Tom Tresser is the Lead Organizer for the TIF work and has been cooking up innovation in community organizing, civic engagement and strategic planning for over 50 years.
The project produce reports that explain the impact of Chicago’s massive Tax Increment Financing Program on a ward-by-ward basis.
We are started our ward-by-ward review of TIFs with the 27th Ward. Since launcing in 2013 we’ve been invited into community over 245 times! Our presentations on SlideShare have been viewed over 290,000 times since we started this work. T
Click here to learn about the TIF Illumination Project editorial team (from 2013). CivicLab co-founder Tom Tresser has been researching TIFs and related civic issues since 2008. Here is a flier from a February 2008 seminar at DePaul University that featured Chicago Reader reporter Ben Joravsky.
See the slide deck we showed at the meeting above!
We operated America’s only co-working space dedicated to collaboration, education and innovation for civic engagement. The CivicLab space was founded by Benjamin Sugar and Tom Tresser and we operated in Chicago’s West Loop for two eventful years – closing on June 30, 2015.
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large…”
CivicLab (r) Reg. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
