It’s the story of a newly elected mayor of a south suburban community. Let’s call him Joe Woods and let’s say the name of the town is Park Forest.
The plot is simple enough. Accompanied by the village manager (let’s name him Tom Mick), Woods, with figurative hat in hand, arrives in Springfield for Lobbying Day, a time in which officials try to pry dollars from something called the Local Government Distributive Fund. The fund is a government device that distributes state income tax revenue to local governments.
The good thing about the fund is that if it were not there, lots of towns would have to impose a local income tax. The bad thing about the fund is that it once had 10% of total tax collections in its pocketbook but these days it is down to a fraction more than 6%. Although the state income tax increased twice in the last 12 years, alas, local governments were shortchanged, for there was no increase in money going to counties, cities and towns.
That may be because no dollar goes through Springfield untouched
Pay attention, class. Everyone reaches for their checkbook when Springfield says your town must do something that costs money, but you have to pay for it.
Cue the dialogue by Joe Woods, who said Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, has a bill that would gradually restore the share going to municipalities by 2027
“We were looking for a slight raise from 6.1% to 7%, and that would mean we would see about a million dollars more,” Woods says. Crossed fingers don’t work in Springfield. Similar bills never seem to come up for a vote.
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It is one thing to chat with folks in Springfield. It another thing when Woods and Mick met with Illinois Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and paid visits to various agencies on a recent visit to Washington.
And it was there the new mayor said he began to understand the importance of numbers.
“It is one thing to ask for money for our town with a population of 22,000, but how much stronger would it be if we were speaking for 65,000 people,” he said, adding he believed numbers reflect common goals. “How much stronger would it be if there was a south suburban coalition that included Matteson, Richton Park, Olympia Fields and Park Forest?”
That, says Woods, was part of the reason behind a recent get-together with Richton Park held in Park Forest’s Central Park. There was food and games along with a survey in which residents of both communities could check their likes and dislikes.
We are not using that dirty word “consolidation.” There are too many mini kingdoms in the area for that to happen. But we are told there are about 2.5 million people living in the 62 communities the make up the south suburbs. Rich and poor communities exist near each other. Flossmoor is little more than six miles from Ford Heights. Flossmoor’s median income is $107,000. Ford Heights’ median income is little more than $12,000.
We do not need to be told that many of us live in a sea of commercial inequality, dotted with a few bustling commercial islands. We drive miles to buy groceries in big stores whose sales taxes do not benefit the town in which we live. We hope that we never need to be transported by ambulance to a Level One Trauma center that may be too far away.
There are not enough fingers and toes available to count all the communities in the south suburbs that need money, need jobs, need better housing, and need hope. But it seems there is not enough money obtainable to fix all the things that need to be fixed from streets and sewers to safe drinking water.
The new mayor in town says would like to change things.
We live in hope.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.