IN RAHM THEY TRUST
Brushing aside demands for more oversight and bitter memories of the parking meter deal, the City Council on Tuesday approved a revolutionary change that will allow private investors to pump $1.7 billion into “transformative” infrastructure projects the city cannot afford to build on its own.
“Cities that fail to invest in their infrastructure are cities in decline,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).
Arguing that Chicago is “drowning in debt” and needs
The “Trust Me” plan | 30 an alternative to either raising property taxes or standing still, Moore said, “The only thing worse than trying this new approach is doing nothing at all.”
Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) said none of her constituents is willing to pay higher property taxes to rebuild Chicago’s crumbling infrastructure.
“So, unless we have a money machine in the basement of this building,” it’s time to give private investors a try, Dowell said.
Six days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel pre-emptively put the brakes on his own Infrastructure Trust, Chicago aldermen approved the public-private partnership by a vote of 41 to 7.
The seven dissenters were Aldermen Bob Fioretti (2nd); Leslie Hairston (5th); Toni Foulkes (15th); Ricardo Munoz (22nd); Scott Waguespack (32nd); Brendan Reilly (42nd) and John Arena (45th).
The vote came after the mayor’s forces buried a pair of alternative ordinances that would have required City Council approval of all Trust-funded projects and empowered Inspector General Joe Ferguson to investigate the Trust, among other safeguards.
“This is creating a vehicle that can come back to haunt us,” Munoz said. Hairston added, “It’s not free money. It’s gonna come to us in user fees and taxes.”
Foulkes said residents of her impoverished Englewood community — saddled with 210 home foreclosures every square mile — don’t trust the Trust.
Addressing aldermen from the rostrum prior to the final vote, the mayor acknowledged that debate on the Trust has been correctly “colored” by the parking meter deal. But there’s a big difference, he said.
That deal pushed by then Mayor Richard Daley “was introduced on one day and, four days later, you voted on it. This has been over six weeks. … You made no changes [on the parking meter deal]. Sixteen were made here,” the mayor said.