CHICAGO | General Discussions

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by sentinel

Conveniently leaving out the fact that it takes a lot more energy to power, heat and cool a home that is nearly twice the size.

NONE of this explanation has anything to do with what I said.

We are arguing equivalency of property taxes.

Somebody said that the property taxes in Texas are higher than in in Illinois. Then they provided an example, where the two taxes are the same but one house is DOUBLE the square footage of the other.

I pointed that out. End of discussion.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

NONE of this explanation has anything to do with what I said.

We are arguing equivalency of property taxes.

Somebody said that the property taxes in Texas are higher than in in Illinois. Then they provided an example, where the two taxes are the same but one house is DOUBLE the square footage of the other.

I pointed that out. End of discussion.

Property taxes are based on the assessed value of the home. SF plays a factor, but it's not the factor. You can find 1700 SF condos in the city w/ property tax bills near $10k. The property tax rate in TX is higher. As Sentinel said, the government gets its $ one way or another. The COL between the two is nearly identical.

[Bonsai Tree]

Originally Posted by glowrock

Tennessee also has an atrociously high state sales tax, really terrible overall infrastructure, and a major city which has an overall crime and murder rate far above Chicago (Memphis). It also, outside of Nashville, really, is quite poor and rural (excepting Memphis and Nashville). One advantage it has is massive federal funding in terms of both Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as of course legacy TVA projects and their continual funding.

Aaron (Glowrock)

I totally agree with you. Family friends just moved to outside Nashville from the northwest suburbs and they were shocked to see how many people were total hillbillies even in the suburbs of Nashville. Tennessee is the south through and through. It has terrible schools, high crime in many parts, and rampant rural poverty. It's doing very little right. Nashville is doing a good job, but the rest of the state? Everyone here claiming that we should put Tennessee on a pedestal needs to get off their high horse.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by glowrock

Tennessee also has an atrociously high state sales tax, really terrible overall infrastructure, and a major city which has an overall crime and murder rate far above Chicago (Memphis). It also, outside of Nashville, really, is quite poor and rural (excepting Memphis and Nashville). One advantage it has is massive federal funding in terms of both Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as of course legacy TVA projects and their continual funding.

Aaron (Glowrock)

Everybody I know who has spent time at Oak Ridge (to use their awesome facilities) hates the damn place

[Bonsai Tree]

Here in Chicagoland we have pipes bursting, water mains bursting, flooding, huge power outages as well. None of our higher taxes have done anything to prevent that

Seriously??? Do you know anything about the current situation in Texas? We have our issues here, but as much as everyone hates them, ComEd actually does a pretty good job. Especially in the last few years, I feel like new technology has allowed them to pinpoint outages far faster than in the past. My power used to go out all the time but now when it goes out it'll be back on really quickly.

Our energy infrastructure in this state is really old, except for in rural areas which have new dc circuits and dc-ac converters for wind power. That partially accounts for the outages you are referring to. Texas has newer infrastructure.

Despite that, our state can handle disasters much better than Texas ever can because we are connected to the Eastern Interconnection (the east-coast electric grid). Texas, because it does not want to abide by federal interstate commerce rules, has its own grid. In its bid for energy "independence" from the rest of the country, it set itself up for disaster. When Texas has a grid meltdown, it cannot ask for electricity from other parts of the country, because it is difficult to transfer large amounts of power across the few connections that each of the grids have.

This snowstorm has shown that Texas is run by a bunch of idiots. Most of its wind turbines don't have heaters because producers wanted to cut costs. So what happens when it gets really cold? All the wind turbines have to shut down. Boom 20% of texas's energy is gone. How about coal and natural gas plants? Well, you have to heat up the coal and natural gas hot enough to actually burn it off. That takes energy, a lot of it. When it's too cold, it can be extremely difficult to get temperatures hot enough to burn coal or natural gas.

Why don't we have problems with this then? Well, for two reasons. First of all our natural gas and coal plants are built for the cold. Most importantly, we get the majority of our energy from Nuclear reactors. They don't need to worry about the weather. Nuclear reactions can happen under nearly any circumstance. We have 6 nuclear plants, producing about 50-55% of our total electricity. Texas only has enough nuclear for 10% of its needs.

Texas messed up huge and we don't have nearly the same problems they do right now. I can go on and on about how much they screwed up. So please stop saying "we have these problems too." No, we don't.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Property taxes are based on the assessed value of the home. SF plays a factor, but it's not the factor. You can find 1700 SF condos in the city w/ property tax bills near $10k. The property tax rate in TX is higher. As Sentinel said, the government gets its $ one way or another. The COL between the two is nearly identical.

I can sort of accept this, but if you own a 2000 sf home in built in 1980 in suburban Chicago that has a $8000 tax bill, that 3700 sf home in Texas with an identical tax bill is looking pretty nice right now.

