It will be a 2-for-1 special this Saturday, April 6 at Chicago State when we Illuminate the many, many TIFs inside the 8th and 9th Wards. Join us at 10am. Details and RSVP at Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Forum-April-6
From Progress Illinois, “Dozens of South Shore residents weren’t too happy upon learning that a portion of their property taxes have been used as part of the city’s tax increment financing, or TIF, program.
Tom Tresser, co-founder of the CivicLab, came to the 7th Ward, and is heading to others, as part of the volunteer-based TIF Illumination Project, which is intended to promote TIF transparency and provide Chicago residents with a snapshot of what the program is — or isn’t — doing for their communities.
“I can’t believe that it’s so much money that’s out there that the community does not know about that’s not channeling back into our community, especially with all the schools closing,” Renita Jones, a South Shore resident of more than 14 years, said after Saturday’s meeting.
“It’s just amazing to me that (the city is) saying there’s no funds, and we have millions of [TIF] dollars that’s available that’s going to the corporate district, but the lower-class people are suffering from it,” Jones added.”
Join us on March 30 as we illuminate the seven TIFs inside the 7th Ward. The details and RSVP are on this Facebook Event page = http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Forum-March-30. Information and to offer volunteer and turn-out assistance, call Sharon @ 773-344-2679.
Join the neighbors from Washington Park Saturday, March 16 at 10am for a TIF Town Meeting. RSVP via Facebook. The TIF Illumination Project will reveal details about the four TIFs in the 20th Ward NEVER before seen or known. Amazing. How DO we do it? Join us in Egyptian Room at the Washington Park Field House to find out.
From the Washington Post comes an amazing prototype tool that aims to fact check political speaking REAL TIME. It’s called Truth Teller.
Truth Teller is a news application built by the Washington Post with funding from a Knight News Prototype grant. The goal of Truth Teller is to fact check speeches in as close to real time as possible. The three-month prototype built by the Post is an enormous step in that direction.
The genesis of Truth Teller was fairly well captured in this Poynter piece, which came out around the time the funding was announced. (One note: the politician mentioned was Michele Bachmann — a she, not a he.)
Steven Ginsberg saw the future of fact-checking while listening to a politician tell lies in Iowa last summer. “It was one of those small parking lot affairs outside a sports bar and the candidate was there speaking to about 30 people,” said Ginsberg, The Washington Post’s national political editor. ”For about 45 minutes he said a lot of things that I knew to not be true, and nobody else there knew that.” Ginsberg thought there must be a way to offer people in the crowd a real-time accounting of the politician’s misstatements. He called Cory Haik, the Post’s executive producer for digital news, and outlined the issue.
For the prototype, we focused on the looming debate over tax reform, both because of timing and its import for the country. The tax debate will play out over several months and naturally lends itself to deceit and deception — even more so than many policy discussions. We hope that our application will help direct the conversation toward the truth as it is happening so that Americans get a fair shot at deciding this critical issue.
The Truth Teller app follows the text of the speech and matches claims to various data bases.
Here is the presentation Tom Tresser gave at the February 12 TIF Town Meeting on the 12 TIFs in the 27th Ward (audio = 23 minutes). The meeting was held at the fabulous Chopin Theatre.
It will be a 2-for-1 special this Saturday, April 6 at Chicago State when we Illuminate the many, many TIFs inside the 8th and 9th Wards. Join us at 10am. Details and RSVP at Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/
From Progress Illinois, “Dozens of South Shore residents weren’t too happy upon learning that a portion of their property taxes have been used as part of the city’s tax increment financing, or TIF, program.
TIF Illuminators Tom Tresser and Bea Jasper (organizer of the Englewood TIF Town Meeting) will be on “The GreenPreneur Show” on WVON on Saturday night, March 23, from 5-6pm. Listen live here. The call in number is 773-591-1690. Let’s talk TIFs on the South Side. Our next TIF Town Meeting is in South Shore on March 30. Connect with the TIF Illumination Project.
Join us on March 30 as we illuminate the seven TIFs inside the 7th Ward. The details and RSVP are on this Facebook Event page = http://tinyurl.com/
Join the neighbors from Washington Park Saturday, March 16 at 10am for a TIF Town Meeting. RSVP via Facebook. The TIF Illumination Project will reveal details about the four TIFs in the 20th Ward NEVER before seen or known. Amazing. How DO we do it? Join us in Egyptian Room at the Washington Park Field House to find out.
Join us in Englewood on March 9. This is the first citizen-powered town meeting to come out of the February 12 TIF Town Meeting we did at the Chopin Theater.
