Prioritizing Equitable Investments - Recommendations Survey

Thank you for taking this brief survey to tell us what you think of our recommendations to improve equity through Chicago’s use of financial incentives. This survey should only take five to ten minutes to complete.

The 10 draft recommendations are organized under five headings: Develop and Track Outcomes, Prioritize and Align Incentives to Achieve Equity, Ease Application Process, Streamline Funding and Communication, and Improve Accountability. For more information about the Recommendations, please see our Executive Summary.

1.Please indicate your level of support and agreement with the recommendations in the Develop and Track Outcomes section on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree.

The recommendations to rank are:

Develop outcomes around increasing equity and align with citywide goals and values. Define outcomes for how incentive use will build healthy, mixed-income neighborhoods across the city. Since all neighborhoods are different, this will require a baseline understanding of what is missing to help determine the outcomes that need to be targeted for each area as well as the data sources and metrics to be used to track progress. Citywide goals should be aligned with these outcomes along with standardized reporting on key data points to track progress on individual neighborhoods and across the city.

Track outcomes in a transparent and effective way. Develop an incentive dashboard to track and report on outcomes from projects that used incentives. To align with outcomes, these reports should be provided at the level of the city as well as individual neighborhoods.

(Required.)

2.If you ranked this three or lower, how can we improve this set of recommendations?

3.Please indicate your level of support and agreement with the recommendations in the Prioritize and Align Incentives to Achieve Equity section on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree.

The recommendations to rank are:

Identify priority areas to achieve city goals and objectives for equity. Assign incentives based on what is needed for development in each neighborhood, with certain areas prioritized for specific incentive use due to their market conditions and socio-economic factors indicating disadvantage or advantage. A market typology aligned with socio-economic factors needs to be created to help structure which incentives are prioritized where.

Align incentive use with priority areas and outcomes determined by criteria that includes equity. Incentives programs should act as one large pot of pooled incentives, rather than different buckets, allowing for greater discretion in providing them to priority areas and areas of disadvantage. Incentives should also align around achieving the goal of healthy, mixed-income communities with outcomes that center both the needs of both the community and its residents.

(Required.)

4.If you ranked this three or lower, how can we improve this set of recommendations?

5.Please indicate your level of support and agreement with the recommendations in the Ease Application Process section on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree.

The recommendations to rank are:

Fund and support a technical assistance liaison role. Provide financial resources for City staff or an outside organization to provide technical assistance to less-resourced applicants. These applicants can be either nonprofit or for-profit entities. Resources should be provided via a funding source that is consistent and maintained over time.

Create a common, streamlined application for all incentives. Refine the City’s recently launched Universal Financial Incentives Application to make the process easier for all applications. Expand the application to include more incentive programs beyond the four it currently houses. The initial application should be shorter and provide some questions up front to determine if applicants could use technical assistance and how quickly they need resources. The application should also be offered in languages other than English. The screener application should connect to a publicly available scoring rubric that allows for transparency in the project application and selection process.

(Required.)

6.If you ranked this three or lower, how can we improve this set of recommendations?

7.Please indicate your level of support and agreement with the recommendations in the Streamline Funding and Communication section on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree.

The recommendations to rank are:

Provide quicker review and better communication around funding. Increase capacity to review applications helping to shorten the timeline to receiving money for all applicants. This may require the review assistance of external organizations because of internal City staff capacity. Ensure clarity in providing information about timelines of when support will be received and the process for reimbursement. An internal tracking process with data on when applications are received, what happened for each applicant, when decisions were made, and when money was received will help determine how quickly the process moves and if improvements are necessary.

Provide bridge funding as part of the allocation for smaller awardees when resource needs and disbursement do not align. Resource and manage a fund via an external organization, like a community development financial institution or a philanthropic organization, to allocate money to smaller awardees when funding is needed sooner than can be provided administratively. To not burden the awardee, the external organization would provide the resources to the City to allocate to the awardee and would be reimbursed by the City when the money becomes available.

(Required.)

8.If you ranked this three or lower, how can we improve this set of recommendations?

9.Please indicate your level of support and agreement with the recommendations in the Improve Accountability section on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree.

The recommendations to rank are:

Require centralized reporting across all programs that use financial incentives. Provide a comprehensive overview of all incentive programs to create a broad picture of total incentive use and what it is accomplishing. This may require consistency in reporting mechanisms, including what is being tracked and how data is being reported.

Develop a civic oversight committee to annually review incentive use across the different programs. Convene a civic oversight committee to serve as an accountability body to ensure that resources are being allocated based on criteria determined for priority areas and that they are accomplishing equitable outcomes. Particularly for TIF districts, there should be periodic reviews and additional reporting requirements to confirm that the districts are meeting their goals.

(Required.)

10.If you ranked this three or lower, how can we improve this set of recommendations?

12.Is there anything we missed or should consider researching about financial incentive programs? Please let us know.