Special Service Area #24-Pissing your money away! In more ways the one. Take a look at these two budgets closely.
Are Managers and Directors salaries a program or an administration fee?
The real administration fee line item went up from 7% to 9%?
Isn't accounting a administration? Why not add another line anyway?
Look at the Safety line, now this is the largest expense outside of the managers. But think about it, how far is $55,000 going to go? How many hours in a year do we get a rent a cop at that price?
I wondered why so much was spent on office work and not program work. Well, DevCorp North fixed that, didn't they? Just change some catagories around.
When is a Fringe Benefit a program? And why did it rise?
Why did the Maintenance Manager get a raise? Did he get a raise on SSA #19 too? Does he collect two pay checks for doing the same job, one for SSA #19 and one for SSA #24 or just one big check? Is he the one watching these, Not at Workers? This is what I witnessed in the last 45 days. On limited observations.
Want to see the real numbers of the so called success stories? So do I, but DevCorp North doesn't want to give up the information easy. Instead making citizens play "cat and mouse" with them.
Here is a month old email request to Ms. Bares and the gang.
DevCorp North
1448 W. Howard St
Chicago, Il. 60626
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004
To the Sole Service Provider of SSA #19 and #24
I am requesting the October, November and December meeting agenda and meetings for SSA#24.
I am also requesting the expenses and income documents for the following:
1] 2004 Glenwood Art Fair. All invoices and pay-outs.
Who paid for:
a. Booths, and the list of vendors?
b. Permits.
c. Music acts.
Why was there only one food/liquor vendor? Does this vendor have close ties to the SSA #24?
How much was spent on advertising and where did you spend this money?
How much was spent on Posters, who made/paid for them?
How much was spent on tee-shirts, who made/paid for them?
How much was spent on banners, who made/paid for them?
Also how much was taken in on
a. Sponsorship
b. Beer sales
c. Admission fees?
2] The 2004 Howard Street Farmers Market invoices/pay-outs and receipts. How many weeks did farmers not show up and a written reason from the farmer?
Who is choosing these budget items, the commissioners or DevCorp North?
DevCorp North, Come Clean
6 comments:
FYI - This is a blog that encompasses a whole ward, not necessarily the 'Morse Avenue' area. To get the debate going, sign up. All you have to do is sign on as James Bond, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe etc. (you get the drift?) and create a password if you want to be ANON. Fear of retaliation can be real. If you have documentation or photos, send them to Craig. To make complaints turn into positive works, then all sides need to be heard. Does anyone have any information on SSA#24 on Morse or SSA#19 on Howard? This is a tool to make CHANGE, to be HEARD, and to explore what the TRUTH really is. Do yourself and your taxpaying neighbors a service and sign up. As stated in the presidential debates 'bring it on'.
Thank you Dan for adding the comments. Advice is always accepted by those who offer who they are. You already may know I live right accross the street from you.
The 1345 W. Lunt building, I have been dealing with from the day I moved in. I stand by my comments, bad building that has gang activity. This building has a shared address of 1340 W. Morse too. Please, check for yourself, prove me wrong, go to the police station and check the arrests and 911 calls to these building addresses of Reality and Management for the last 5 years. Call the management and ask them how many tenants have been thrown out for suspected gang activity. Ask them about the gambling arrest in the vestibule camera on Morse.
The Dollar Store. Go in and ask the owner/clerk why she let's the gangs use her business. Ask her why she doesn't run the Open Air Drug Market Salesman off. Ask her why she doesn't call the cops. Ask her why she tells her customers not to bother to make a stink. (This is a comment I got from a well known leader/activist in Rogers Park, He can confirm this here if he chooses.) Ask her why she doesn't attend CAPS meetings. Ask her why she doesn't attend community meetings. I stand by my comment, bad business owner, gangs hang out and use her shop as a hideout.
As for DevCorp and Alderman Moore. I have exhausted all measures of getting a response from them publicly. This blog allows me to keep track of what doesn't get done, hope they fix what I post is wrong and maybe get the Sun-Times or Tribune to check into these wrongdoings. The media seems to be the best at exposing corruption in Chicago, not the investigators.
