Only two of Brookfield’s four tax increment financing districts collected incremental revenue for the 2021 tax year, the Cook County Clerk’s Office said last week in its annual TIF Report, which compiles data from all TIFs in the city of Chicago and suburban Cook County.
Both the Congress Park TIF and the Grand Boulevard TIF generated no new incremental property tax revenue during the 2021 tax year, which was collected in 2022.
Meanwhile, the Ogden Avenue TIF collected $447,575 and the 8 Corners TIF collected $242,098. Those amounts represented year-over-year declines in revenue of about 16% and 20%, respectively, following a trend seen throughout suburban Cook County.
While the city of Chicago saw its overall TIF revenues increase by 15.5% in tax year 2021, the suburbs saw an overall decline of about 13%. The main difference was that 2021 was a reassessment year for Chicago.
The 2021 tax year was not a reassessment year for the communities in the Landmark’s coverage area, and Brookfield total equalized assessed value for all properties combined declined 7.83% from 2020, according to Finance Director Doug Cooper.
It is typical in non-reassessment years for total EAV to fall slightly, but the drop is made up for in years where those properties are reassessed. Brookfield’s EAV has continued to increase steadily since recovering from the 2008 real estate crash, despite the small declines in EAV it sees in certain years.
Brookfield’s EAV had fallen from $485.3 million in 2010 to $331 million in 2015. It began recovering from the crash in 2016 and, as of tax year 2021, had increased to $423.9 million.
“Every three years when the county performs its triennial assessment, the value increases at a greater amount than the decreases,” said Cooper. “So, from that standpoint, there is not a major concern [when there are decreases in EAV].
Properties in Brookfield were last reassessed in 2020, and the village’s total EAV jumped 17.2% that year, resulting in record TIF revenues in all but the Congress Park TIF, which has never generated any increment, since the property within that TIF is all village- owned.
TIF districts expire after 23 years, during which time incremental tax revenue within the boundaries can be used to fund infrastructure improvements, to assemble property and incentivize redevelopment.
If a TIF district, like the Congress Park TIF, doesn’t generate any revenue, improvements can be funded via loans which must be paid back. Since its creation in 2011 – more than half of its total life – the village has spent about $605,000 in the Congress Park TIF, principally for infrastructure improvements in and around the Congress Park train station.
The Ogden Avenue TIF has loaned the money for those improvements.
“Because state law allows a transfer of funds from one contiguous TIF to another, we have been funding Congress Park TIF expenditures with Ogden Avenue TIF revenues,” Cooper said.
“Once the Congress Park TIF begins to generate monies, then these funds can be easily swept into the Ogden TIF if necessary or desired. The village has actively continued to pursue the development of the Congress Park site and hopefully will have development in place prior to the dissolution of the TIF.”
Since 2008 when it was created, the Ogden Avenue TIF has generated incremental property tax revenue of about $2.36 million and thus far has spent about $355,300. The 8 Corners TIF has generated about $1.15 million in revenue against expenditures amounting to about $620,000.
The Grand Boulevard TIF, created in 2019, generated all of its revenue during the 2020 tax year, collected in 2021. That year, the TIF district collected about $35,700 against about $30,000 in expenditures to date.
EAV in the Grand Boulevard TIF in 2021 fell below the EAV the area had when it was created, which is why it generated no revenue last year.
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