Which is probably why so many people are bailing the State

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Bonsai Tree

Texas messed up huge and we don't have nearly the same problems they do right now. I can go on and on about how much they screwed up. So please stop saying "we have these problems too." No, we don't.

We have these problems too.

Illinois messed up huge.

It may not have been with the electric grid, but in fucking up its finances for generations to come.

And what did we buy for that? Fine, we aren't totally out of power for 5 days, but that doesn't mean we don't still have plenty of big time problems due to failing infrastructure.

If all of those tax dollars went toward making our infrastructure spic and span, I'd be the last person complaining and the first person showing up to the Cook & Lake County Treasurer's office to pay my tax bills.

But alas, that's not what happened. Most of it is going towards unnecessary personnel and their platinum pension packages. And you still get a worthless fuck on the phone half the time you call Chicago's Water Dept. And don't even get me started on the Cook County Treasurer's office. Have you ever tried calling them? They don't even HAVE a person answering the phone, you get thrown around in a hilariously never ending feedback loop of recorded messages that's literally like a Saturday Night Live routine.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I can sort of accept this, but if you own a 2000 sf home in built in 1980 in suburban Chicago that has a $8000 tax bill, that 3700 sf home in Texas with an identical tax bill is looking pretty nice right now.

Which is probably why so many people are bailing the State

The house in Naperville has a basement, which is not included in the SF. TX house is still probably 500-1k SF larger, but most households don't need a 3.7k SF house. It's dated anyway - you'd spend a significant amount updating the kitchen and bathrooms.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

We have these problems too.

Illinois messed up huge.

It may not have been with the electric grid, but in fucking up its finances for generations to come.

And what did we buy for that? Fine, we aren't totally out of power for 5 days, but that doesn't mean we don't still have plenty of big time problems due to failing infrastructure.

If all of those tax dollars went toward making our infrastructure spic and span, I'd be the last person complaining and the first person showing up to the Cook & Lake County Treasurer's office to pay my tax bills.

But alas, that's not what happened. Most of it is going towards unnecessary personnel and their platinum pension packages. And you still get a worthless fuck on the phone half the time you call Chicago's Water Dept. And don't even get me started on the Cook County Treasurer's office. Have you ever tried calling them? They don't even HAVE a person answering the phone, you get thrown around in a hilariously never ending feedback loop of recorded messages that's literally like a Saturday Night Live routine.

While I am not in any way denying the long-term stupidity of Illinois' financial situation, I highly suggest you take a much deeper look into Texas' own financial morass. The state pretty much pawns everything off on regional and local districts, and these districts have absolutely atrocious amounts of debt. The shell game every entity uses in Texas to deny a deficit being a deficit, debt being debt, is absolutely comically bad.

Trust me, Texas is no panacea of financial stability.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[jtown,man]

Texans having to pay federal income tax shouldn't be included, everyone does, its a moot point.

Texas sales tax is not higher than the Chicago sales tax of 10.25%. Obviously, property tax fluctuates between cities but I don't think their property taxes are more than Illinois, comparable, but not more.

Texas has a gas industry, great. This means it's citzens pay less taxes. It's not a hit on Texas, it just is what it is.

Chicago schools aren't great by any stretch of the imagination. My friend just moved from here to Florida and her daughter is having to take remedial classes. She was an honor student at CPS. I've been looking through CPS data for a class and some schools have a below 50% graduation rate. That isn't anything to brag about. The state spends tons on schools but the results in the city anyway aren't impressive.

Basically, as long as someone doesn't move to the gulf coast or buys a very expensive house, they will do much better.

I don't mind high property taxes, well, I mind, but I'd rather have that than a high-income tax. You have some control over how much your house is worth ( don't buy an expensive house), but you don't want to limit your earning potential. I'll admit, Illinois income taxes aren't that high, but 0 is a lot lower.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by glowrock

Tennessee also has an atrociously high state sales tax, really terrible overall infrastructure, and a major city which has an overall crime and murder rate far above Chicago (Memphis). It also, outside of Nashville, really, is quite poor and rural (excepting Memphis and Nashville). One advantage it has is massive federal funding in terms of both Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as of course legacy TVA projects and their continual funding.

Aaron (Glowrock)

Sales tax in Memphis, for example, is 1% less than in Chicago, so the point isn't a good one.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Bonsai Tree

I totally agree with you. Family friends just moved to outside Nashville from the northwest suburbs and they were shocked to see how many people were total hillbillies even in the suburbs of Nashville. Tennessee is the south through and through. It has terrible schools, high crime in many parts, and rampant rural poverty. It's doing very little right. Nashville is doing a good job, but the rest of the state? Everyone here claiming that we should put Tennessee on a pedestal needs to get off their high horse.

What did they expect in Tennessee? University of Chicago professor neighbors?

