4111 West 21st Place Chicago, IL 60623 Phone: 773-521-3137 Fax: 773-522-1832 http://lawndalealliance.blogspot.

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Public Comments to Mayor Emanuel Regarding the Proposed 2012 Budget Presented by Valerie F. Leonard August 31, 2011
Good evening. My name is Valerie Leonard. I am a resident of North Lawndale and CoFounder of the Lawndale Alliance. The Lawndale Alliance is a neighborhood association of local residents who come together on an ad hoc basis to address issues of concern to the community through grassroots community organizing, advocacy and community outreach. We hold annual TIF town hall meetings series on a number of topics, including status reports on the financial and programmatic performance of every TIF that impacts North Lawndale; the performance of North Lawndale schools; the pros and cons of hosting Olympic venue in North Lawndale; and a status report on the impact of the mortgage foreclosure crisis and the level of Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding the community received to put abandoned foreclosed properties back on the property tax rolls as affordable housing units. We have had the opportunity to do a cursory review of the Citys 2011 Budget Analysis and the TIF Reform Panels report, and observe your first 100 days in office, and offer the following impressions. Citys 2011 Budget We appreciate your analysis of the 2011 budget and look forward to a public hearing on the preliminary budget for 2012 once its complete. We are concerned that reports in the media, and information gleaned from your website indicate a set of priorities for this administration that may or may not fully address the concerns of the North Lawndale community, or other West Side neighborhoods for that matter. When you announced a city partnership with the MacArthur Foundation to target 9 high need communities for loans to rehab abandoned foreclosed buildings to create affordable for-sale or rental properties you left out North Lawndale, even though the 24th Ward ranks # 4 in terms of mortgage foreclosure all over the city. No West Side African American community was included. Nor was there any indication that the latest round of federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program dollars would be targeted to North Lawndale. Its as if the City is prepared to let us die on the vine. When you selected your TIF Reform Panel, you staffed it overwhelmingly with institutional interests, with only one person who represented a community development organization from the South Side. There were no representatives from the North Lawndale or the West Side, in spite of the fact that every inch of North Lawndale is in a TIF. We read in the paper today that you plan to make drastic cuts to the Police force that could seriously impact the Citys ability to put more

police officers on the streets. As you know, District 11, in North Lawndale, is ranked among the highest in the city with respect to crime rates. We respectfully request that before any preliminary budget is complete, that you visit North Lawndale and hear directly from our citizens what our priorities are. You are invited to attend the next meeting of the Lawndale Alliance on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at the District 10 Police Station on the corner of Ogden and Homan from 6 pm to 8 pm. We will be discussing the state of the 24th Ward and our level of City services.

TIF Reform Report We appreciate the work of the TIF Reform Panel. We are pleased that they have adopted some of our suggestions to develop a comprehensive economic plan to use in concert with the TIF program and to measure each program within its proposed goals and objectives, and to develop metrics to measure the extent to which the TIFs are meeting the goals and objectives. However, when we studied the metrics and the implied goals and objectives, they are more process oriented as opposed to outcome oriented. If were not careful, you can meet every one of your goals and objectives, and there will be no direct impact to the people or local businesses in the communities. We recommend that any goals and objectives include outcomes relative to the people and businesses in the underserved communities within the TIFs. This would necessarily include enhanced skill levels of the surrounding workforce, increased capacity of the local businesses to compete in their markets, etc. We appreciate the fact that you examined the governance structure as a means of enhancing accountability. We respectfully request that you expand the Joint Review Boards role to evaluate the cost versus benefits and measure positive and negative impacts of TIFs before granting approval. As it stands the group has historically rubber-stamped TIF proposals, looking only at eligibility criteria versus the potential impact to the taxing bodies. As a result, there were situations where taxing bodies could very well have voted against their own interests. We also request that you create a TIF Advisory Council comprised of stakeholders from TIF districts around the City to provide advice into the TIF decision making process. A good model would be the Community Development Advisory Council, which reviews all CDBG funded programs. In closing, we thank you for your time and consideration. We hope that you can join us for our town hall meeting next week.