MIHALOPOULOS: Alderman quick to raise our taxes, slow to pay his own

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Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) paid his property taxes after the Sun-Times reported Friday he was months late. | Sun-Times files

Without saying a word at the City Council meeting last month, first-term Ald. Derrick Curtis joined the vast majority of his colleagues in supporting Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2018 budget.

Like 46 other aldermen, Curtis voted to collect higher taxes on telephone bills, Uber rides, tickets to big-venue events and demand more from the property, water and sewer bills of every household and business in Chicago.

What Curtis alone has not managed yet, however, is to pay the property taxes for his house in the 18th Ward that he represents.

He’s the latest in a series of elected officials whose delinquent property tax bills we’ve exposed. Last month, two Cook County commissioners — both vocal critics of the county’s now-repealed pop tax, by the way — hurried over to the county treasurer’s office and paid up right after I called asking about their personal property-tax debts.

OPINION

According to the treasurer’s office, as of Sunday, Curtis still owed more than $1,500 in unpaid 2016 real-estate taxes for the home he owns on Christiana Avenue, in the Southwest Side’s Ashburn neighborhood.

The treasurer’s website shows that he has not paid any of the second-installment bill of $1,110.32 — which was due on Aug. 1 — and now owes another $83.25 in interest for not ponying up on time.

Including interest, he also owes 323.69 that he has not yet paid for his first-installment bill of $1,100.25 that was due March 1.

At least Curtis and his wife have paid some of that bill. They made payments of $401 and $389.51 in August and September, according to public records.

The couple bought the 1,203-square-foot, brick house for $175,000 in November 2015. They borrowed the full purchase amount from an individual, according to property records. The loan is due a year from now.

The house is where the alderman is registered to vote. It’s at the address Curtis lists on campaign committee documents filed with election authorities. And it’s where he gets a homestead exemption, which reduced the property-tax tab by more than $500 this year.

The alderman did not return messages left Friday at his ward office and on his cell phone.

This isn’t the first time Curtis has had trouble paying his bills. Federal court records show he filed for bankruptcy in 2006, even though he was making nearly $70,000 a year at the time as the 18th Ward superintendent for the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation.

My check of tax bills for aldermen found Curtis appears to be the only member of the august body who failed to pay what was due in August in a timely fashion.

Raking in a taxpayer-funded salary of $116,208 a year as an alderman, Curtis should have no problem covering property-tax bills that total just a little more than $2,200 a year.

It’s no more than our elected officials are asking the rest of us to do. Almost all of us do so more readily than Curtis. Out of more than 1.7 million parcels in Cook County, the owners of about 1.6 million properties have paid the last bill by now, according to the treasurer’s office.

Politicians who want to get re-elected are well-advised to be sure to have the highest tax bill on the block. This way they can avoid even the perception that they’re getting an unfairly low assessment thanks to their clout.

They also might want to be sure to pay whatever the amount on the bill is. And do that on time.

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