For context: Neighbors are divided, with some (including the social justice org Pilsen Alliance) citing the TIF's checkered past to argue that the TIF expansion will be used by wealthy/powerful to gentrify the neighborhood. see: blockclubchicago.org/2024/08/08/a-p… actionnetwork.org/letters/no-pil…

Supporters have argued that increasing the TIF area will provide more funds to build affordable housing. Here is a map of the TIF area expansion.

"The expanded TIF could generate almost $950 million in incremental property taxes over 36 years." - blockclubchicago.org/2024/08/08/a-p…

Supporters argue funds could also be used to fund home repairs in the neighborhood. Opponents point to the misuse of more than $50m in TIF funds meant to address urban blight being instead used to redevelop navy pier. Supporters say: get involved in the process, and control the $

Ald. Sigcho-Lopez is in the building. Packed house tonight. Nearly 40 people of all ages here. There's a beautiful mural in this field house.

Presentation beginning now from unnamed speaker for the Pilsen TIF expansion. It's bilingual.

Folks still coming in. Maybe 60 in the room.

Presentation starts now with a VERY fine print powerpoint slide. It covers the history of the Pilsen TIF. It started as an industrial TIF since 1998. Proposal is to change the existing TIF, which will expire in 2034. The proposal is to expand the mapping to make

the industrial TIF into a residential TIF. In 2022-3 Dep of Planning and Development held a meeting where a ton of homeowners were seeking support with increased property taxes, which had increased by more than %40.

DPD will make final decision on this expansion. (maybe they have final say?). The listening sessions are meant to inform the DPD's decision. DPD has not made the decision yet.

Now an explanation of TIF districts: it's (ostensibly) a financial tool to help develop blighted communities. Speaker is defining a blighted community - something about age of housing stock and vacancies.

Woman in the audience asks: "Are you saying that Pilsen is a /blighted/ community? I'd like to see the data that supports that."

Speaker responds: Johnson admin did research on how to deem areas blighted. Speaker explaining that blighted as a definition also encompasses road and water and light infrastructure.

Audience member going back: "I don't mean to be disrespectful. But if we wait til the end of the presentations, then we will never have time to express our minds. Don't you want to hear our minds?"

Speaker agrees to field questions after every slide.

Another audience member asks how to define vacancy. Another audience pipes in saying, the reason we have vacancies is because our property taxes are so high.

Another audience member: the powerpoint slides are too hard to see.

Many people seem to be taking offense that the neighborhood is considered blighted. One asks: "How can this be blighted if there are all these new big fancy apartments?"

Another adds: "From an infrastructure perspective, we are blighted. Not from the perspective of new, fancy housing."

Audience member: Harold Washington created the TIF funds but it's been distorted by Rahm Emmanuel, Lori Lightfoot. It's a slush fund, we've seen our money redirected to Lasalle Street. Does anyone on Lasalle Street need affordable housing?

Audience member is siting a study by Maria Pappas (county treasurer) saying that the word blighted needs to be tightened, and that it's used too loosely, too excessively. Pilsen is not blighted. There's not a lot of vacancies.

Audience member: "Pilsen is developing. People are struggling to pay for everything. If there's a TIF then property taxes will increase."

Speaker responds: It's a catch 22. If you invest in a community, then property values rise, and assessments rise. But if you privatize the investment, that's /really/ what makes property taxes rise. There's another way to invest in the community.

I'm reminded of a Facebook post by the organizer Michael Kinnucan. Questions he raises: is it worthwhile opposing neighborhood investment that causes property taxes to rise?

The idea being that such local efforts do next to nothing to meaningfully change the direction of housing values/property taxes. If the primary concern is opposing increased property taxes, it's worth asking (and I genuinely don't know the answer here) if blocking TIF expansion

would make a real dent in much broader housing market dynamics. Maybe!

Audience member asks: What is the TIF review committee? Who would run it?

Speaker: TIF review bodies are at the discreiton of Alderman. Ald. Sigcho would create his own volunteer TIF review committee to see how funds were spent.

What seems really at issue the question of whether this financial instrument can be used for good or not. It's track record makes people think that their money will just go to big, downtown tourist projects.

Audience member: Why should we believe that a kabal of big businesses wouldn't seize our TIF funds? We've seen prior meetings where they talked down to us with mumbo-jumbo speak.

Speaker cedes the point. We already see non-profits cropping claiming to be TIF review committees. That's not what we want. We want to establish a public, procedural group run by people.

Audience member: how do community groups oppose these shadowy non-profit groups pretending to speak on behalf of neighborhood? How are you opening up to neighborhood, meaningfully?

Speaker is trying to convince people that their could be a meaningfully democratic TIF review committee.

Someone spoke up in favor of the mere possibility that a TIF review could be democratic. Majority of room is against it.

Audience member speaks about Sigcho's zoning board meeting (which she says is totally private, no meeting notes viewable) as evidence that there will not be a meaningfully democratic process of managing TIF funds.

Anti-TIF speaker gets riotous applause.

