September 18, 2024
"DYSFUNCTIONAL" CITY, MAYOR JOHNSON MEAN HUGE 2025 PROPERTY TAX HIKES
“It’s really scary,” said Alderman Nick Sposato (38th). “It’s totally dysfunctional,” said Alderman Anthony Napolitano (41st).
They’re not referring to a prospective Harris-Walz Administration.
They’re referring to the fact the Brandon Johnson’s Administration in Chicago is making Lori Lightfoot’s tenure look good, Rahm Emanuel’s look great and Rich Daley’s look positively fantastic.
“It’s just total chaos. Nobody knows what they’re doing,” Napolitano said.
“Everything is agenda-based,” which he means the Woke/Left.
“He (Johnson) is not working for all Chicagoans. He only cares about pleasing his Socialist base. He is going to raise property taxes in this year’s budget, which he promised not to do. And next year’s taxes are going to go way up,” the alderman said.
Chicago’s fiscal 2024 budget is $16.6 billion. All those unallocated federal COVID funds are gone.
At present, the city is running at a projected $982.4 million deficit. In other words, by the end of the year it will have spent a $1 billion more than expected tax revenues and fees. And the Chicago Teachers Union demands (and will get) $175 million from the city to cover pensions for non-teaching school employees? What is going on? Does anybody know what they’re doing?
Chicago by statute is not able to emulate the feds. They can’t just borrow and create a city debt, much like the national debt of $34 trillion. It’s pay-as-you-go. So with a shortfall of $1.2 billion between now and Dec. 31 Johnson has to find a whole load of money. And whatever he can’t find will be covered by tax-anticipation bonds payable to the lender from 2025 property tax revenue.
The mayor froze all city hiring, but said that CPD and CFD are exempt. The CPD is supposed to have 11,000 sworn officers. “It’s down to 8,500,” said Napolitano. And the number of EMT ambulances has dwindled to 80, and should be at 100. “They don’t care” about public safety, he said.
Napolitano, alderman since 2015, said city council meetings are “no longer enjoyable. They’re a circus. The (open first floor) gallery is jammed with angry people yelling about migrants in their neighborhoods and the Socialists try to pack it with pro-Hamas types. It’s just chaos. But the mayor’s got his 26 votes (majority) and he can ignore everybody else.”
Napolitano added that the mayor is “destroying small business” with his paid leave and minimum wage hike mandates. A worker can just disappear for days or weeks– with pay and benefits – because of personal or family illness, bereavement, or birthing. “They cannot sustain this expense.”
The “root cause,” which is a term so widely used it almost means nothing, is illegal migrants, he said.
“There’s 22,000 in Chicago. They’re being moved around, fed 3 meals a day…mostly put in parks, schools and tent camps on the Southeast Side and far South Side,” which are Hispanic and Black areas.
“It’s closer to 40,000” migrants now in Chicago, Alderman Jim Gardiner (45th) said. He said as an alderman even he does not know where they are. “They moved them for the DNC trying to make them invisible.”
The migrants are no longer camped-out at O’Hare, Midway or local police stations. So where are they? Follow school enrollment, said Napolitano.
“They quickly put the (migrants’) kids in public schools so they can get the federal per-pupil/per-day allotment,” he said.
The Left agenda dominates the council, said Gardiner. There was a ploy to put Socialist alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez (27th), a Johnson ally, to be named Zoning Committee chairman, but there was not enough votes for that to happen. Johnson decided to support 27th Ward Alderman Walter Burnett.
That’s a critical position, explained Gardiner, once held by the likes of Tom Keane and Bill Banks back in the day, and important in terms of business growth and housing construction.
In short, the job was to encourage capitalism and private enterprise and, of course, get big donations from developers.
The mentality was to make it more difficult for builders, less profitable, and more time-wasting.
But, in Brandon Johnson’s Chicago, outcomes are what matters.
When Sposato says the future is “scary” just look at the recent 2023 property tax bill, which amounted to a total of $70 billion for all taxing districts. For Chicagoans 42 percent of every tax dollar goes for education at some level, including pensions. Most of the water bill goes for pensions. The city already boosted the city property transfer tax and earmarked it for “homelessness.” So what’s left?
“There will be a huge (property) tax hike,” predicted Sposato, and it will pass the council in December.
And for all those Chicago renters out there, the Millennials and Gen X/Y/Zers who voted for Johnson and think that property owners are rich, your landlord is going to get socked and pass the tax hike along to you through higher rent.
Kamala Harris said she will try to impose nationwide rent control after elected. Like that’s going to pass through Congress. Another carrot in front of the naive voter. Much like the student debt forgiveness.
The bottom-line: A politician, when elected, can choose two methods of governing. Either he/she can attempt to broaden their base, appealing to those who didn’t vote for them, or they can harden their base by placating those who did vote for them. Johnson has chosen the latter course.
Johnson ignores the fact that he won the 2023 runoff 319,481-293,033 over Paul Vallas, getting 52.2 percent. He presumes his 2023 base will vote for him in 2027. But there are 2,746,388 Chicagoans, many of whom didn’t bother to vote in 2023 but do now or will own real estate (or are still paying rent and unable to buy a home), and there are the 293,033 Vallas voters who cannot restrain their determination to vote AGAINST him in 2027. The mayor is digging himself a deep hole and the imminent property tax hike will make it way deeper. Johnson, like Lightfoot, will be one-term-and-out. Pro tip: Let’s just remember to follow the money.
PENNSYLVANIA IS THE KEYSTONE STATE: Biden beat Trump 81,283,501-74,223,975 in 2020. And there is no doubt that Harris will get more votes nationwide than Trump in 2024. But it matters not. It’s electoral votes (EVs) that matter. Biden won the EV count 306-232 in 2020, meaning he was 36 EVs above the 270 needed and Trump 38 short.
There are seven Battleground states in 2024 with 93 EVs – AZ (11), NV (6), NC (16), GA (16), MI (15),
WI (10) and PA (19). Biden won all except NC in 2020. Trump won all except NV in 2016. Polling thus far in those states are virtually meaningless: All have microscopic leads for Trump or Harris, way inside the margin-of-error. Trump is likely to win AZ, NV, NC and GA (49 EVs), giving him a total of 265 EVs; Harris is likely to win MI and WI (25 EVs), giving her 254. So it all comes down to Pennsylvania and its 19 EVs.
As goes Pennsylvania so goes the presidency.
Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com
This column was published in Nadig Newspapers. If you, a friend or a colleague wish to be added to Russ's BUDDY LIST, and be emailed his column every Wednesday morning, email webmaster Joe Czech at Joe@Nadignewspapers.com