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July 3, 2007
Welfare Kankakee County Style- a reverse Robin Hood-stealing from the many and rewarding the wealthy and powerful. by Keith L. Runyon, President of CUT
Our community “misleaders” have morphed our county into a haven for retail corporate welfare..
Look at the score card: Bradley taxpayers are being forced to subsidize Kohls’ a $14 billion corporation and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation with sales approaching $355 billion. Kankakee taxpayers are also being forced to subsidize Wal-Mart,
Bourbonnais “Taxpayers are being forced to Subsidize Jewel/Osco whose parent company SuperValu is a $44 billion company and Kroger a $66 billion corporation. Bourbonnais taxpayers are also privileged to subsidize a Denver developer who is shuffling the stores in what the elected officials refer to as the “Town Center”, which in any other community would simply be called a strip mall.
The economic reality is that retail locates where there is supporting population. The metro area of Kankakee, Bradley, Bourbonnais, and Manteno has a population of nearly 70,000.
Population is incentive enough to attract retailers. So why are the elected officials burdening taxpayers with the cost of retail growth locally? Local elected officials are all nice, well meaning people who are simply no match for slick, well organized developers.
Contrast what happens locally with the actions of Plainfield. A couple of years ago Wal-Mart and Menard’s told the city council of Plainfield that they would like to locate stores there but they needed tax concessions in order to do so.. The city board extended a hearty invitation for them to locate in the community, however. they kindly declined to offer any tax incentives. Wal-Mart and Menard’s have large stores in Plainfield. Plainfield knew it was in the driver’s seat because they had a large and expanding population. Wal-Mart and Menard’s wanted access to that market.
Many years ago this writer had the pleasure of commuting
to Chicago with the Village
Attorney of Park Forest and a very senior partner in one of Chicago’s premier
law firms.
The Village Attorney complained about how the developer was running rough shod over the Village Board.. The Senior Attorney said, “the problem is, that the developer is a bunch of pirates and the Village Board is a bunch of boy scouts. The only way you will be able to deal with the developer is for the Village to hire it’s own pirate.”
Our local situation requires the same solution. The local villages have to retain the services of a strong community growth negotiator. One who is not intimidated by slick developers. TIFs which STIFF local taxpayers must also be abolished and replaced by an area wide commercial zone.
Local governments should create conditions conducive to growth, short of forcing taxpayers to subsidize growth. Only growth that pays for itself and is accompanied by proper infra-structure planning and self financing is desirable. Any other growth is undesirable and detrimental.
It is time for local governments to ” just say no” to the slick developers’ requests for tax schemes. The slickers are playing one community against the other, to see who will offer the biggest bribe. One developer is using part of his tax breaks to finance the tax referendum campaign to get you to build a new high school so he can sell more properties.
Of course there is always real danger that if the metro area says no to retailers tax grabs, they could be induced to locate in densely populated Bonfield, Essex, Buckingham or even Irwin.