Some people don't look entirely down on rural folks, it isn't a negative.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

My class got the chance to have a Calumet City official come and speak with us. The FIRST thing she brought up in her presentation was that it was great that they were a "home rule" city, meaning they can do things other cities can't. Her only example? Having a sales tax that is 2% higher than the states.

Huh? Then she went on to talk about their number one goal as a city is to increase tax revenue and keep their retail sector up and going.

She doesn't realize Indiana is literally across the border from them. Residents can easily move or shop there and save tons. The city keeps raising its property taxes to keep the government's income increasing every year despite a population that decreases every year.

How does that make sense? Why is the city's revenue keep climbing while its population is going down? They keep increasing taxes, which then leads to more people leaving, which leads to them to keep raising taxes. Why do they need so much revenue? Because they are running the city as if they had the same population as 20 years ago, despite losing 25% of their population.

It all reeks of a scheme to keep the idiots in their jobs and to keep the machine running.

This is funny and not surprising. There are a subset of suburbs including Cal City that hit the jackpot in the annexation wars and freeway/arterial building eras in the 1950s-1960s, and grew up around having abnormally large tax bases both from retail sales and the resulting property tax from the valuable commercial real estate. So sure, Cal City may be losing out to Munster and Merrillville, but it's still reeling in disproportionately high tax revenue because it has the River Oaks area around Torrence and I-80.

It's just funny that this outlook has been so deeply internalized within city government. There's also an interesting political battle going on in Cal City right now between the "old guard" and upstarts trying to muscle in, with racial overtones.

Each town has its own quirky history. And the the towns that don't have those lucrative commercial districts have different political dynamics because the money being raised and spent is coming mostly out of homeowners, and as the property taxes go way up, property values stagnate or decline - a problem that has hit many of the south suburbs, which continued high spending and debt accumulation despite weaker and weaker tax bases, and the high tax rates further discourage any commercial development that could soften the blow, particularly when Indiana and Will County are so close.

FWIW, most of the villages along the old Norfolk and Western (now Metra Southwest Service) like Oak Lawn, Worth, Palos, Orland Park, etc. are much more oriented around leaner government, keeping lower taxes, and being "business friendly", rather than milking commercial activity to fund a large patronage gravy train, and have rather different political dynamics.

[OrdoSeclorum]

Wasted taxes are wasteful and inefficient. But taxes pay for the investments that create economic growth. The worst place for a dollar to be is in my bank account behind a bunch of other dollars I'm never going to spend.

Simply being low tax in and of itself isn't good if it means that the citizens are less healthy, educated and prosperous than in a community with higher taxes. It's obvious on its face, but there's a reason why NFL players are more interested in playing in L.A., Seattle or Chicago than Carolina or Nashville and it's due to the opportunities that are available to them in those destinations, not the 5% of income that they might save each year by remaining in less developed markets.

I don't want my taxes to be used inefficiently. And I don't want to be treated unfairly compared to people who are in similar situations. Other than that, I'm excited when we invest my tax dollars into amenities, transportation, civic infrastructure and education that makes my life better than it would be in, say, Nashville, where most streets don't even have sidewalks. That impacts my quality of life far more than if I save $135,000 or $85,000 this year, which doesn't really impact me much at all.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Texans having to pay federal income tax shouldn't be included, everyone does, its a moot point.

Texas sales tax is not higher than the Chicago sales tax of 10.25%. Obviously, property tax fluctuates between cities but I don't think their property taxes are more than Illinois, comparable, but not more.

Texas has a gas industry, great. This means it's citzens pay less taxes. It's not a hit on Texas, it just is what it is.

Chicago schools aren't great by any stretch of the imagination. My friend just moved from here to Florida and her daughter is having to take remedial classes. She was an honor student at CPS. I've been looking through CPS data for a class and some schools have a below 50% graduation rate. That isn't anything to brag about. The state spends tons on schools but the results in the city anyway aren't impressive.

Basically, as long as someone doesn't move to the gulf coast or buys a very expensive house, they will do much better.

I don't mind high property taxes, well, I mind, but I'd rather have that than a high-income tax. You have some control over how much your house is worth ( don't buy an expensive house), but you don't want to limit your earning potential. I'll admit, Illinois income taxes aren't that high, but 0 is a lot lower.

You completely ignored my main point, which was that Texas' finances are nowhere NEAR as rosy as the state generally leads on. Municipal debt loads are staggering, and that combined with generally substandard infrastructure is leading to situations like we're witnessing with the power grid nearly going completely offline, not to mention severe flooding, etc... etc... etc...

Those who look to Texas as some bastion of financial solvency and a panacea of wealth are woefully misinformed.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Sales tax in Memphis, for example, is 1% less than in Chicago, so the point isn't a good one.

