The River Forest Village Board slammed the brakes on the process to create a tax increment financing district (TIF) along Madison Street on Monday night, delaying required public meetings until at least the fall.

Before an overflow, sometimes testy, crowd, River Forest trustees on June 27 voted 4 to 1 to reset the clock, directing staff to rewrite the proposed TIF ordinance to include language, offered by residents, which would bar the village from declaring eminent domain against homes adjacent to the district. Trustee Tom Cargie was absent.

The original TIF ordinance was silent on the issue of eminent domain. Residents objected to that ordinance, saying it would not provide the protections they wanted against government seizure of their homes.

Trustee Tom Dwyer was the lone dissent, noting that eminent domain — the right of the people or government to take private property for public use — can’t be legislated away. 

“All we are doing is handcuffing future boards from considering alternatives,” Dwyer said. “We are pooling money to improve Madison. Madison needs to be improved, but to do that we have to proceed with the appropriate planned development. … You voted us in to increase the tax base and services or do both. The TIF is really doing that.”

If a future board wants to reverse the TIF ordinance, they can, Dwyer said. 

Over the last year, trustees discussed and voted unanimously to pursue the TIF after nearly a year of study by the village’s Economic Development Commission. Eminent domain had not been brought up until April during a required community meeting. 

Village President Catherine Adduci said the purpose of the discussion Monday was to bring forward eminent domain language that residents had proposed so it could be discussed in open session. 

“We are all neighbors, we all care about River Forest. We love our community,” Adduci said. “By discussing the proposed language that you have offered, we have an opportunity to determine the shape that the TIF might take. This is the time for us as a board to address eminent domain and the TIF in general with the residents.”

Without the language that residents proposed, they may continue their protest against the TIF district by having their homes removed from its boundaries. That would reduce the area’s size and, more importantly, shrink the size of the pool of tax dollars, or increment, that the village would need to boost redevelopment along its southernmost thoroughfare.

In all, 96 residences are in the TIF area, which runs from Thatcher Avenue east to Lathrop Avenue and includes single-family homes, townhouses, condominiums and multi-unit buildings. 

Now with Monday’s action, a public hearing scheduled for July and a meeting slated for adoption of the TIF in August will be pushed back to the fall. There will be another meeting of residents and business owners who live and work in the affected area. 

Because this will be a new measure, the joint review board — representatives of each taxing district plus a resident living in the TIF — has to re-convene to assess the new TIF. 

This panel, formed to provide trustees with a recommendation on the district, met in early June and had planned to meet again on June 28.

Monday’s exchange between residents and elected officials was sometimes heated. Residents voiced fears. 

“You’re going to take away my house. Leave us alone!” Nicholas Altier shouted at trustees on Monday.

Some also raised objections to results of the housing study, which identified rental or for-sale housing, primarily in Forest Park and south Oak Park, if homeowners were to be displaced by TIF development. 

The study was a snapshot of residential property in a certain price range that was available at the time the study was conducted in April 2016.

In addition, residents voiced objections to how their neighborhood was depicted in the TIF qualification report. Some read the report to believe that it was blighted, which is one of the conditions under which a TIF can be declared. 

It was instead declared a “conservation area,” qualifying factors for which include properties with lagging or declining assessed values, deterioration and obsolescence. Some of the property is more than 35 years old.

With her home included the TIF area, Susan Altier stated that she and her neighbors felt like “prisoners in our own homes.” 

Some worried that they would have to put their lives on hold just by having the idea of eminent domain out there for 23 years, the term of the TIF.

Ed Pogue called trustees “heartless” for even suggesting that homeowners should be included in the TIF district at all. He wondered if he should even consider building his new home with all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the area.

Pete Collis, the owner of Pete’s Automotive on Madison Street stated, “Taking the wrecking ball to everything sounds stupid.” 

 Jennifer Moore, whose husband Rich is on the River Forest Elementary School District 90 Board of Education, told trustees that what they were doing was laughable and that they should be voted out of office.

The reticence toward the TIF led some residents to ask the village to remove their homes from the TIF boundaries, and skepticism surrounding the village’s intentions has led some to push an online petition against eminent domain. As of Monday, 382 people had signed the petition. Most recently, residents sent around their own FAQ to counter information the village has been posting on its website since May. 

After the meeting, Maureen Gorman, one of the leaders of the drive against eminent domain, said she was encouraged by the trustees’ action. 

“We’ll see what’s going to happen and then decide,” she said. 

River Forest began studying the creation of the TIF to, among other things, help implement the recommendations of the 2010 Corridor Study. The Economic Development Commission started studying process in August 2014; trustees authorized the effort along the way.

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