Morning Shorts
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2009 - Posted by Mike Murray
* Ryan doesn’t get Bush mercy
* Reform commission starts work with public meeting
* Capital wishes, stimulus dreams
Trains, planes, automobiles and . . . sewage. Those are just some of the issues that local governments hope they can improve upon if and when some of President Barack Obama’s proposed $800 billion stimulus package trickles down to the south and southwest suburbs.
Details have yet to be ironed out for the package—and the president already is facing opposition from Republicans in Congress on key points—but that hasn’t stopped local officials from whipping up wish lists for area projects.
* Assessor seeks to cut valuations as home values fall
Cook County Assessor James Houlihan says he’s researching ways to come up with a standard adjustment in property assessed valuations — which directly relate to how much homeowners pay in real estate taxes — to bring them more in line with current housing market conditions. The plan would make adjustments based on a property’s location — likely calculated for each township — and could save people some cash.
* Daley to shutter at least four mental health centers
Mayor Richard Daley’s administration will announce plans Wednesday to close as many as five of the city’s 12 mental health centers on Feb. 1, citing a decline in state funding.
* Alderman arrested, charged with DUI
Ald. Sharon Denise Dixon (24th) was arrested and charged with drunken driving and obstructing a police officer when she reportedly refused to obey street closures at the scene of a fatal fire early Wednesday in the North Side’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
Dixon, 46, of the 1600 block of South Central Park Avenue, was charged with driving under the influence, obstructing a police officer, obstruction of traffic and operating a vehicle without insurance, according to a police source.
* Cook County judge pleads guilty to DUI
- Carl Nyberg - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:23 am:
Didn’t Reagan clear out the mental institutions by turning people out into the streets?
Didn’t this increase pan handling?
And isn’t more pan handling associated with higher levels of crime?
People who are mentally ill and most appropriately treated in a residential facility should be in residential facilities. Putting them on the street is bad public policy.
- VanillaMan - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:28 am:
Ryan doesn’t get Bush mercy. - I don’t know why some believed Bush would help Ryan. Of all places, Illinois needs to see some justice regarding our convicted public officials. Releasing Ryan would not have served the public.
Alderman arrested, charged with DUI. - It is one thing to be caught driving DUI. It is another to do what Dixon did. She disrespected our laws, our police and her office with her behavior. She better claim that she was drunk, because she acted like a drunken fool, didn’t she?
- Scooby - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:29 am:
With all the inauguration coverage I expected yesterday to be a huge news dump day. I figured morning shorts would read like a horror movie.
- VanillaMan - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:36 am:
Daley to shutter at least four mental health centers. - I don’t like myths designed to make people look bad. We have developed medicine which allows those who used to be denied their rights and freedoms due to mental illnesses, to function. The good people who operate these facilities care about the work they do and the people they serve. When budgets are cut, caution is taken to ensure that those released from these institutions are not abandoned.
We cannot guarantee a whiffle-ball world for anyone. That is why we work hard to guarantee that you have rights to choose your own world.
- Leroy - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:37 am:
If we can’t pay to maintain the infrastructure we have now, how are ever going to pay to maintain new stimulus-based infrastructure?
(Hint: we won’t have to. Solving that problem will be up the next generation of political ‘leaders’)
- fedup dem - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 9:48 am:
Ald. Dixon is a rookie Alderman, which explains why she didn’t have a lackey serving as her driver.
Regarding Judge McGinnis, apparently her attorney must have slept thru civics class while he was in school. Either that, or the man is lying when he claimed he didn’t realize that January 20 was Inauguration Day.
- BigDog - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:19 am:
The Sharon Dixon story should be required reading for all just in case there is anyone out there that assumes the Alderman title indicates some assumed level of intelligence. Yikes.
- b-dogg - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:29 am:
i’ve written here before that Blago’s troubles made Ryan’s case an impossible one to make.(i may have read that before here too.) anywho,
shuttering mental health facilities is terrible public policy. many of these people’s new homes will be the street and prision. you will still pay for them there, vanilla man, through your taxes. but, hey, out of sight-out of mind right? we live in a society, brother. step out of your comfortable life and figure out. “whiffle ball world?” hasn’t the recent economic meltdown taught you anything about the unchecked advance of the “free market.”
“caution is taken to ensure they are not abandonded” what caution is taken? dropping them off at their last known address? their families couldn’t deal with/help them that is why they were in the instituion to begin with. severe mental illness places an unbelievable amount of strain and stress on families, and if they are low income, forget about it. take your callous disregard for those less fortunate than you somewhere else!
- Truthful James - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:32 am:
So the Assessor is going to provide relief to homeowners.
Unless the politicos reduce spending generally, that just raises the burden on commercial properties.
Has anybody driven around the Cook County as well as the other Counties and the State looking at neighborhood strip malls and seeing the vacancies, basically because business is shot and when the owner tries to pass the increasing taxes through as per the leases, they can’t pay that either?
Nope. I know of no small commercial landlord who has been able to do anything but reduce the lease rents in an attempt to at least keep stores occupied.
Between the 38% ratio and the multiplier, commercial properties in Cook are paying taxes based on an equalized value close to 100% of estimated market value.
Home owners who have been given 16% valuations by law (10%-12% de facto) if they are unlucky have equalized valuations of at max 41% but have their taxes capped. (2.60x used as example multiplier.)
Cook County is Fantasy Island indeed
- Leroy - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:40 am:
Truthful James -
Now the reason for all those vacancies is because we have been slacking for the eight years. No one has been working hard at all.
