DETAILS MATTER by Bob Ginsburg June 28, 2020
The Illusion of progress: The limits to Equitable Development while Funding and Projects stay in silos.
Welcome to Details Matter a Newsletter about urban development, public finance, Transportation, and politics in Chicago and Illinois. You can subscribe (here). Click (archive) to get previous issues which mostly focus on dealing with the fiscal crisis. If you don't want to continue receiving this just reply with unsubscribe in the subject line. I will try and get this out once per week and my goal is to use Twitter (@reginsburg) as well but I may be too verbose.
The Illusion of progress: The limits to Equitable Development while Funding and Projects stay in silos.
I took a week or so off to address some family issues. This newsletter has been very hard to write while the Black Lives Matter protests continue as well as with the pandemic accelerating in other parts of the country. It is hard to see how we can have a discussion on how to move forward. All these issues (housing, transportation, public safety, climate change, equitable development) are inter-related yet the discussion rarely looks at how multiple changes can be planned and implemented together. There are no easy answers and the heads of the Chicago Departments of Housing, Planning and Transportation are incredibly smart, creative people facing challenges they did not anticipate. However, they are locked in patterns and practices that limit what they can do “out of the box.”
For example, the CTA Fast Tracks projects in Auburn Gresham were announced as part of the Invest South/West Initiative but there was no discussion of how that will build up Auburn Gresham or how reducing the commute time to the loop by 2 minutes will change anything in that community. To be clear, it is imperative and critically important for the CTA to eliminate slow zones and invest in track maintenance. We all hope that the funding for Fast Tracks from the fee on app-based ride-hailing companies operating in Chicago will be sufficient to complete the track work. But repairing slow zones is not enough as the transit deserts persist. CTA stations and bus routes are critical hubs for rebuilding our neighborhoods and providing access to jobs, increase access to commercial areas and expand development of affordable housing. This is not a “millgate” community where all the jobs are close by. The regional job centers such as downtown and north/northwest of the City will remain and will not be moving soon. The transportation system has to provide regular and reliable transportation from the underinvested communities to the job centers. The challenge is to take the traditionally independent planning efforts by CTA and integrate and prioritize them with the City Departments of Planning, Housing and Transportation. The last two Mayors kept them pretty separate.
The news releases continued discussion of Auburn Gresham with the announcement of $4 Million for a “healthy lifestyle technology hub” on 79th street to provide health services shown lacking by the Covid-19 pandemic. Just like the previous Mayor’s Whole Foods grocery in Englewood a few years ago to address the real problem of food deserts, there was no follow up on how the trophy project will be followed by new housing, job training, and increased access to jobs downtown and in other areas of the city, and increased resources for those commercial areas. Without progress or even specific initiatives in those needs, the new projects will not transform those areas or residents ability to leverage them for broader neighborhood stability and investment. Addressing those needs will keep existing residents in those communities and at tract private investment.
The success of Invest South/West will not be based solely on how many individual projects and ribbon cuttings occur. Though, I understand the political realty and need for such public events. The real measure will be how much we reconstruct and reconfigure our planning and other programs rather than tinker on the edges.
The ongoing Budget problems. In the last two weeks Illinois and Chicago budget crises have come into sharper focus. We are still waiting for progress in federal funding before seeing how big a hit the state, county and city capital budgets will be hit. There is no question that the complete funding for the $45Billion capital plan will not be available.
Cook County announced a $289M gap this fiscal year and a proposed $409M gap next year and that was based on a “middle-of-the-road” recovery from the pandemic. Besides the layoffs and elimination of hundreds of positions, the County announced 6.5% budget reductions in some departments and County offices, the elimination of 70 more positions and 35 new layoffs. That is just the beginning. There was no public discussion of where positions were eliminated or where the layoffs occurred.
The Mayor announced a minimum deficit this year of $700M Tax hikes and layoffs are back on the table. For perspective, New York city estimates a $9 Billion revenue shortfall and potential layoffs of 22,000 City employees. The Illinois casinos reopened but there projects are down which makes it unlikely that a Chicago casino will generate any revenue for years. Rather than starting a strategic discussion with the Board and the Public about how to maintain services while reducing staffing and raising new revenues, the revenue shortfall and strategy for addressing it were left open ended.
Finally, the Legislature and the Governor appropriately celebrated the state operating budget which kept the status quo for this year by borrowing $5 Billion on the hope that the Federal government will come through with support before the borrowing has to be repaid. If the feds do not come through, the extra money from the Fair tax amendment will have been spent along with much of the revenue needed to support the Capital bill.
The same old, same old will no longer suffice.
At the same time as the budget news was coming out, there were several articles discussing that Chicago is proceeding independently with its Invest South/West project as I discussed before. Given the magnitude of the crisis from Covid-19 and the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests we should look at bigger changes so we can spend limited resources more effectively. This is too big a crisis to waste. We need to think more fundamentally and bigger rather than doing a just bit more than what was previously done.
For example, if we use the $250 Million in Invest South/West funds to help subsidize private developments we risk gentrification or unsustainable projects. Many would argue that the role of the City and the State is to expand transportation, invest in commercial areas infrastructure and provide subsidies to keep local housing while supporting construction of community led affordable housing.
In the early 1980s as the CTA debated about closing both the Brown line and the Green line extension to Jackson park. It tore down the tracks for the Green line but delayed the decision on the Brown line. The existence of stable neighborhoods and good housing along with the Brown line led to a rapid resurgence those west Lakeview areas.A different decision would have led to more Congestion and less development on the north side.If the money had been found to preserve the Green line extension, perhaps those communities would look different as well. We should not let the CTA make its decisions in isolation but as part of a city and county-wide effort at restablizing and reconstructing these communities. While this is anecdotal, recent studies have shown (Value of Transitways) that increased transit is associated with general economic and job growth.Stable communities with sound housing and good transportation will lead to private, unsubsidized investment.The time has come to reconstruct our institutions and our communities rather than adjusting them and hoping for the best.