Tax share plan borne of desperation

Businesses are migratory in nature. They go where people will feed them.

Decades ago, retailers in a once-vibrant downtown Elgin moved up river to West Dundee to enjoy mall living. The Elgin retail scene was devastated.

And in the past decade, some of those businesses have moved from West Dundee farther north and west out of town to Randall Road, deemed one of the hottest retail strips in the country. West Dundee's Spring Hill Mall and its surrounding business district isn't quite as vibrant today.

But in neither case did the town that lost out ask for anything from the town that got the business. Look around the suburbs, and you can see similar migrations to retail-rich corridors.

That's just how business works.

But consider a proposal from East Dundee. The village has a smaller sales tax base than its neighbor, and leaders there are concerned that if Walmart finally goes through with plans to build a shiny new store next to Spring Hill Mall, the retail giant will shutter its East Dundee store.

That would be a huge blow to East Dundee.

On Saturday, staff writer Tara Garcia Mathewson wrote about East Dundee's desire to submit legislation seeking to have West Dundee share sales tax revenue with it, gradually reducing East Dundee's share over nine years, should Walmart shutter the East Dundee store in favor of West Dundee.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and East Dundee does not have a lot of options. But this is wrong. And a waste of time.

East Dundee would bear no responsibility for being the host community of a neighboring Walmart, yet it still wants a piece of the pie.

Adding insult to injury, East Dundee Village Manager Robert Skurla pitched this idea to the Metro West Council of Government without talking first with West Dundee.

That's not very neighborly. And not a particularly good way to enter a discussion in which only one party can benefit.

We know how it looks, but Skurla says that based on the meeting schedules of the committee and the state legislature, he had to move forward. He said legislation moves sluggishly and he wanted to push East Dundee to start the process as quickly as possible.

“You get your foot in the door, you get it drafted and then you ask again next year,” Skurla said.

West Dundee Village Manager Joe Cavallaro points to his town's recent business losses but wouldn't comment on Skurla's plan.

The revenue-sharing plan and how word got out is not likely to garner a lot of good will.

And boy, is it likely to make uncomfortable the next meeting over plans to combine East Dundee's, West Dundee's and Sleepy Hollow's police departments.