Update: The Obama administration awarded the CTA the loan it needs for this project in early January 2017.
On November 30, the Chicago City Council voted in a special session to approve a “transit TIF” for the Chicago Transit Authority’s project to modernize the Red and Purple Lines. The money will be used as a local match for a federal grant.
Transit TIFs are new to Illinois. The state legislature passed it in the summer, and the city’s various commissions and committees debated the mayor’s enabling ordinance before finally enacting it in November. The transit TIF district’s boundary was the only part of the law that changed. (An earlier map showed the district including an area south of North Ave.)
Its boundary is now official and part of our massive map collection. You can also search for any address and we’ll tell you if that property is in the new transit TIF district.
Transit TIF districts differ from original “tax increment financing” districts because they won’t divert funding away from the Chicago Public Schools. The district will collect property tax revenues above the amount collected in 2016 from properties within. CPS will get its share of the revenues as if the district didn’t exist.
Read more coverage of this topic on Streetsblog Chicago and Metropolitan Planning Council’s website. (MPC was instrumental in getting this law passed in the General Assembly.)
Then, 80 percent of the remaining revenues will be spent on paying for the transit modernization project — and only that project. The other 20 percent will be divvied amongst the other taxing bodies that receive funding from property taxes (including the Chicago Public Library and Chicago Community Colleges).