It was pure happenstance that Peter Zelchenko learned about a property-tax hike for the owners of the buildings that line Lincoln Avenue between Webster and Diversey. “I went to my alderman, Vi Daley, to ask if she could put trash cans on the street,” says Zelchenko, who lives on the 2200 block. “She told me about the SSA.” His immediate response was “SSA? What SSA?”
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“The beauty is that there’s community oversight,” says Brad Leibov, a planner who runs the New Chicago Fund, a consulting firm that helps groups, mainly chambers of commerce, set up and operate SSAs. A board of commissioners–whose members either live, work, or own property within the district–oversees the SSA’s annual budget. After ten years an SSA can be dissolved by the local property owners or the city. “I believe in this program,” Leibov says. “It gets tax dollars right into the hands of the people who know how to spend it best.”
The state legislature set up SSAs back in the 70s, and there are now 34 of them around the city–the Lincoln Avenue one would make 35. As the city has been scrambling to fill gaps in its budget, SSAs have become an increasingly popular way to fund or expand services the city can’t or shouldn’t pay for. According to Leibov, 13 of the 34 have been created since 2001.
Zelchenko didn’t go to either hearing because he didn’t know about them. He’d just moved back to his parents’ house after getting divorced. “I grew up in this house,” he says, “but I haven’t lived here in years.”
Klausmeier and Leibov say Zelchenko’s the only resident who’s strongly opposed the SSA. Leibov says, “I would say that, based on what we have heard, people either support the SSA or are indifferent to it.”
