DisgruntledHawkFan
Blackhawk Down
I love that this city is telling billionaires to f*** off.
OT: Bears & NFL Talk 94
- Thread starter No Fun Shogun
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belfour30
Blackhawks Fangirl
- Dec 14, 2019
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- Aug 24, 2011
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The Bears in Naperville would be bananas. I have no idea where’d they fit a stadium and parking. Also all those fans coming and going, getting on and off the highway at 59 and i88…YIKES.
Sarava
Registered User
Yeah. And for Arlington, I've thought about what that might do to traffic there as well. I drive home and come through that choke of where 53 meets 90 and it gets very congested. I cant even imagine how I would go home if there was a stadium at Arlington and an event on a given night. I should be careful what I wish for haha.
And on another note - I saw yesterday Waukegan is trying to throw their hat in the ring for a potential Bears dome. That's just too far away. That's as close to Milwaukee as Chicago.
I agree that Waukegan is too far but I will say, it does have a few things going for it:
1: Better transportation system (Metra, and north/south roads are so much better than east/west)
2: Literally right on the lakefront
3: Cheaper land
4: Might have an easier time getting locals on board than a place like AH and Naperville
Sarava
Registered User
I think 1 is the same...might even be advantage Arlington due to the Metra station literally being on the property. I would suspect that line serves more Bears season ticket holders.
2, 3 and 4 I agree with you. But again, it's too far. If they are that out of options, they'd be better off working something out with Chicago. People aren't going to want to drive to darn near the Wisconsin border with any kind of frequency.
8 to 12 times a year isn’t too frequent. They aren’t playing 41 home games (or 81) like other sports.
I can also see the venue becoming a home to many major concerts/events with its proximity to both Chicago and Milwaukee.
If they go up there I’d prefer it farther west (Gurnee?).
Sarava
Registered User
If you think about it. We're talking about putting a long overdue dome stadium for the Chicago area in a far out of the way place due to this state's f-ed up tax situation. Only in Illinois....
I understand both sides. Arlington Heights is a very nice suburb and has top notch schools and they want to continue that. They cant really push their residents any harder, as they already pay way too much in property taxes. And the Bears probably dont want one of the worst stadium tax deals in the country. I get that too.
I dont think there's a bad guy here - they just need to figure out if there's a solution here or not.
I understand both sides. Arlington Heights is a very nice suburb and has top notch schools and they want to continue that. They cant really push their residents any harder, as they already pay way too much in property taxes. And the Bears probably dont want one of the worst stadium tax deals in the country. I get that too.
I dont think there's a bad guy here - they just need to figure out if there's a solution here or not.
I know we're just probably going to fundamentally disagree on this point but you're really not sure if the worse party here is the taxpayers or the $6 billion corporation wanting a massive tax break at their expense?
Sarava
Registered User
I said from the beginning - I will never support government guaging their citizens or businesses with heavy taxation. IMO there should be laws capping tax increases. So yes, fundamentally you and I couldnt be further apart from each other on this point.
And you're framing your wording as if this $16 mil per year is part of the budget that has to be accounted for. They were fine with $3 mil just 2 years ago. Why do they suddenly need $13 mil more? It's an absurd postion to take. You could double that original tax bill to $6 mil per year, and it's still a huge windfall for the local economy and could help prevent homeowners from getting their taxes raised at the same time.
There very literally IS a cap on local government bodies increasing property taxes (5 percent) and it's a massive reason why property taxes are as high as they are (incentivizing taxing bodies to constantly increase the max amount rather than just tax at what is needed). Nothing in government is as easy as "just cap taxes." In addition this isn't a tax increase issue, it's an assessment increase, so unless you're proposing a cap on assessment increases (which would harm basically everyone who doesn't sell their property + doesn't make massive improvements on their property) OR a cap on tax increases regardless of assessment increase (which, once again, only cuts taxes for massive businesses or people who are rich and make massive improvements to their home) your tax cap idea wouldn't affect this.
This isn't how property taxes work.
To put it very simply, the property owners of each taxing body (as a collective) owe X amount of property taxes every year. Assessments are used to determine how much each property owner owes to get to that X. The Bears assessment increase does not affect X's total at all, all it affects is large a proportion of X the Bears owe. This means that local governments have no monetary incentive for the Bears assessment to be bigger (because it doesn't affect X, which is their budget), the incentive is that it decreases everyone else's share of X that they need to pay. In other words, the assessment being bigger does not affect local government, it just affects the other property owners in that district.
I think you're looking at this as if it's like income taxes for the rich, where you can argue it's the government budget vs rich people's wealth. In reality, this fight is between the Bears wealth vs local property owners wealth. Local government isn't at odds with the Bears here directly, merely indirectly because it is beneficial for the vast majority of their constituents.
Once again, this very literally comes down to the Bears vs every other property owner in Cook County. I cannot fathom why anyone outside of those who have a monetary stake in the Bears would come down on the side of the Bears on this fight. Very literally fighting against your own self-interest.
Sarava
Registered User
I'm not going to shame someone for exploring their options and not letting a 500% tax increase get shoved up their butt.
Oh and what about all those property owners in Cook County when the Cubs were cut their sweetheart tax deal?
