Our goal is to reveal the total TIF impacts for Chicago on a ward-by-ward basis. This has never been done before. Why? Because people don’t “live” in a TIF district. That is, if you ask people where they live, they are likely to answer “I live in Garfield Park” or “I live in the 27th Ward.” If you ask people, “How are things in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor TIF District?” we’re pretty sure the answer would be a blank stare.
People’s mental maps are about a community or political district – they can relate their situation on the ground to a map of a place or district. And they know who to complain to if they feel something is not right in their neighborhood. In Chicago, that tends to be the Alderman who represents the ward.
So we’d like to start this process with the 27th Ward.
The 27th Ward is on Chicago’s Near North side and goes west to the Garfield Park community. The Alderman is Walter Burnett, Jr. There are 12 TIFs that go through the 27th Ward – in fact about 77% of the ward is in one TIF or another. Download a map of the ward.
Here is a map of the ward showing how these 12 TIFs overlap it. [Download a PDF]
12 TIFs crisscross the 27th Ward.
Here is a table showing how much each TIF intrudes into the ward. [Download this table]
We were able to get several sets of data to show how much property tax was extracted from the 27th Ward in 2011 by these 12 TIFs. Read more about that here.
Here is the finished graphic designed by Carlyn So to show how TIFs impact the 27th Ward.
We added data about the 2013 Chicago public school closings and budget cuts to our data. The combined picture for the 27th Ward looks like this:
No one else can tell Chicagoans how TIFs are impacting their communities. Please make a deductible contribution via our fiscal agent, the Investigative News Network.
Here is the presentation plus audio on what we discovered about the 12 TIFs in the 27th Ward (1 hour, 25 min)
Visit our online data store to purchase the 27th ward presentation and any of our Illuminations.