But that is about to change! Time to roll up the sleeves, old boy. The sooner we all get serious and get back to work, the sooner we will be out of this mess.
- 2ConfusedCrew - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:49 am:
Perhaps Hooli could just drop the numbers back down to the levels of about 2000 or 1998, before his downtow comupter started jumping whole neighborhhod because some did a tear down 10 blocks away.
Should not be too hard.
Should not mean he needs to leave the Loop.
He can still play mini-Blagoof and blame Madigan for all his woes.
He can still take the FOI Filly out for rides.
- Truthful James - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 10:56 am:
Leroy –
Who has been slacking? The neighborhood businessman who has seen the Target and Walmart superstores (among others) underpricing him because their volume lowers the wholesale costs to the big guys who buy by the container load?
His sleeves are rolled up all the way to his neck, he has fired everybody but family, or perhaps he is running it one handed.
Sooner does not pay the rent, and from that pay the mortgage, Those are date certain due, and the banks are not in the not for profit line of work.
You can tell how tough it is for the mon and pops. The customers come in with exact change including pennies. Items on the shelves disappear out the door — even the 99 cent ones.
Meanwhile, back in the public sector pay and raises go up every year, AFSCME and the NEA see to that. In Cook County some officials nominally have two jobs. State Senator and City Sewer Inspector? I can see how those do fit together, if a guy has the time.
- Elliot Ness - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:05 am:
How come nobody has picked up on the fact that Cook County has changed the assessment ratios for 2009. Most commercial property will be assessed at 25% next year, and residential properties at 10%. Therefore commercial assessments should already be dropping next year by 13% for Commercial Properties next year, right? If he doesn’t drop the assessments that much, attorneys are going to have a field day with their appeals to the Board of Review and PTAB.
Houilhan’s days are numbered
- MOON - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:22 am:
Houlihan is afraid to address the real issue. You can play with the assessments all you want, however if the taxing bodies keep wasting money, the taxes will not go down.
Houlihan is all about gimmicks!
- 2ConfusedCrew - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:24 am:
No no
Hooli is all about lunch in the look
Pony rides
And watching his career sink below the sunset
- Empty Suit Parade - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:35 am:
How about posting the whole Defender story on Jones?
- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:38 am:
Why? Is anything in there at all?
- Truthful James - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:52 am:
Elliott and MOON, and all the good readers.
That will be for Tax year 2009 (collectible in 2010.) It does not apply to the taxes collected in 2009, that is, he triennial for the South Suburbs, which was to be the first of the set of three triennials. Which means if implemented the rest of the County escapes.
I say, if implemented, for there is no indication how Houlihan the Magician will do that (”At no time will my hand leave the end of my arm.”) The County merely saying so does not get it done, even if Houlihan promised there would be no revenue loss.
If assessments drop, remember that most municipalities will have lower valuation, but the State Multiplier remains a mystery. It is based on sales ratio studies for the prior year. The 2.6 Multiplier reflects a finding that Cook county properties are way underassessed vis a vis the 33 1/3% standard.
But the sales ratio studies may reflect a decline in property values, which means that the Mulyiplier creating the Equalized Assessed Value on which tax rates (and thus tax collections) are based may fall as well, creating lower EAV.
Good, yes? Not so swiftly, Tom. Consider than most taxing bodies have statutory tax caps — and most ae taxing at the cap. Lower Total EAV for a taxing body means higher tax rates to collect the same dollars. Many are taxing at the maximum rate now. It can not be raised without a referendum. Likely there will be less dollars to put in various funds. Service crises.
That was before the great real estate debacle in which we now find ourselves. As the famous philosopher Little Orphan Annie sang: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, there is always tomorrow, it is only a day away.”
I say again. The permanent cure is to freeze all property valuations at the present level, changing the valuation only on improvement or sale. Abolish the Multiplier for property taxation purposes.
Economics lesson over. Wake up the student next to you.
- Six Degrees of Separation - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 12:28 pm:
If we can’t pay to maintain the infrastructure we have now, how are ever going to pay to maintain new stimulus-based infrastructure?
Hmmm…most of the stimulus will be for fixing the infrastructure we have now. And we have always been “able” to maintain the infrastructure we have now, but the collective “we” have not always chosen to do so with the available resources.
- Jake from Elwood - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 12:43 pm:
Whiffle-ball world?
- steve schnorf - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 3:04 pm:
I don’t claim to know a lot about Chicago’s mental health system, but I suspect the centers being closed are not in-patient facilities but are neighborhood clinics. In that case, no one lives there to be moved out and dropped off.
- Cal Skinner - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 3:30 pm:
The assessment level for homes in Cook County prior to the state multiplier has been 10% or less for probably ten years.
That’s what IL Dept. of Revenue figures show.
- emyjo - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 8:41 pm:
When is Houlihan up for re-election? His Customer Service is atrocious!! My Grandmother waited over an hour to get assistance and all she could see was people laughing and loafing around behind the counter. Seriously, take a number on the 3rd floor County Building and observe. You will never see anything like it. Go through the Treasurer’s Office and you have people greeting you at the door!!
- steve schnorf - Wednesday, Jan 21, 09 @ 11:16 pm:
I’ve know Houlihan, and worked with him on various matters, for the better part of 20 years. I don’t agree with him on some things, and I know there are legitimate people who dislike him, but my personal experience is that he is very much one of the good guys.