Category Archives: Presentations

Bring The Book With The Answers To YOUR House!

“Chicago Is Not Broke. Funding the City We Deserve” would like to come to YOUR house! We are offering folks the opportunity to organize a “Broke” Book Meeting-In-A-Box house party.

We will send you 10 books and a discussion guide and you invite friends and allies to your home. You can give your guests a copy of the book or you can re-sell it to them to recover you costs.

You power up the old PC and play a pre-recorded personalized intro we will record ahead of time.

When you re-convene your crew book organizer and editor Tom Tresser will connect vial live Skype video. How cool is that! The cost is $100 (which means if you sell the books @ $12 each, you can make some $) and you get can get started right now…

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Standing Room Only @ 11th Ward TIF Illumination

Tom at 11th Ward forumThe TIF Illumination Project did our 26th public meeting on December 4, 2014 when we lit up the TIFs of the 11th ward at the First Trinity Lutheran Church on 31st Street. I’m constantly amazed and thrilled by the turn out and civic energy present at these meetings. This one was partially sponsored by Friends of Maureen Sullivan, who is running for 11th ward alderman.

You can preview the presentation here. You can download the full presentation at the TIF Data Store. Please help us  produce a series of TIF training videos that will be placed online for free viewing – contribute to our first crowdfunding campaign!

If you would like more information on TIF training, research and scheduling an Illumination for YOUR ward, please email tom@civiclab.us.

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TIF Presentations Viewed 44,000+ Times!

Presentation views We upload all the TIF presentations to http://www.slideshare.net/tomtee. These presentations have been viewed over 44,000 times!

The champ is the two presentations on the 27th ward which were viewed a total 4,292 times.Thar works out to something like 10 views every day since they were uploaded.

So – if you are one of the people whose viewed these presentations and found them valuable – PLEASE support our work by (1) signing our email list at http://tinyurl.com/SignUp-CivicLab, (2) consider renting a desk with us (we’re in Chicago’s West Loop), and (3) making a deducible contribution via our fiscal agent, the Investigative News Network – http://tinyurl.com/SupportTheLab-INN. Contact Tom Tresser at tom@civiclab.us.

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Chicago Reader Cites Work of TIF Project

Reader_pix-8-27-14 Thanks to tireless TIF reporter Ben Joravsky of The Chicago Reader for this wonderful piece. He connects the dots from the supposed state of Chicago’s finances to the plight of our public schools and the tens of millions, nay, hundreds of millions of property tax dollars, we shower on major corporations.

None of this work would’ve been possible without the hundreds of hours contributed by our all volunteer team of coders, map makers, graphic designers, researchers and community organizers who – collectively – have now Illuminated 127 TIFs across 29 wards. The full record of these forums are here. If you want YOUR ward Illuminated, contact us at tom@civiclab.us.

When we Illuminate a ward we tell you: (1) overview of how TIFs work in Chicago, (2) how many TIFs in the ward, (3) best estimate of how much $ those TIFs took from your ward, (4) how much money left in TIF accounts FROM your ward, (5) who got paid from TIFs in your ward. We even provide a nifty graphic map that lays all this out in a super clear manner. No one else can tell you all this!

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