It’s hard to know where to start on the latest version of the Tasty Dog story. This is the chapter where it is discovered that the venerable eatery, saved from extinction years back by the howls of the people, relaunched in the finest darn hot dog stand tax dollars could construct, hasn’t ever paid a nickel in property taxes.
Ever. Never.
We had the editorial howitzer at the ready. We could take out the Barton Brothers, proprietors of hot dog heaven. We could take out the village, owners of the property on which the hot dog palace sits. But after asking more questions, dear citizens, we believe the best answer may be to turn the mighty howitzer on ourselves, the taxpaying, hot dog-consuming people of Oak Park.
We’ve been screwed again.
Everyone is to blame. No one is to blame. But guess who is going to pay?
The details are vague. The history, just eight years old, is blurred. But at its root here is the warped mindset that brings us to a moment where the Bartons feel socked by a $120,000 past due property tax bill, and the village is searching for a way to help them out of this hole: The village thought it proper and legal to buy a parcel of commercial property (formerly a gas station), build a pricey hot dog stand on it to get out from under a political mess of its own making, and assumed that no one should ever pay property taxes on the valuable corner lot.
A village trustee, Jon Hale, charged with trying to sort out this mess, expresses consternation but claims that he is told the property tax issue was never discussed during lease negotiations.
And for years, no taxes were assessed by the county. Then, possibly because someone – a property tax-paying restaurant, perhaps – dropped a dime on Tasty Dog, the county assessor came out of its stupor, decreed that the village-owned site was wholly used by a for-profit business and sent out past due tax notices to Tasty Dog.
We simply shake our heads at the choices made by the village boards of that era. Actively getting more property on the tax rolls is the obvious goal, not precluding property. The village had already been extraordinarily generous with Tasty Dog, and its existing lease, which runs though New Year’s Eve 2024, is a damned bargain.
No one wants Tasty Dog driven out of business. Our high school students would starve. But again, and again, the village proves that its skills as a property owner cum developer are lousy. The village is broke. Homeowners are quaking under the tax burden. And here we are again considering hot dog stand welfare.
This isn’t right.
Going postal
Mail deliverers don’t like it. Mail deliverees don’t like it. The latest post office plan to reconfigure all the routes and change the carriers who cover them has all the markings of a lose-lose proposition. Granted, the new carriers will adjust and the residents will become attached to them – eventually. But there’s no guarantee the routes won’t all get reshuffled again in a few years. And it certainly gives the appearance of a post office that isn’t in touch with the community it serves. That belies the name “postal service.”