December 4, 2013Tom Tresser

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What are TIFs?

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What are TIFs?

• Created by municipality (state

statute)

• Boundaries cross political and

community boundaries

• Designed to subsidize some

business project in “blighted” or

under-served area

• Captures “incremental” property

taxes ABOVE base when district

was created

• Lasts 23 years

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How Do TIFs Work?When the TIF is created,

the city tallies up all the

property taxes

generated by district in

that year (called the

"base" amount). After

that, all property tax

increases above the

base (the "increment")

are channeled to the TIF

district.

The property taxes

collected from

properties inside the

district BEFORE the

district was created

that go to units of

government stays

FLAT for the life of the

TIF (23 years).

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What are TIFs?

Under state law, areas proposed for TIF designation

must possess numerous blighting factors to be

eligible:

• Age

• Obsolescence

• Code violations

• Excessive vacancies

• Overcrowding of facilities

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TIFs Used to support commercial projects in these “Blighted” Areas

40 S. Halsted

Apple Store

7Better Government Association

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Where are TIFs?

• All over Chicago and Cook

County = 435 TIFs in 2013

• 151 in city of Chicago

• Additional 284 in suburban

Cook County

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Where are TIFs?

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How Much Revenue Do TIFs Collect?

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How Much Revenue Have TIFs Collected?

Ouch!

Source: Cook County Clerk

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2013 TOTAL TIF REVENUE FOR COOK COUNTY

City of Chicago

TIFs diverted $422 MILLION

Suburban Cook County where

91 municipalities have TIFs

TIFs diverted $261 MILLION

TOTAL FOR 2013 = $683 MILLION

How Much Revenue Do TIFs Collect?

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How Much Revenue Have TIFs CollectedSince TIFs Introduced Here?

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Volunteer TIF Researchers Open TIF Reports Look

Up Designated Numbers and Place Then Into

Shared Spreadsheet…

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THE CITY HAD

$1.71 BILLION IN

UNSPENT TIF FUNDS

AT THE END OF 2013!

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What are TIFs doing to us?

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• # TIFs in your ward

• How much property tax $ extracted by those

TIF from ward

• How much $ left in those TIFs FROM ward at

end of year

• What projects in ward funded by TIFs

• Lifetime extraction of TIFs which are mostly in

your ward

• Any transfers of $ in or out of your TIFs

• $ extracted by city for “admin” costs

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TO GET THE FULL PRESENTATION WITH THE

PARTICULARS ON THE 11TH WARD, PLEASE

VISIT THE TIF DATA STORE @

http://www.tifreports.com/store.

ALL TIF PRESENTATIONS ARE AVAILABLE

THERE FOR DOWNLOAD @ $2.50 EACH.

TO MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE INVESTMENT

IN OUR WORK VIA OUR FISCAL AGENT, THE

INVESTIGATIVE NEWS NETWORK, PLEASE

GO TO http://tinyurl.com/SupportTheLab-INN.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR TRAININGS,

RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY MEETINGS,

EMAIL INFO@CIVICLAB.US.

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www.tifreports.com