Greg Hinz’ question about taxes in Chicago during LISC/Chicago‘s recent “Back to the Future” panel turned into a discussion about the city’s tangled bureaucracies and the impact they have on development. According to Robert Weissbourd of RW Ventures and Scott Myers of World Sport Chicago, Chicago’s red tape is a big turn-off to industries that could be jumpstarting the city’s economy.
It is not the red tape per se, but rather the slow process of it, and possible corruption.
I don’t want developers and business not to follow the rules, but when they in good faith try and do what is required, they should be treated with respect form city employees, and fast turn around times.
So my point is don’t confuse red tape and poor service. We have poor service in this city. People line up at 5 am for the building permits department. People wait all day, to find out they are going to have to come back and wait all day again, and again and again. You get different answers from differnet people. Seems no one knows what’s going on down there. They are highly under staffed, and many should be fired and replaced.
Building permit rules book is not online, purposefully so you have to pay for it.
Compare this to Maria Pappas’s office. I don’t like paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when you go down to her office, on the two busiest days of the year (tax due date), she has plenty of smiling knowledgeable staff, with cookies to go. She has a online search to see if you paid taxes twice, which is common at closings. I got 2K back because of her.
Someone please fix this Daly run city!
Jackie’s assessment is completely correct. Service is rude, what there is of it and you can’t get people to answer questions or surly employee’s (to use the building department as an example, if the person in line ahead of you pisses someone off or pulls rank and gets an alderman to override something, you suffer). It’s symptomatic of big cities, but I do think Chicago is particularly bad and it overspills into private enterprise as well, such as retail clerks.
The real problem with Daley is that he’s been so good at co-opting potential opponents is that there is no real opposition to him or future leaders-leadership ready to spread their wings or even just take over when he does decide to retire/step down. It’s going to be a real mess when he does – I’m not looking forward to it.
Jackie, you could not be more correct. As a small business owner that moved from Detroit to Chicago I can attest to the issue first hand The pace and process is painfully slow and when looked at from a distance it would almost appear to be engineered in that manner.
The only thing more painful is trying to get assistance from the city when you have been wronged by a business owner. You would think that all the forms and licenses would make any experience had smooth a drama free. After buy a condo from developer, I’ve learned it is anything but. Not only did the Developer manage to have multiple addresses for their incorporation documents they had missing or “incomplete” license documentation (the city’s word’s not mine). I say that to say this. If the degree of red tape is going to remain fine, but we should be allowed to hold city government and the parties they’ve vetted to an extremely high standard.
I still own a condo in Chicago but I have no plan on returning until I can figure out how to get the same “big guy” treatment that is being bestowed on the anointed few. Until that day I am happy workout side of the city, avoid the mountainous tax burden and tape and allow my business to grow unencumbered.