Article from the Chicago Tribune in 1895 describing a riot at St Hedwig's Church

Article from the Chicago Tribune in 1895 describing a riot at St Hedwig's Church (pt 2)

Article from the Chicago Tribune in 1895 describing a riot at St Hedwig's Church (pt 3)

Reminds me of my favorite, from 1895: a mob throwing red pepper at the police while attempting to abduct a priest at St. Hedwig's in Bucktown

I like how meteorologists can do something cool like predict the size of hail that rains down from the sky and then have to be like "it's kinda golf ball sized?" when they explain it

Property tax collection rates drop in Chicago neighborhoods with big bill hikes Residential property tax collections fell in 11 of the 13 community areas with the highest tax increases in 2024.

Property owners in Chicago neighborhoods slammed with big bill increases have come up short paying them in full, according to a new analysis of collection rates from Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office measured roughly a month and a half after the due date.

Read the report, with several interactive maps and dashboards, here: it works better on desktop than mobile (we're working on fixing that...)

If you're interested in a community, region, or property type, I tried to make it easy to filter the data.

www.cookcountytreasurer.com/pappasportal...

It's worth noting that homeowners in these neighborhoods paid a lot more in taxes than last year, but it just wasn't enough to cover the increased bill amounts. I also found many tax delinquent homeowners made partial payments, meaning they're trying, but struggling, to pay their bills.

For this analysis, I crunched the numbers on Tax Year 2024 collection rates as of Feb 1, 2026, and compared those to collection rates at the same point in the cycle in prior years. People who are late on their bill payments still have a lot of time to pay, but monthly interest will be added.

Graphic from Treasurer's Office Analysis of Tax Year 2024 residential collection rates in Chicago Community Areas, showing a drop in collection rates compared to last year in communities that saw large bill increases

Remember those large residential property tax increases in Chicago's South and West Side? I found that those tax spikes resulted in lower initial collection rates, meaning more homeowners in places like W. Garfield Park, N. Lawndale and Englewood are tax delinquent than last year at the same time:

First page of November 8 1995 Chicago Tribune article by Julie Deardorff detailing the Chicago Bears PR strategy for pitching a new stadium to the media.

Second page of November 8 1995 Chicago Tribune article by Julie Deardorff detailing the Chicago Bears PR strategy for pitching a new stadium to the media.

Found a fun Tribune article from 1995. The newspaper got a hold of the Bears' internal PR strategy for using the media to help the team get a new stadium.

And yes, almost exactly 30 years ago the Bears said they were looking at Indiana to persuade Illinois to go in on a new/refurbished stadium

As a reminder: the TIF distribution calculation changed in tax year 2024. What had been tax code-level distribution calculations now occur at the property-level, necessitating a PIN table to explain TIF revenue.

Screenshot of the Cook County Clerk's website highlighting the new "TIF PIN List" table for tax year 2024

btw, it looks like the Cook County Clerk published the new PIN-level TIF distribution table on its website.

This is the same table I used to do the TIF analysis section of the Treasurer's Office 2024 Tax Bill Analysis. Link here:
www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/property-tax...

I admit today was a bad day to get a flat tire

Yeah, I think that's fair, and probably worth taking a hard look at in future TIF studies. I don't think either way is wrong, just diff interpretations of how TIF works.

I saw Prof. Weber mentioned the differences in a paper back in 2007, if you're interested (p10): www.cdfa.net/cdfa/cdfaweb...

(I don't have an official answer bc the Clerk's Office handles TIF distribution.)

I think in the past the Clerk was limited by the old mainframe. The new way is how many collar counties do the calculation (see Lake, for example), and IMO it's more transparent.

www.lakecountyil.gov/268/Tax-Exte...

Graphic showing TIF tax amount changes from 2023-2024. The South suburbs increased by 19.1%, higher than the north (9.7%) and Chicago (10.4%)

It's one reason why this year the tax amount going to south suburban TIFs increased by 19%, even though it's not a reassessment year:

This means individual properties in a TIF will have different distribution percentages depending on how much each property's value increased.

The main difference is that now TIFs with a lot of properties losing value will collect more money, because any property gaining value will add increment.

Snippet from the Treasurer's 2024 tax bill analysis noting that the TIF distribution calculation method changed in 2024

For Chicago TIF data wonks: you might be surprised to find out that Cook County's TIF distribution calculation method changed this year!!

In the past, current/frozen EAVs were aggregated at the tax code level to determine an area TIF distribution %. Now, this calc occurs at the property level.

Screenshot of the Treasurer's Office 2024 Tax Bill Analysis map dashboard showing a 76.71% tax bill increase for residential properties in North Lawndale.

For this year's tax bill analysis, I revamped our map dashboard! Users can view block-level AV and tax bill changes by property type in any Cook County municipality, Chicago community area, or assessment region. Works on phones, best on a computer! Link:

www.cookcountytreasurer.com/taxbillanaly...

I've seen some great articles on our report, including pieces in the Tribune (featuring web maps!), the Sun-Times, and Crain's. Give them a read!

Today marks the release of the annual Cook County property tax bill analysis!

It wasn't an easy year to put this together, but we hope it helps shed light on changes to your tax bills.

You can read the full report and view our data dashboards here: www.cookcountytreasurer.com/taxbillanaly...

Read my Cook County property tax collections update on the CCTO website!

Major topics:
-Collections have rebounded after a slow start
-Southland residents are struggling
-many place still have very low collection rates

Read and and peruse the data here: www.cookcountytreasurer.com/pappasportal...

I'm not even mad, Yamamoto was so good he deserved to finish it

Do new CTA bus stop signs not tell you the number to text 41411?

Kinda obsessed with the concept of a pedway sidewalk cafe

Bucktown, Chicago (2025)

Screenshot of a Google search for the Milwaukee Ave YETI store showing that it is permanently closed

Would be cool if they brought back a music venue here. But I don’t have much faith in this landlord

Every day is muggier than the last

Chicago building permit for the reconversion of a 4 unit, 2.5 story apartment into a single family home

Deconverting a 4 unit apartment into a single family home shouldn’t be legal in the city of Chicago

Strava showing our walk of manhattan north to south

Manhattan was light work 😤

Row of buildings in Harlem, New York

It’s beautiful 😍

I have seen the light. Chicago’s bagel/deli desert must be remedied