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Well, it didn't take long . . .
Roughly eighth months after Mayor Daley broke his promise not to spend any public money on the 2016 Olympics, he's proposing to spend untold millions buying Michael Reese Hospital so he can tear it down for the Olympic Village.
The mayor didn't tell reporters how he would fund the purchase of the 37-acre site, west of Lake Shore Drive between 26th and 31st streets. But give Crain's columnist Greg Hinz credit -- he figured it out. "The property," Hinz dryly noted in in his Wednesday account of Daley's proposal, "is included within the Bronzeville tax increment financing (TIF) district."
It's also next to the 47th and King TIF, the 40th and State TIF, the 41st and King TIF, the 35th and State TIF, and the 43rd and Cottage Grove TIF. State laws governing TIFs allow the city to "port" TIF funds -- that is, move TIF money from one district to an adjoining one. Including Bronzeville, these TIFS had about $19.3 million in their accounts as of last December.
Remember, TIFs are property tax dollars diverted from the schools and parks and county into slush funds controlled by the mayor. He could use them to rebuild the CTA, hire more teachers, or help offset the city's $196 deficit, which instead has him calling for a $300 million increase in property taxes and fees. Instead, he's pouring money into his pipe dream.
Enjoy the games, my friends.
-B. Joravsky, March 14, 2007
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/thew...
May 10, 2006
Daley, Civic Leaders Meet with U.S. Olympic Committee
Chicago would be an ideal location for the 2016 Summer Olympics, but the games must provide long-term benefits for the people of Chicago and must not burden taxpayers, Mayor Richard M. Daley said today. ...
If Chicago is to pursue the Olympics, Daley said, " ... real safeguards must be in place to protect the city’s finances and our taxpayers. This effort cannot become a financial burden to the taxpayers of Chicago and Illinois.
“We will not seek the Olympics if we think it will detract in any way from our ongoing efforts to improve the Chicago Public Schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, make our city safer and more affordable, or help those most deserving of our support.”
This tax increase is about libraries and kids.
The Olympics is about a legacy and kids and physical excellence.
Ben, Why do you attack the best Mayor in the history of Chicago?
Congressman once tied mayor to corruption
Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb 13, 2007
Nine months ago, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) delivered a blistering critique of Mayor Daley before the City Club of Chicago that appeared to lay the groundwork for a campaign for mayor.
Gutierrez talked about a mayor besieged by corruption who had been in power too long. He accused Daley of wasting time and money on Millennium Park and attracting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games at the expense of public schools. He called it "offensive" that only two of every 100 Hispanic freshmen in Chicago public high schools go on to college. ...
Gutierrez said his on-again, off-again alliance with Daley was back on again after the mayor invited him to a Saturday morning breakfast about a month ago.
Daley assured Gutierrez that no public money would be spent on a Chicago Olympics ...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20...
Ben has proven, once again, what a fucking liar Daley has been, is, and will continue to be.
Also, let's not forget the MANY other liars who inhabit our governments, city, county, sate and federal.
They all have one thing in common, namely, they are the INCUMBENTS.
Does any citizen still have any doubts about:
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
Just Do It.
One thing I don't understand is, since Ben has proven himself to be capable of understanding exactly how those in our city and county governments waste, steal, misuse, mismanage and otherwise fuck over each and every citizen residing in this city and this county, why haven't we, the taxpaying voters, been offered the opportunity to elect BEN JORAVSKY as our Mayor, or our County Board President?
Olympic Games
West Side Stories
Scrounging Up $3 Billion in 'New' Tax Money? Hey, No Problem.
by Neil deMause, Village Voice, January 22 - 28, 2003
Councilman James Sanders couldn't help himself. No sooner had the chair of the City Council's Economic Development Committee warned fellow legislators at the December 17 hearing on the city's Olympics plan to hold off on questions about financing, than he was asking Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff: "And the city won't have to put any money in the plan?"
Doctoroff's answer, as always: "No existing tax money will be used."
That word—"existing"—was not chosen lightly. For Doctoroff's West Side dreams absolutely would require public money: at least $3 billion of it, for everything from an Olympic stadium to expanding the Javits Convention Center to—the big-ticket item—extending the No. 7 train to Eleventh Avenue. But in Doctoroff's vision, all this would be "new" tax money: funds that would be created by the very development they were helping to build.
If it all sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Doctoroff's plan to use this "tax increment financing" (TIF) to convert the West Side's lofts and parking lots into a westward extension of midtown's office towers is raising eyebrows among development experts—and could yet deep-six New York's shot at winning the 2012 Olympic bid two summers from now, as IOC chair Jacques Rogge puts a microscope to cities' financial plans in the wake of Athens's disastrous preparations for the 2004 Games. "That would be the grandmother of all TIF districts," says California TIF expert Howard Greenwich, whistling in amazement at a project that would be 10 times the size of the largest TIF on record. And it's almost certain, he says, to cost taxpayers money—possibly for decades to come.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0304,demause,4133...
How about posting some VERIFIABLE data on exactly what benefits have been gained by the last, say, 10 cities that have hosted the Olympics?
And by gained, I mean, NET gains, after ALL the COSTS have been subtracted from the gross gains.
Instead of posting your feeble, whining, Daley touting crap, post the VERIFIABLE FACTS to support your claims of 'enormous benefits' and 'investments and people would pour into Chicago after the Olympics'.
How about asking the citizens of our city if they want 'people' pouring into our city?
How about detailing the likely nature of those 'investments'?
How about sharing the nature of those expected 'benefits'?
And the identities of those who expect to be benefited?
I'm sure the mayor appreciates your expecting him to be dead by 2016.
Will the rest of his cronies and pals, and their offspring, be dead by 2016 as well?
This tax increase is not about libraries and kids.
The Olympics are not about a legacy and kids and physical excellence.
Ben, Why do you attack the worst Mayor in the history of Chicago?