Keep reading, or not. Still, thanks for responding.
CORRECTION:
Realty and Mortgage
not Realty and Management.
>Why would the Dollar Store want people dealing crack in front of it? The answer is they don’t.
There's something the merchants on Morse and Howard don't wnat even WORSE than people dealing crack in front of their stores:
ARRESTS in front of their stores.
They don't want blips showing up on Citizen ICAM. They don't want to appear in the police blotter. They don't want to come up for discussion at a CAPS meeting as a problem store.
The gangbangers are not stupid, they learn where to stand.
Citizen ICAM
A citizen requests additional information on the breakdown of income and expenditures for various programs of a tax-exempt public charity in our neighborhood, and is denied. Kimberly Bares, Executive Director of DevCorp North, denies the request, claiming that her organization is not bound by the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, even though the original request did not cite the Illinois Freedom of Information Act as the basis for the request.
In fact, a breakdown of a tax-exempt organization's income and expenditures is our right as citizens, not under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, but under our federal tax code.
Operating a corporation as tax-exempt is a privilege, not a right. A charitable organization enjoys many privileges, only the most obvious of which is that they don't pay taxes like the rest of us. One responsibility of their privileged status is that they are expected to operate in the light of day. Charities don't file 1040's like the rest of us, but the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does require most charities to annually submit IRS Form 990, the "Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax." The intent of this form is to disclose enough information that the IRS, funding organizations, and the public can evaluate the organization's claim to tax exempt status.
Unlike personal income tax returns, tax-exempt organizations have no expectation of privacy regarding their financial disclosures. On the contrary, they are legally required to provide their financial disclosures to the public upon demand. Our federal tax code requires that a charity share the past 3 years of their Form 990's and attachments on demand to anyone who asks. The financial disclosures for a tax-exempt organization are available to the tax-paying public from the organization itself, or, if necessary, from the IRS. Many legitimate tax-exempt organizations honor their legal obligation to share their finances with the public using their own web site. Their disclosure forms may also be available online via a specialized web site like GuideStar.org.
Part III of IRS Form 990, "Statement of Program Service Accomplishemnts," on page 2, requires:
"All organizations must describe their exempt achievements in a clear and concise manner. State the number of clients served, publications issued, etc. Discuss achievements that are not measurable. (Section 501(c)(3) ... organizations ... must also enter the amount of grants and allocations to others."
Four slots for various programs are provided, and the instructions for the form direct:
"All organizations must describe their exempt purpose achievments for each of their four largest program services (as measured by total expenses incurred). ... Attach a schedule that lists the organization's other program service."
Every year, DevCorp North list one and only one program on their financial disclosures: "Grants for the Public Support and Community Development Block Grants to Benefit the business and residential area," and reports all their expenses against this one program.
DevCorp North's terse description of their program services on their financial disclosures is in sharp contrast to the effusive description of their program services on their web site:
* Technical consultant to business under contract with the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development;
* Sole service provider of the Howard Special Service Area;
* Sole service provider of the Morse Special Service Area;
* Lobbying and grassroots lobbying for city legislation including Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts and Special Service Areas (SSAs);
* Sponsor of the Roger's Park Farmer's Market;
* Sponsor of Rogers Park Business-Arts Networking;
* Publisher of the DevCorp North Journal;
* and many others.
DevCorp North accomplishmentsIn direct circumvention of their legal obligation to disclose their expenditures by program, DevCorp North deliberately conceals their spending. Given an opportunity to provide our community with details of their stewardship of our property taxes, DevCorp North declines.
How much do DevCorp North's many programs cost, broken down by program and by year? This is a perfectly reasonable question for a citizen to ask, and within a citizen's right to know of a tax-exempt organization. It is information that DevCorp North is legally obligated to disclose, but they do not.
Kimberly Bares, the Executive Director of DevCorp North, is a career executive in the not-for-profit sector. As such one might expect her to understand her legal obligations and honor them. Instead, she stonewalled. She is either incompetent or dishonest or getting some very bad advice from her lawyers.
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