Does Anyone Have $5 Million to Spare


To the outrage of a great many suburban mayors, Governor Pritzker announced that he will seek to end the “Food Tax”. This tax has been an enormous source of revenue for local governments throughout Illinois. It is estimated that it will cost Naperville $5 million in revenue annually should the tax go away.

This will be one heck of a financial hit for Naperville. It begs the question whether or not Naperville will they find things to cut or will council simply add $5 million to our tax levy or maybe expand the home rule sales tax to cover the gap.

The Watchdog hopes council finds items to cut but we are not optimistic. The fact that council is even considering spending six figures on a ridiculous DEI program suggests council is quite comfortable spending our money on political fluff. Moreover, who can forget the obnoxiously expensive, gaudy blue entry signs Holzhauer successfully pushed for. There is not much out there to suggests cutting costs is in the council vocabulary.

Will council just increase the real estate tax levy? There is much crowing about real estate taxes out there get now. Most Naperville residents saw real estate taxes jump substantially this year. Clearly this might be an appealing solution for council’s “Tax Free Caucus”, namely White and Holzhauer, since neither would have to pay it. But is it politically realistic to substantially increase real estate taxes given how much our real estate taxes have already increased?

Council might increase the Home Rule Sales Tax. Wouldn’t this be the most “Illinois” answer ever? We eliminate tax on food to help poor people and then replace it with a home rule sales tax that hits EVERYTHING.

Predictable suggested solutions will be to increase marijuana stores? Bring in video poker? How about a casino? Expanding vices to cover a budget gap sounds like very bad policy making.

Elections have consequences and Illinois overwhelmingly elected Pritzker. The Watchdog suggests this budget quandary be dealt with by cutting all things DEI as well as anything  else of a  “fluffy” nature. Council should announce these cuts as the Pritzker Cuts and direct all resulting complaints to the Governor’s Office to handle.

Let no disaster go to waste!

 

 

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Show 12 Comments

12 Comments

  1. John Georgias

    Spot on! Cut DEI and tell the truth, it is on Pritzker!!

    • Robert Hacker

      Almost spot on , DEI is divisive and devious . Using the term “fluffy” to describe DEI spending diminishes its harmful impact.

  2. Gerard H Schilling

    No end to these nitwits redistributing our wealth. You get what you vote for by the politicians we elect.

  3. jim haselhorst

    The city, every year, approves a property tax relief (levy adjustment) well over this amount. So saying the city will need to struggle to find a way to make up this lost revenue is stretch at best.

    I can see how some people might think the government continuing to tax citizens on essential goods, like food, is a must do. These are the same people that when the government cut taxes on the rich while enacting income tax on social security benefits to make up the lost revenue thought this was also a good idea.

    The entitled will always think of ways to tax the less fortunate to lessen their own tax burden. This has been the mantra of conservative for over a century now, so its unlikely they will every believe anything different at this point in time (it is literally a generational conservative mantra).

    • Joan Murray

      Spot on Jim! Conservatives and especially libertarians are the I’ve got mine crowd. We are still waiting for that wealth to trickle down.

      It’s funny to see those hypocrites who did not serve our nation, continue to bash the military veteran city councilmen because they were given
      benefits for their service.

  4. John Georgias

    As a conservative, I can assure you Jim, you know nothing about us. As for the fake virtue of suggesting conservatives want to tax the poor and not tax the rich, conservative policy does more to help the poor than socialist leftist progressive policy. Compassion is not taking other people’s money and redistributing in an inefficient manner. Compassion is tithing and giving money directly to those that need it, this type of compassion is not the fake virtue you are selling here. The poor are being devastated by socialist leftist progressive policy nationally, at the state level, and even at the local level as city councils push political agendas instead of helping their constituents. As for passing on the tax burden to the poor, you can look no further than to two members of the city council who can afford to pay property tax but choose not to do so.

    • jim haselhorst

      Your words are in keeping with a conservative philosophy that talks about “community” involvement in solving community social needs through resources like churches but in reality these resources simply don’t work and were they do work, falls far short of the needs of the community. In reality just around 30% of all funding for community charitable needs actually come from religious organizations, and the largest portions of this from the LDS church. So unless you, and all your conservative associates, are willing to triple your tithing this resource will never come close to meeting the needs of any community.

      This same philosophy is what brings use “thoughts and prayer” every time a community suffers a tragedy but no real actions to addresses the needs of this community or those that suffered directly in this tragedy.

      Note: to clarify on were this philosophy does not work. Churches in poor communities have poor parishioners, who simply do not have the money to donate to the church, which means the church does not have the resource to provide for the community’s needs. So this philosophy only has a chance of working in richer, affluent communities were the parishioners have the disposable income to fund the churches efforts. Meaning this philosophy is in practice just another elitist delusion based on the mistaken belief that call communities are equal in access, opportunity and resources.

  5. Joan Murray

    Unless you’d rather maintain status quo and hierarchical systems that only benefit the few, you WILL want to support these resources for members of our increasingly diverse community of employers, employees, and residents of the Naperville community.

    https://insightglobal.com/blog/why-dei-is-important/

    • Robert Hacker

      For over one hundred years Progressives have been implementing policies aimed at improving the conditions of the poor. Yet their situation appears to be on continuous decline . Perhaps it’s the solutions that are the problem.

      • Joan Murray

        Who’s talking about poor people? My comment was about DEI. If you think DEI is about improving the condition of poor people, then you need some DEI training.

  6. jim haselhorst

    And over a century conservatives have been doing everything they can to inhibit through funding restrictions, individual requirements that restrict providing aid, propaganda programs (describing these people a “lazy”, “free loaders”), etc.

    Additionally they have implemented economy policies that make it harder for the poor (and more recently even the middle class) to grow their economic power and wealth. IN the last two decades 80% of the middle and lower income classes have seen their “wealth” decline, while at the same time the top 20% have seen their “wealth” increase by over 15%.

    This is due to policies like reducing the tax rate for top income brackets while increasing those of the lower brackets, providing means to shelter income from taxation that are only available for people the greatest wealth, shrinking tax credits for middle and lower income groups, limiting access to higher yield investment vehicles, etc. In short by creating a socioeconomic environment that “smiles” upon the “haves” and gives only false hope to the “have nots”

  7. Joan Murray

    Time to cut funding to NCTV17

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