At its essence if I give it the best possible spin the TIF program lets the mayor take property tax

When I heard that Mayor Emanuel intends to spend $55 million of your property tax dollars to build a hotel and basketball arena on the near-south side, I thought it must be a cruel joke he's playing on the people of Chicago.
The closings have been opposed by students, parents, teachers, and, in a number of instances, cheapest air line tickets the Chicago Public Schools' own hearing officers. These opponents consider the plan wasteful, hasty, cheapest air line tickets unwise, counterproductive, and dangerous. Other than that, it's great.
As I write, protesters have taken to the streets in the hopes that angry demonstrations will accomplish what crying, cheapest air line tickets begging, pleading, and reasonable argument haven't: convince the mayor to change his mind.
Because there's cheapest air line tickets the kind of broke that means we don't have any money for schools, and there's the kind that means we don't have money to subsidize the rich and powerful. We haven't come close to reaching that second kind of broke and probably never will, so long as this mayor's in charge.
The $55 million will come from tax increment financing districts near McCormick Place. That gives me a chance to discuss a topic I love almost cheapest air line tickets as much as Derrick Rose's left knee the great scam known as the city's TIF program.
At its essence if I give it the best possible spin the TIF program lets the mayor take property tax dollars from the schools, parks, and county in order to invest the money in projects that he hopes will someday generate even more property tax dollars.
Think of it like pulling ten bucks out of your paycheck and investing it in Starbucks stock. In several years, if all goes well, your $10 may have grown into $100. Incidentally, if you do this several thousand times over, you might get wealthy enough to become one of the few people the mayor makes time to meet with unlike, for example, cheapest air line tickets everyone else who lives in Chicago.
But once the city owns it, this land will move off the property tax rolls because publicly held property is exempt. So instead of investing cheapest air line tickets your property tax dollars in developments cheapest air line tickets that create more property cheapest air line tickets tax dollars, Mayor Emanuel has decided to invest them in a scheme that will yield no property tax dollars whatsoever. Think of it as spending cheapest air line tickets $55 million to lose money.
And even before cheapest air line tickets the mayor announced a TIF handout, developers were already over there clamoring to build things like hotels cheapest air line tickets and retail and tech centers. In other words, had Mayor Emanuel just stayed out of the way, the area would have boomed on its own, bringing in more money for the schools, parks, and county.
As my libertarian friends might put it, the mayor is crippling capitalism by intervening in a free market. Quick tell the people at the University of Chicago who worship at the shrine of Milton Friedman, their beloved free-market guru.
You get a hotel that you'll probably never stay in. And an arena for DePaul cheapest air line tickets basketball games that you'll probably never attend. Because let's face it there are even fewer fans of the Blue Demons in this town than of the White Sox, who also play in a subsidized facility that doesn't often fill up.
At this point, I should remind everyone who doesn't know that DePaul is a private university with tuition costing more than $30,000 a year for undergraduates. That means it's a long shot for average Chicagoans, unless they're willing to go into severe debt to pay for it.
Earlier this month, cheapest air line tickets Cardinal George joined forces with rabbis, imams, ministers, and priests to call on Mayor Emanuel to bring back the water fee exemption he stripped from nonprofits, including soup kitchens and shelters that serve the poor. In response, the mayor's City Council floor leader, Alderman Patrick O'Connor, ripped cheapest air line tickets into Cardinal George, telling him to mind his own business.
So there's always a chance that the board of education which is charged cheapest air line tickets with looking out for the fiduciary health of the schools will use its clout to try to kill this deal on the grounds that there are better ways to use $55 million.
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