The Daily Chronicle has come out against the proposed Sycamore Road TIF District, pointing to Mayor Rey’s recent comment that two developers are interested in one of the properties even with no incentives. So why bring tax increment financing into the equation? It certainly might give the city some more money it can spend on…
Category: TIF
November 25 Council Agenda
The city has put up another meeting agenda for tomorrow that’s a revision of the original, so all you early birds will have to read the new one. However, keep the old one handy because they didn’t include the rest of the packet with the revision. Highlights: Item 1: Another hit to the Public Safety…
DeKalb – Firefighter Quid Pro Quo
The City of Springfield is expecting to approve a new contract with its firefighters’ union soon. Golly, I wish we had that kind of news coverage. Remember the last-minute hoop we had to jump through to find what the 2011 contract with our firefighters was about? The Springfield story reminded me that the longish closed…
Egyptian Expenditures on Next Council Meeting Agenda
What timing I have! I posted city expenditures for Egyptian Theatre projects on Tuesday and now there’s a memo dated November 6 in the agenda packet for next Monday’s meeting about this (see page marked E-3, which is p. 13 of the PDF file, my emphasis added): In March of 2013, the City Council agreed…
Spending TIF Money on the Egyptian Theatre
Last month I was going through recent City of DeKalb check registers for something or other and came across a payment out of DeKalb’s Central Area Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Fund for $189 with the description “EGYPTN THTR UNCLG BSMNT DRN.” I also found descriptions for “EGYPTN THTR STG DOORS LCKS” and “LGHT FXTR WMNS…
TIF Funds Paid for Airport Signage
Click on the image for a larger version.
Raise Taxes to Gussy Up the Muni Building? Really?
I can’t believe hikes in taxes are even up for discussion. Consultants estimated one option for renovating City Hall – including upgrades to the heating and cooling system, plumbing and fire protection system, among other things – would cost $3.7 million. City Council members also are exploring spending $7.5 million on renovations, with $5.5 million…
New TIF Video Lays Out the Issues
This is from WBEZ so is Chicago-centric; nevertheless it’s a useful way to look at Tax Increment Financing districts and features three TIF experts. Bonus: Ben Joravsky’s latest, a look at the DePaul Basketball Boondoggle. The mayor says it will cost at least $55 million to buy land for [a hotel] project and the money…
Mercer County & the Role of Transparency in Good Government
Illinois’ Mercer County lies south of the Quad Cities and comprises part of its metro area. Perhaps you’ve heard that the county’s treasurer, Mike Bertelsen, has been arrested and charged with stealing at least $13,000 from the county’s 911 Fund, the result of investigations that followed a forensic audit in the county office. The Illinois…
Video Excerpts from August 12 Council Meeting
*Update 8/22: City IT director Jeremy Alexander notified me early this morning that an encoding error is the cause of the audio glitch. They expect to have the problem corrected before the end of the day.* It has come to my attention that the audio portion for much of the August 12 city council meetings…