Mayor Brandon Johnson arrives for a City Council meeting, March 20, 2024, at City Hall. The mayor and City Council members wore purple flowers in honor of Women’s History Month. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration held a hearing Friday on his ambitious $1.25 billion bond plan to fund affordable housing and development that saw some aldermen welcome the idea while others bristled over a lack of specifics on how their wards would be affected.
These special districts capture any increase in property taxes resulting from fresh development and lock that new money away in a special fund that can be spent by the city on economic development projects within that district’s geographic boundaries. Johnson’s plan would borrow against the new property tax revenues that are freed up after a TIF’s scheduled expiration.
“This is a very unique and creative way of front-loading particular development and economic development in the city of Chicago,” Burnett, Johnson’s vice mayor, said. In their presentation, city officials pitched the deal as a means to shore up new revenue without raising property taxes — a red line that Johnson drew during his mayoral campaign — and during a critical time in which federal stimulus funds that buoyed affordable housing and development projects are fast dwindling.
At a news conference Wednesday, the mayor had shrugged off the apparent setback and paraded the $1.25 billion bond plan as his next battle: “So buckle up.”