in the late summer or fall, the county officially tallies the “extension,” or the amount of property tax dollars that the city has spent in reality. In 2009 the city’s extension was $833.9 million—the money for pensions, debt, and libraries the city asked for last fall, plus another chunk of change the mayor didn’t talk about, $37 million collected and then turned over to the City Colleges. It’s true that, as the mayor said, the city ended up with $796.9 million in property tax money; it’s not true that taxpayers only had to cough up that much. In fact, they paid out 5 percent more than the mayor had promised a year earlier.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Here’s another way to look at it: On top of the money taxpayers are already sending to the city, schools, parks, and county, TIFs ensure they have to kick in another half a billion bucks a year. Mayor Daley gets the extra money while the other bodies do the taxing.
Back in 2006, county board commissioner Mike Quigley got the TIF bug. He assigned two bright young staffers, Jeremy Thompson and Jason Liechty, to study the program. They wrote a report, “A Tale of Two Cities” (PDF), that among other things urged the county to include details on tax bills about how much money the TIFs were receiving.
Of course your property’s value doesn’t stay the same forever. So every three years the number crunchers with the Cook County assessor’s office reassess property values in the city. They completed the latest round in the city this year, and these assessments will come into play at this time in 2010.