Oh and what about all those property owners in Cook County when the Cubs were cut their sweetheart tax deal?
Every party has acted rationally so far. The only people of relevance shaming anyone is the Bears putting out a press release talking about how the County was being so unfair so they have to look elsewhere because mean ole' Fritz Kaegi valued their property at the same price that they paid for it lol.
Sarava
Registered User
Why did you delete the part about the Cubs? Surely their property value is massively higher than Arlington, yet they are paying a small fraction of what Cook County wants the McCaskeys to pay.
The entire ad valorem system of property taxation should be scrapped.
Their is no direct connection between valuations and the taxing entity budget needs.
Should be a tax per head for the basic requirements of a community. We can argue what those requirements would be.
Beyond that, things should be paid for via user fees.
An argument can actually be made that people with high $$ properties and high $$ taxes use less public services not more.
Their is no direct connection between valuations and the taxing entity budget needs.
Should be a tax per head for the basic requirements of a community. We can argue what those requirements would be.
Beyond that, things should be paid for via user fees.
An argument can actually be made that people with high $$ properties and high $$ taxes use less public services not more.
500% sounds dramatic, but what you’re opposing is assessing the property at the amount the Bears paid for it, as if the McCaskeys are entitled to special treatment.
Wrigley qualified for tax credits for its renovation based on its inclusion in the national register of historic places.
Flat tax never works and is just a means to stick it to the poor.
Sarava
Registered User
Yeah I know about the historical loophole used.
And I wonder if maybe the 16 mil isn't the problem. Because what are they going to want to hit them for if they put a 2.5 bil stadium on the property? It just might mean its impossible to build a new stadium in Cook County. Of course, if this is all the case, the Bears probably should have figured that out before dropping 197 mil on the property.
I ignored it because what you're saying is just factually wrong, and I don't mean this in a mean way because this is a really complicated issue, and I think you have a misunderstanding of how these things work. But if you insist I talk about that specific point, I can.
The location and size of the property renders any comparison of them essentially meaningless for property tax conversations, but if you really want to compare them:
The parcel that Wrigley is on is 380,226 square feet. The 2022 assessment for Wrigley is $10,357,409. Divide the two and you get $27/sq foot.
The parcel that Arlington is on is 8,950,708. Assessed at $190mil, that's $21.2/sq foot.
So with that out of the way, to your points:
"Cubs property value is massively higher than Arlington" - That's just not true. The Wrigley property is like 4% of the size of the Arlington property, it'd be pretty crazy if it was valued higher, let alone "massively" higher.
"They pay a small fraction of what Cook County wants the McCaskeys to pay" - You're correct that Cook wants the Bears to pay more. It would be shocking if they didn't want a property that's like 2,500% bigger than another to pay more. Luckily for the McCaskeys, the County wants them to pay less per square foot than they want the Cubs to. The Cubs property is actually more expensive, it's just smaller.
In case you want to do your own research, the property pins for each property are
02-25-202-008-0000 (Arlington) and 14-20-227-002-0000 (Wrigley). Have at it.
But it’s not a loophole. And the Bears could have enjoyed the same benefit with SF if not for their ridiculous renovation that stripped it of landmark status.
Sarava
Registered User
That's interesting that the building value at Wrigley is only 1.8 mil? Does it gets suppressed because of the historic designation?
Yeah and the Bears dont own Soldier Field either.
From what I could find, there's a specific Cook County tax incentive for historic buildings renovation that the Cubs got back in 2013. It lasts until 2025, so starting 2026 the building value will assumedly rise considerably from the current 1.8mil.
Wait a minute. You are saying the Bears are being taxed on the value of the property.
… ok
Then you state that since that properties tax bill went from 3 million to 16 million all other landowners will pay less (to as you put it “get to x)
How?
Did everyone else’s properties decrease in value?
You can’t have this both ways. Either property is taxed based on it’s worth or it’s not.
If you change the valuations for others shouldn’t it change for the Bears as well.
So there's two different systems at play here.
There are property assessments, which merely are used to estimate what the market value of a property is. They are NOT necessarily directly correlated to property taxes. For example, if your property value goes up 1%, but everyone else's goes up 2%, and no taxing body that you're a resident of raises their taxes, then your property taxes would decrease even though the value of your property went up. So if there's a year where the housing market just absolutely booms and property values all go up like 10%-15%, that doesn't mean that your taxes are also going to go up 10%-15%.
Then there is the overall taxes for the county (X). For this, let's just say X is $100, so in other words the property owners of Cook County need to, between all of them, pay enough taxes to make up that $100. The assessments come into play to determine how much of the share of $100 a property owner needs to make up. Let's say that Arlington was paying $1 of that $100, but now that the Bears have taken over, that's been raised to $2. Where all the other property owners were having to make up $99, they now only need to make up $98 amongst themselves. So the Bears paying more is a tax cut for everyone else, regardless of their own property value changes.
Now, that's a very simplified version of what actually will happen. In reality, the Bears assessment going up means that everyone else will probably just have less of an increase than they would have (which is still a cut). The only way this wouldn't happen is if literally everyone else's property values increased at a rate higher than the Bears, which won't happen.
So, in conclusion, property values determine the share that you have to pay for a tax, but it isn't directly correlated with your taxes.
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