The Neighborhood Capital Budget Group is a decade-old coalition of nearly 200 community based organizations and local economic development groups in Chicago dedicated to improving our neighborhoods through well-planned, targeted public investment. Our mission: To ensure the quality of our infrastructure in order to ensure the quality of life for our communities.

NCBG Issues of Concern
The History of NCBG
Accomplishments
Contact Information

NCBG is currently working on four major sets of issues:

1. Basic Infrastructure: Streets, sidewalks, sewers, libraries, industrial infrastructure . . . these types of capital investment form the physical backbone of our communities upon which other improvements may be built.
2. Tax Increment Financing: Tax Increment Financing, also known as "TIF" has become the City of Chicago's most widely used economic development tool. But despite its popularity with the City, many neighborhoods have raised questions about accountability, displacement, and effectiveness.
3. School Construction and Repair: The buildings in which our children learn have a direct and important effect on the quality of their education. NCBG has been helping Chicago parents understand their school's capital needs for three years, and has recently begun informing parents in other cities about the need to rebuild America's schools.
4. Public Transportation: Reliable, affordable, accessible public transportation is an economic necessity. It allows people to get to jobs, brings people to neighborhood shopping districts, provides an important link to educational and cultural instiutions, reduces traffic, and provides environmental benefits. Despite the importance of public transit to Chicago, bus and train service has suffered deep cuts in recent years, and our basic transit infrastructure is in a serious state of disrepair. NCBG has also been instrumental in starting the Campaign for Better Transit, a new consumer group for Chicago transit riders.

History

The Neighborhood Capital Budget Group was formed by grassroots community organizations and neighborhood development corporations in 1988. These organizations wanted local government to:

1. Rebuild the aging and crumbling infrastructure in Chicago’s neighborhoods,
2. Preserve and improve the day-to-day quality of life for neighborhood residents, and
3. Reinvest in the basic public investments and physical improvements essential to retaining and attracting business and private development.

While NCBG advocates for increased public investment in the “bricks and mortar” of neighborhoods, the organization’s vision is to bring about comprehensive and strategic community revitalization. All the bricks and mortar in the world may not make any positive difference -- unless those investments are part of a vision of a vibrant community that better serves its long-time residents and offers educational, housing, and economic opportunity for all its members. The NCBG organizational vision holds that communities must be empowered to plan for, participate in, and benefit from the revitalization of the City’s neighborhoods.

Increased capital investment, that is, more and better public works projects, is a means to that end. The “bricks and mortar” investment that communities seek is crucial to achieving larger economic development and quality of life goals. For example, in demanding improved school facilities and the alleviation of overcrowding, our goal is to provide a world class education for all children in the city.

Initially NCBG focused on the City’s crumbling municipal infrastructure: the poor condition of city streets, sidewalks, sewers, public buildings, etc. Transportation infrastructure, especially the deterioration of the CTA’s rail lines, soon emerged as another high priority for Chicago’s neighborhoods. Later on, as City Hall turned increasingly to “tax increment financing” (“TIF”) to spur economic development and to pay for infrastructure improvements, NCBG became heavily involved in TIF.

Today, NCBG is made up of nearly 200 community and economic development organizations throughout the City’s 50 wards, working to increase public investment in all our neighborhoods.

NCBG provides research, policy analysis and organizing assistance to groups all over the City concerned about the City’s capital spending priorities, transportation infrastructure, TIF, and the condition of our school facilities. To get the kind of public investment neighborhoods need from government, communities need to be proactive and develop their own comprehensive community plans. NCBG also assists neighborhood organizations with developing such plans for their communities.

What has NCBG accomplished? Over the past decade, NCBG has . . .

• Opened up the City of Chicago’s capital budget to direct citizen input, with annual public hearings and a permanent citizens’ advisory council


• Convinced the City to commit capital dollars annually to rebuild neighborhood infrastructure
  Since 1992 the City has invested over $7 billion in neighborhood improvements such as streets, sidewalks, alleys, sewers, and public facilities like our neighborhood libraries.
• Called attention to the deterioration and overcrowding in our public school facilities, and advocated for increased investment in our schools.
• Published a major study on these conditions, entitled Rebuilding our Schools Brick by Brick. and periodic “report cards” on the Chicago Public Schools Capital Improvement Program.
• Provided assistance to dozens of community groups and Local School Councils to increase the capital investment being made by the Chicago Public Schools
• Successfully organized for the renovation of the CTA Green Line, a $420 million capital investment in important neighborhood transit.
• Helped to win a $440 million “Full-Funding Agreement” from Congress for the reconstruction of the CTA’s Douglas Branch of the Blue line..
• Helped to create "The Campaign for Better Transit," an initiative to help organize Chicago’s transit riders to work for an improved, expanded and more reliable mass transit system.
• Convenes and supports a citywide Community Task Force on TIF, working to reform the City’s major economic development program and make it more accountable to citizens and taxpayers.
• Provides the public with an array of reports and analyses tracking public spending in Chicago’s neighborhoods.
• Created the TIF Bill of Rights (see page 5) and is working to implement it through the TIF Reform Platform.
• Helped increase public and media attention to the infrastructure issue.
• Documented and exposed inequitable patterns of capital budget allocations.
• Helped scores of community organizations and local economic development organizations fight for -- and get -- increased public investment in their neighborhoods.
• Persuaded the City to increase its capital investment by over $1 billion in the 1990s.
• Advocated for and won the adoption of a citizen participation process in the City's capital improvement planning.
• Citizens can now voice their concerns for their community's capital improvement needs through established City procedures including annual public hearings, disclosure of the proposed capital improvement plan, and a citizen's advisory committee to the Mayor.
• Persuaded policy makers that good infrastructure management and increased public investment in infrastructure muust have a higher prioritiy in government.
• Researched transit agencies' capital budgets.
• Advocated for increased coordination between City government and transit agencies
• Organized to save the CTA's Green Line, a $400 million investment in the city rapid transit infrastructure.
• Taken the lead in promoting "transit-oriented community development" -- a community planning process that sees transit as an asset for stimulating community economic development.

NCBG ceased to operate as of February 1, 2007. Inquiries may be sent to NCBGCBT@gmail.com. While we cannot promise to answer every email, we’ll do our best. If you’re interested in the issues NCBG addressed, reach out to Key Community Leaders who worked closely with NCBG.