Lonnie,
With all due respect, it's clear that you don't understand how a TIF works and the intricacies of Public Finance in Illinois at all. I know what drives your position and they are noble goals but there are other considerations in this town that need to be factored in when making decisions.
MikeT and Stella - the School Board and District 96 were clear in that they were not taking a position on the TIF. Why is it the knee-jerk reaction on this Board to attack people personally that don't agree with your position? In this case they aren't even disagreeing with your position. I don't think those tactics advance your cause.
Lonnie - I guess all is forgiven and you can come home now. You'll love the weather. If you hustle you can vote in Chicago for Daley.
It would be nice if district 96 made a position paper on their position. They will be asked on Tuesday night. I am drawing from my memory of what I heard said on Saturday. I think I heard that they want to be included in the tif. maybe I am misconstruing the position.
I asked other to contribute what they heard.
1. include hauser and central in the tif boundaries
2. no new residential development within the tif boundaries
3. ensure that no school age kids come in to houses that were vacated due to people moving into the tif district
4.
5.
6.
7.
I did not hear the same protest as I heard from the Pleasantdale superintendant in the BurrRidge school system when the village proposed a TIF there. In fact, I did not hear any protest. I understand from the above points that:
a) they support the concept of the riverside tif
b) they were told by the village that it was going to happen (because they can do it) and the school was trying to get the best deal it can from something that was going to happen since they did not want to fight it with litigation like Pleasantdale did.
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I keep hearing the idea that 'the village is going to do it anyway'.
I see the tearing and gouging and the cutting of Van Gogh's Cypress on the Road so that the piece can be sold on ebay.
Look what they've done to our town, ma.
Corbi, I wish you could refrain from telling everyone that disagrees with you on the alleged merits of the TIF that they don't understand. I feel that I understand it only too well. Please try not to see everthing in terms of economics. Some things about Riverside are priceless and we should not gamble with them. Perhaps the village has a spending rather than a revenue problem. I'm not necessarily saying that that is the case; I haven't looked at village finances for a while now. The spending pattern needs to be looked at as well as revenue.
Riverside is greater than the sum of its EAV.
And, if you really want the best EAV for now and for future Riversiders, we must retain Riverside's special 'brand distinction', which is that hard-to-define element called character or charm. This distinction needs to be conserved, protected, emphasized, polished, nurtured, and brought out and not compromised and plundered.
Olmsted created this town in response to the Industrial revolution of the 19 th century. The world is getting more technologized, complex, and harried, and not less. Drive to Fryes in Downers Grove and you'll get fried and down. When you come back to Riverside, the unhurried and de-congested pace of this fine example of a unified landscape gives a sense of that safe slow enclosure that Olmsted spoke about in the vision statement.
We want to keep this over short sighted and ill advised revenue enhancing schemes that would plunder the carefully devised flow, or cadence almost, of space in town - as in a Van Gogh painting. Going through the center of our town should NOT be a similar experience as going through rectilinearly laid out towns such as Lagr and OP, where car congestion is the norm.
In the end, we will retain and get our EAV if we keep ouy eyes focused on this brand distinction. Once we get the word out some more about this special place of Riverside (small approach; talk is cheap), I believe the people who come here will come here for the semi rural atmosphere spoken about in the vision statement, and not for TIFs, and not for strawbucks or chipotles. Let Lyons have strawbucks on Ogden; we'll keep Grumpy's. The people I am talking about will have the following things when they come here:
** desire for the semi rural atmosphere
** money, and they 'll pay for the opportunity to live in s semi rural suburb in the middle of gritty cook county, 20 minutes into down town chicago and minutes to Lagrange and OP.
The people coming here will also find creative ways to get bad operators out and replace with good. Maybe they will give them/him an offer he cannot refuse. I mean an old fashioned money offer. free market economics. Maybe this will happen in conjunction with what the Attorney General is doing.
The shopping list that I have seen so far for the TIF, a multi story parking deck in the middle of town and infrastructure that readies for even more high density housing than has already been built out over the last century, is antithetical to the vision statements.
We want to stay different. It will be the best attractant in the end.
"Come to Riverside, and live in a Van Gogh! "
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