Growing up in Pilsen, I’ve witnessed many changes. My family, like others, has deep roots here, but rising costs have forced many neighbors out. In addition to rising property taxes, we now face the threat of an expanded Pilsen TIF (tax increment financing) district, which could accelerate gentrification and displace even more residents.
TIF districts, often called Chicago’s “shadow budgets,” don’t directly raise taxes but divert revenue away from schools, parks and other public services, straining these resources. Non-TIF neighborhoods then carry a greater burden of funding these services.
Originally intended to develop “blighted” areas, TIFs mostly benefit wealthy developers and corporations, fueling gentrification. Pilsen has a thriving commercial corridor and was named one of the coolest neighborhoods in the world by Forbes. Yet, it still meets the legal definition of blight?
This isn’t Pilsen’s first battle against the TIF. In the mid-1990s, community members organized against it. A compromise limited the TIF to the industrial corridor along Cermak and Blue Island. Though the TIF was set to expire in 2022, it was quietly renewed for 12 more years by ex-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez.
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In 2023, plans to expand the TIF into residential and commercial areas surfaced. After strong opposition, Sigcho-Lopez initially withdrew the proposal, only to reintroduce it later with support from local business interests.
Adding to the frustration, Mayor Brandon Johnson, who plans to phase out TIF usage in favor of a bond program, is now sponsoring this expansion. The TIF will generate nearly $1 billion without a clear plan from our alderman.
The mayor’s bond program is a step in the right direction, so why is he supporting Sigcho-Lopez’s unpopular proposal? Especially considering the projected budget deficit.
With a crucial vote looming at the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday, we urge all Chicagoans to stand with us against the TIF expansion. Our neighborhood is not for sale, and neither is our city’s future.
Javier Ruiz, board of directors member, Pilsen Alliance
Contempt for poor folks who rely on CTA
I was grateful to read Neil Steinberg’s Sept. 5 column on what the recent Blue Line executions show about the state of our society. I agree with his remark that we hold the homeless in contempt, but would add that this contempt extends to all of Chicago’s poor, including working-class folks who staff or rely on public transportation on a daily basis.
This problem manifests itself in a particularly egregious way on the CTA because we do not really view public transportation as a common good, but as a last resort for those who — we implicitly think — were not clever or industrious enough to “get what’s theirs” in our (alleged) meritocratic society.
Our L trains and buses are like a funnel where the elderly, working-class people, immigrants, minorities, homeless and students — all the “losers” from our materialist, hyper-acquisitive perspective — are thrown together. Come what may, we tell ourselves, they deserve their fate.
What is so frustrating and heartbreaking is that our political and civic leaders, even when they claim to be fighting for these disadvantaged communities, carry this same attitude.
Think back to the quip one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s nominees for the Regional Transportation Authority board, Rev. Ira Acree, levied in response to aldermanic questioning: “As a man, I don’t have to use CTA.”
This comment’s barely veiled misogyny — those who use public transit are weak, silly and feminine — shows how deeply hatred for the vulnerable has been internalized and normalized by those who profess to serve them.
When our mayor and Dorval Carter Jr., the CTA board president, just parrot campaign slogans at crime — “better, stronger, safer” — instead of laying out the concrete steps they are taking to drastically and immediately improve transit security, they are singing from the same hymnal.
Carter, at least, should know better, given his rich international travels on the taxpayer’s dime: a quadruple murder on public transportation would, in any other developed country, topple the municipal government. That it won’t do so here is a testament to the Chicago elite’s sad and fatal failure of political imagination, which is, I’m sorry to say, making our beloved city and less and less livable by the day.
Kristóf Z. Oltvai, Woodlawn
City makes bad spending decisions
The editorial on the Yellow Banana Grocery Store was spot on (“Will Yellow Banana’s grocery store deal with city go bad?”). I predict that if this store goes under the city will never recover the money it invested. It seems that no one in the city cares.
The city’s spending under the Johnson administration — like the foolish $814,000 fence, like ignoring a massive budget deficit — is highly questionable and troubling. There is no doubt that this will result in massive tax increases and job layoffs, actually hurting the people the administration wishes to help. There is no substitute for sound economic decisions.
Stephen Carmody, Beverly
Look at consumer prices
Thursday, you correctly reported that last month’s inflation number showed a decline in inflation (“The big number”). It failed to take the opportunity to place that number in perspective as it affects your readers.
While inflation may be lessening, that does not mean that the consumer can expect prices to be lower. The overall rise in consumer prices in the last four years is at or above 20%. Any of your readers who makes a trip to the market tomorrow will realize that their dollar buys only 80% of what it did four years ago.
R. Stanieak, Woodridge