Opinion Editorial Written by Guest,
Marcus Brown
With the personnel issues of his early tenure now behind him, Mayor Bovey and the West Chicago City Council face a major challenge: a $425,000 budget shortfall in 2026, created by the state’s decision to eliminate the grocery tax. This tax, collected by the state and distributed to municipalities, disappears January 1, 2026 along with the revenue.
With any such shortfall, our aldermen are faced with a choice — instate some type of tax to cover this gap or reduce expenses to balance the budget.
While residents of West Chicago have been forced to tighten their belts over the past five years as they’ve dealt with the effects of the COVID pandemic and soaring inflation, the city council does not seem inclined to follow suit and practice some fiscal discipline. For the past several months, as this issue has been simmering behind the scenes, the general consensus among elected officials seems to be to raise the city’s portion of the sales tax by 0.25% to a rate of 8.75%, placing it above most neighboring communities.As I detailed in my op/ed last month, any tax increase should be avoided when spending cuts have not been fully considered.
This increase would generate an estimated $1.2 million in revenue, which is $775,000 more than what’s needed to cover the loss of the grocery tax revenue. The justification for this decision, as expressed by the mayor and some aldermen, comes down to two claims. First, they argue that a sales tax is better than a grocery tax because most grocery staples — milk, bread, eggs, produce — are “necessities” and are exempt from sales tax. That sounds compassionate toward lower-income residents. But the truth is, many other “necessities” aren’t exempt: diapers, clothing, school supplies, appliances, cars, and even the gas to fuel those cars.After all, no politician wants to be responsible for making it more expensive for you to put food on the table.
It’s a great argument against the grocery tax.
Before our aldermen pull a muscle patting themselves on the back for choosing to raise the sales tax instead of reinstating the grocery tax, perhaps they should acknowledge that the impact of such a tax hike will still be detrimental to our residents and local businesses. If it’s cheaper to shop in nearby communities like Wheaton, Carol Stream, and St. Charles, then that’s what consumers will do, bypassing West Chicago businesses for better deals.
The second justification given for this increase centers around how this new revenue will be used. In fact, Mayor Bovey himself has already floated ideas for how the city can spend this newfound revenue that it will collect starting next year. Rather than exploring ways to shift the tax burden off of West Chicago consumers, Mayor Bovey is putting together a wish list of projects. To be fair, Mayor Bovey has repeatedly said that he remains committed to closely examining the budget and looking for ways to cut and reprioritize spending as a way to deal with the budget shortfall. But at the same time, he’s said he wants to, “keep open,” the option to increase the sales tax, and I can certainly understand why, when that means over $700,000 in new revenue that can be spent.
So what does Bovey want to spend that new money on? Two words that have been in the vocabulary of West Chicago leaders for decades — downtown revitalization. Specifically, Bovey has talked about building a public plaza in downtown, a gathering place, as the mayor has described it. This plaza would include, among other things, a stage or a bandshell, a food hall, and a railroad-themed micro market, as well as a futsal court. The location for the plaza would be the West Washington property that’s still undergoing remediation. The mayor has said that if the city chose to clean up the site to the “residential standard” the cost would be an additional $1 million. From the mayor’s comments, it wasn’t clear if the building of a plaza would require that level of further remediation.
While I appreciate that the mayor is eager to start putting some more visible points on the proverbial scoreboard after spending the first few months of his administration mired in personnel battles, I think he needs to tap the brakes.
We all want downtown revitalization. We can all see that the city’s downtown is an underutilized asset. A quick glance at neighboring communities is all it takes to see what a thriving, bustling, revenue-producing downtown district can look like. The potential exists for something great in downtown West Chicago.
But if we’ve learned anything from the city leadership — or lack thereof — over the past several decades, it’s that pet projects are not the catalysts for growth, whether it’s a new city hall or a new downtown plaza.
The real key to revitalizing downtown is to attract the types of businesses that will generate foot traffic and significant sales tax receipts. These types of businesses need to see West Chicago as a viable, business-friendly community. The city should be bending over backwards to attract these businesses with incentives that are just too good to pass up.
What the city should not be doing is making it more expensive to shop in West Chicago, which is what a sales tax increase will do. It sends the wrong message to business owners and consumers when the city council’s first instinct is to hike the sales tax and then turn around and spend that money on a plaza.
While I’m sure the plaza will be lovely, will it truly make a positive economic impact? The mayor would like us to believe that to be the case, but at this point, it doesn’t seem convincing.
In each of our own households, if a large sum of money dropped into our laps, I’m sure we could all think of dozens of ways to spend it. Who doesn’t daydream about spending lottery winnings on a trip, or new car, or a swimming pool. But the reality is that we need to be better stewards of the money we have now before we start spending new money that we have yet to collect..One of the themes of Mayor Bovey’s campaign earlier this year was to change the status quo. It was time to think differently about how city government should work for its citizens. This meant upending some of the entrenched staff who were content to run things as they saw fit, often behind closed doors, with little accountability and transparency. There are years of poor management that need to be unwound in West Chicago. Perhaps before the mayor and the city council start hiking taxes to spend newfound money on pet projects, they should instead focus on cleaning up the mess they inherited.
Raising taxes is easy. Cutting spending is hard. Mayor Bovey and the city council were elected to do the hard things. Now is the time to start
Opinions shared in this op-ed belong to the author and may not reflect the views of the West Chicago Voice. We believe in giving our neighbors a space to express their views. To submit an op-ed of your own, email the West Chicago Voice or consider submitting a Letter to the Editor—details can be found here: https://westchicagovoice.com/letters-to-the-editor/.
