"While your kids were sweltering in the heat of schools that can't afford air conditioners, or ducking bullets fired by gangbangers who operate more freely because we can't afford police, Mayor Emanuel was coming up with $92 million to spend on something you don't want.
In this case, the South Loop project at Cermak and Michigan that will feature a DePaul basketball arena and a Marriott Hotel. The $92 million will come out of the good old tax increment financing slush fund, which is like a magical drug for creating new money for the mayor to waste.
Good thing he supposedly reformed it.
The specific slush fund is the Michigan Cermak TIF district, created in 1989 by Mayor Daley.
Anytime you want to come back, Mr. Mayor, all is forgiven.
At the time of its creation, Mayor Daley said he had to divert money from schools and cops, among other things, for 24 years in order to battle blight in the South Loop.
He told us to think of it as investment. Instead of using those tax dollars for teachers or police, he vowed to shrewdly and strategically invest them in various projects that would transform the South Loop into a promised land of redevelopment yielding more property tax dollars for our schools and cops when the TIF expires in 2013.
Alas, here we are in 2013, and the war against South Loop blight has not been won—even after 24 years of shrewd and strategic mayoral investment of economic development dollars.'
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