Chicago
small business owners and Northwest Side residents say local
businesses are dying off, and they need Cook County officials to intervene.
"We,
of course, have been slaughtered in the recession in the last four to
five years," said Mark Thomas, owner of The Alley Chicago, at a Cook
County economic development forum Thursday morning.
Thomas told
Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle and Commissioners Edwin Reyes (8th) and John Fritchey (12th) that landlords should see some sort of tax
incentive to encourage them to rent space to local businesses rather
than chain stores.
Elise Doody-Jones, a small
business owner in Logan Square, added that rents are too expensive. The high rents are a burden for neighborhood businesses and can often discourage small
business owners to set up shop, she said.
Larger corporations
generally do not move their businesses into communities until they feel
the demographics and income levels are right, she explained.
"It's
really the small businesses who run on a shoestring that step in," she
said. "But the rents are too high because the property taxes are too
high." Read more »
Residents of Chicago's 11th Ward were outraged upon learning that $57.4
million in property tax money was sitting in their tax increment financing
(TIF) districts' collective bank accounts at the end of 2011, according
to data unveiled by the CivicLab.
Property taxpayers in Englewood were furious upon learning at a town
hall meeting Saturday that their tax dollars had contributed at least $44 million to the
Englewood Neighborhood Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District since it
rolled out in 2001. According to data from the CivicLab's TIF Illumination
Project, some $44 million of taxpayer dollars had funneled to the TIF district between 2001 and 2011.