Chicago Address Budget Shortfall By Taxing Condos For Services They Don’t Receive

Chicago will be eliminating a $75/unit rebate given to condominiums of 5 or more units in their 2012 budget. This rebate was started in 1984 because the city taxes these condominiums yet they do not provide any garbage service to them.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel indicates:

Eliminating this garbage rebate for condominium owners, a step also recommended by the city’s inspector general, is the fair and honest thing to do for Chicagoans.

Seriously – how is charging money for nothing exactly fair and honest? Let’s see – you pay me taxes, and I’ll refuse to provide the services you pay for. Sounds like Mayor Emanuel has no idea what the words “fair” nor “honest” mean. Perhaps we should send him a dictionary – or emails with online links to the true meaning of those words.

Condo Owners Often Pay Twice For Trash

It’s nice to see a proactive city council – East Greenwich, Rhode Island – looking at city pick-up of condominium trash.

Cities extensively benefit from condominiums – each condominium unit pays property tax, but the corporation (especially in townhouse and high-rise) usually have to pay for third party services often offered to single detached housing.

This is often true with trash pick-up. Condominium owners pay municipal tax and then have to pay part of their condo fees for non-municipal trash services.

So it is always nice to see a city council look at delivering fair services to all their properties, instead of taking the property tax and “running.”