CHICAGO, IL (WBBM Newsradio) - Nearly a dozen faith leaders stood outside Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago on the first Monday of the new year, demanding answers from elected officials on why properties like Trump Tower saw a 39 percent reduction in taxes, while some residents on the South and West Sides saw increases in the double and even triple digits.
With the New Mountain Pilgrim Church in West Garfield Park, where some residents saw their property tax increase by up to 133 percent, Reverand Marshall Hatch explains that this issue is not going to go away. He and the other faith leaders in this group want a freeze on assessments and a rollback to the previous year.
“This is not going to stand. For us, this is an existential crisis. This means that if we do not win this fight, we will not be able to stay in our neighborhoods,” said Hatch, “This system is unfair, unjust, immoral, and in fact it’s a racket stacked against the poor.”
Pastor Ira Acree, of the West Side Austin neighborhood’s Greater St. John Bible Church, adds that the disparity doesn’t make any sense, “They are balancing the budget on the backs of the Westsiders and Southsiders,” Acree said.
The faith leaders say that if elected officials are unable to sort out the disparity, they will take action, both in the courts and at the polls.
Rainbow PUSH Senior Advisor Jeanette Wilson said that unlike downtown property owners who have the ability to push back against increases, individual residents might not have the resources to take legal action but there are interested parties who might begin to file lawsuits on their behalf.
“We have lawyers who will defend the poor. We are the lawyers on behalf of those who have erroneous taxes. We’re going to file some cases and challenge our elected officials to do what is within their purview,” said Wilson.
Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi responds to a request for comment from the WBBM newsroom, emphasizing that they raised the assessment on Trump Tower in 2024, while the Board of Review cut the value significantly.
“These property tax increases hitting South and West side homeowners are flat out unfair, and they're the direct result of huge cuts that the Board of Review commissioners gave to large corporations,” writes Kaegi, “Big commercial properties like Trump Tower had their assessments cut, and then that tax burden was pushed onto working class families.”
Kaegi agrees that families need relief right now and that big commercial properties need to pay their fair share. His idea of a solution would be a circuit breaker bill in Springfield that would cap how much property taxes can spike in any given year.