Note: I said STATE sales tax. I am fully aware that Chicago's sales tax rate is very high. I stated that Tennessee's, without any additional local additions, is very high as well. That is true.

Again, my main point is that EVERY state needs to collect taxes in order to function. With the exception of a few states on the extreme high and extreme low on the spectrum, most states have overall taxes that are very, very near one another when you include state/local income, sales, property and other taxes.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by glowrock

Note: I said STATE sales tax. I am fully aware that Chicago's sales tax rate is very high. I stated that Tennessee's, without any additional local additions, is very high as well. That is true.

Again, my main point is that EVERY state needs to collect taxes in order to function. With the exception of a few states on the extreme high and extreme low on the spectrum, most states have overall taxes that are very, very near one another when you include state/local income, sales, property and other taxes.

Aaron (Glowrock)

I don’t think anybody disagrees that municipalities have to collect taxes. Where we differ, and where I am feeling some pushback from the Illinois defenders around here, is in the idea that municipalities need to have the flexibility to cut costs when tax revenue is down—one way being eliminating unnecessary personnel. Cut staff, cut pay, maybe renegotiate pensions. *

The corrupt special interests that be made the latter nearly impossible. I find that not only horrible policy, but basically a moral failure.

* Classic case: Preckwinkle was more willing to pass a highly unpopular soda tax than to cut personnel. It came back to bite her, and she finally had to cut hundreds of staff—which nobody noticed because I’m sure that that staff did diddly shit. That’s the mentality of our leadership. Oh, and where is Toni? Still in office. Re-elected over and over and over again by the same flock of sheep......

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum

Wasted taxes are wasteful and inefficient. But taxes pay for the investments that create economic growth. The worst place for a dollar to be is in my bank account behind a bunch of other dollars I'm never going to spend.

Uhhh.. think about what you just said here.

The money I’ve earned is better off in Springfield’s hands than in my bank account.

After 30 years of corruption, mismanagement, and self-enrichment by our so-called leaders, I beg to differ.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

This is funny and not surprising. There are a subset of suburbs including Cal City that hit the jackpot in the annexation wars and freeway/arterial building eras in the 1950s-1960s, and grew up around having abnormally large tax bases both from retail sales and the resulting property tax from the valuable commercial real estate. So sure, Cal City may be losing out to Munster and Merrillville, but it's still reeling in disproportionately high tax revenue because it has the River Oaks area around Torrence and I-80.

It's just funny that this outlook has been so deeply internalized within city government. There's also an interesting political battle going on in Cal City right now between the "old guard" and upstarts trying to muscle in, with racial overtones.

Each town has its own quirky history. And the the towns that don't have those lucrative commercial districts have different political dynamics because the money being raised and spent is coming mostly out of homeowners, and as the property taxes go way up, property values stagnate or decline - a problem that has hit many of the south suburbs, which continued high spending and debt accumulation despite weaker and weaker tax bases, and the high tax rates further discourage any commercial development that could soften the blow, particularly when Indiana and Will County are so close.

FWIW, most of the villages along the old Norfolk and Western (now Metra Southwest Service) like Oak Lawn, Worth, Palos, Orland Park, etc. are much more oriented around leaner government, keeping lower taxes, and being "business friendly", rather than milking commercial activity to fund a large patronage gravy train, and have rather different political dynamics.

Thank you for the response, very interesting information!

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum

Wasted taxes are wasteful and inefficient. But taxes pay for the investments that create economic growth. The worst place for a dollar to be is in my bank account behind a bunch of other dollars I'm never going to spend.

Simply being low tax in and of itself isn't good if it means that the citizens are less healthy, educated and prosperous than in a community with higher taxes. It's obvious on its face, but there's a reason why NFL players are more interested in playing in L.A., Seattle or Chicago than Carolina or Nashville and it's due to the opportunities that are available to them in those destinations, not the 5% of income that they might save each year by remaining in less developed markets.

I don't want my taxes to be used inefficiently. And I don't want to be treated unfairly compared to people who are in similar situations. Other than that, I'm excited when we invest my tax dollars into amenities, transportation, civic infrastructure and education that makes my life better than it would be in, say, Nashville, where most streets don't even have sidewalks. That impacts my quality of life far more than if I save $135,000 or $85,000 this year, which doesn't really impact me much at all.

I think most people would agree with you, I do. But the fact is that tax money isn't being spent wisely, its basically used to fund the incomes of government workers (to include pensions), not all the good stuff you are talking about. This is why I like local government, its more responsive, you can easily go read your cities budget and see where YOUR money is going.

The high taxes in this region would be fine if every place looked and acted like Elmhurst, but it doesn't. Tax me all you want, but at least give us great results, this area isn't. This isn't me saying LETS BE LIKE TEXAS, no. It is me saying "lets look at how we are taxing and what we are taxing people for." That is is, there needs to be some readjustments, not revolutions.