Speaker (who appears to be Lucia Moya Calderon, Sigcho's point of contact [): says that the member of the public said things that were not factual. She says that in fact Sigcho's zoning process is meaningfully participatory. chicago.gov/city/en/sites/…

Audience member: "Byron listen to us. The residents are speaking. We've seen this nonsense before. We don't want this."

Other audience member: "Regardless of expansion, we will have a TIF for another 10 years. The existing TIF is going to continue. So the question is, really, can we make sure that the money truly goes back into the community?"

Speaker returns to slides: This TIF expansion would raise >$900m over 10 years, not 900m over one year.

Speaker is now presenting what Sigcho-Lopez has actually spent TIF money on. Top four, infrastructure, affordable housing, municipal facilities, and schools, speaker says. There's a graph of it, but it's impossible to make out.

Now speaker is talking about what schools have received schools. Ruiz received the most and used the money to build a new roof. Juarez used TIF funds to remodel locker and pool.

Audience member directly addresses Sigcho-Lopez: "What do YOU want? TIF expansion or not?"

Sigcho-Lopez: I want to see money get back to my community. What I would like to see is my community not get displaced. I would like to see seniors getting money for repairs. I want to see money spent on community.

There is a way to expand affordable housing better than how we do it. I would like to see that we listen to one another. I believe in the power of people. I need to develop solutions for my job.

Sigcho: Delivers an impassioned defense of the POTENTIAL of TIFs (not their history). Sigcho went to Vienna, Austria recently and saw 1 bedroom apartments for $300. Why can't we have that here? he says.

Sigcho: I understand the past. We can't relive it. I believe this can be a tool for good (more or less, I didn't get exact quote).

Lucia Moya-Calderon: CPS has $13b in school needs.

Audience member: There are no TIF's in Austria. Maybe that's why the apartments are $300.

Another audience member: "We built this community without TIF money."

1989 - TIF is still a smokescreen. You cannot continue to keep puttin it into our throats.

Audience: 90% of Pilsen was owner occupied. Now it's less than 50%.

Audience member: "With all due respect to you Sigcho-Lopez. TIF lied to us. We voted for you to take care of us. We voted for Solis. And what happened, every latino has been indicted or has left with their ego-crushed, cause they gave us the hot potato and got burned.

Sigcho-Lopez don't get burned."

Audience member in a prophetic mode: I'm suffering right here. I got ticket people getting tickets. No freakin cops. My whole block we're getting tickets. *MAN SLAMS FIST ON BANISTER* Eradicate the TIF and let the people speak!

Another audience member: why don't we bring back the porch and roof program?

Another audience member: Alderman should be jumping and screaming to fight for porch and home repair.

Audience member: Sigcho-Lopez and others did not taking sexual abuse allegations at Juarez high school not taken seriously.

Lucia Moya-Calderon: we did take those allegations seriously.

Audience member: what guarantees that the TIF will be different from its past? There's clearly a deep trauma in this community around TIF.

Audience member: I've been traumatized since 1989. I'll be traumatized in 2034. I just hope I have medicare.

Another audience member: Hundreds of millions dollars have fled the neighborhoods and gone downtown. Why don't you do TIF reparations?

Sigcho-Lopez - $2.3 billion went from our neighborhoods down to 78. 20,000 units promised, nothing built.

Sigcho-Lopez is talking up the cirtcuit breaker program that would do income-based tax.

I ask the committee: what measures would be put in place to assure that TIFs are not abused in the way that they used to be abused?

Lucia Moya-Calderon: We want to create a committee that would use statistics to assure that the right percentages of TIF funds go towards affordable housing, infrastructure, etc.

Sigcho-Lopez says that Lightfoot sent $2bn to unbuilt projects. An audience member: Every meeting I go to, people say no TIF. If you're about power to the people, and the people are saying no, then why are you continuing with this project?

An 81 year old man is here. He was born here, he says. He was part of 18th st development corridor. He says he got receivership of abandoned buildings and then put together a sort of job corps with people from county jail etc to restore buildings.

81 y/o: When you already have a structure we should rehab it instead of building new homes?

Sigcho-Lopez railing against empty homes, in agreement with man's remark. Audience member replies: you've been here five years and what did you do with Tif funds?

Audience member: procedural changes are not going to fix power imbalances. We need organization.

Audience member: How do we kill the TIF expansion? Lucia: City council votes no. Audience member: Not true, Sigcho-Lopez can withdraw it now.

Lucia claps back: I know that's how /you/ do it but that would be corruption. I don't want to go to jail. She says, "Sorry, I know that lady personally."

Lucia: There will be [some kind of a vote?] that goes to community on this issue. With just a yes or no question. (You can vote then?) Unclear to me.

Audience member: I think that we can't be like Wilmette, and just be Pilsen and keep our money here.

8:15pm the meeting concludes. Where things stand: room is majority in favor of stopping TIF expansion - what is not and was never on the table is abolishing TIF now. It will only expire in 2034. Sigcho and Lucia are in favor, but won't say it, of TIF expansion because they

see this as a tool that can be and has been, by Sigcho-Lopez, used to benefit Pilsen (hence their points about repairing roofs etc.).

Lucia reccomends that everyone look at the slides on the 25th ward website. They are available here. 25thward.org/wp-content/upl…