Mr.

Sure, we'll resume.

The Cook County Land Bank.

Jessica.

Jessica.

Good afternoon, Chairman Daly, Commissioners.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the Cook County Land Bank's fiscal year 2026 mid-year budget template.

I'm joined today by Daniel Taylor, our manager of finance and business operations, who will walk us through our expenditures following my revenue overview, and Alex Simmons, our senior planning analyst.

Before we get into the numbers, I want to note that the land bank continues to operate by generating revenue through property sales, land banking agreements, and municipal transactions while advancing our core mission of returning vacant and abandoned property back into productive use across Cook County.

This builds on real momentum.

Last year we announced our highest revenue ever since 2018, generating 9.6 million in 2025.

And now we've generated $309 million in community wealth to date.

This year our projections are lower due to some challenges.

However, our fiscal year 2026 expenditures are tracking within budget across every category.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Next this the agenda slide.

Okay.

So we're going to talk about revenues.

We have no ARPA dollars in our expenditures.

Next slide, please.

Revenue.

We've generated about $4 million against a $7 million annual goal, which is 57% of our target, with the positive variance of $887,000 as of May 31st, 2026.

This variance is a good variance.

It's not a shortfall.

Revenue is coming in ahead of projection, driven by our strategic focus in our increasing sales and reducing our departmental expenditures.

Our revenue mix consists of property sales, which are the primary driver, supplemented by miscellaneous income, then land banking agreements and municipal transactions.

For this, we credit Calumet City, the City of Chicago, Dalton, and Madison, in which we've conducted municipal sales this year, and we have a land banking agreement with the CTA red line.

We are on pace and it's not a projection.

We're on pace against our fiscal year 2026 goal with a positive variance to date.

Next slide.

Thank you, Jessica.

FY26 land bank fiscal year to date department expenditures listed are overall on pace in all categories.

The first category are expenditure line personnel.

The 20% variance is due to four positions not yet filled.

We are currently in process for those positions to be posted.

The next category is our operations and maintenance line, which is dedicated for our property maintenance landscape and needs related to our property inventory.

Additionally, seasonal factors creates natural lags as we transition from winter maintenance activities into spring cleanup.

The natural growing season also affects it, which typically occurs uh in April and May.

The primary reason for this low spend uh stems from our billing cycles as we receive invoices one month behind the actual service date uh uh versus delivery dates.

The land bank expects to catch up and meet our budget projections by 11.30.

The next line, the largest uh variance and expenditure is the contingencies and special purpose line, which includes department spend of $650,000 and a credit appropriation transfer in the amount of $3.5 million.

Um these combine uh produce a credit that you'll see there of $2.8 million.

This uh appropriation transfer came from the Department of Budget and Finance to support our operations, uh Department expenditures as a special purpose fund.

This line also represents many other expenditure categories, including our line of credit reserve, funds reserved for delinquent taxes, interest for our line of credit, our professional service line, survey reports, and scaffolding.

Overall, the land bank senior management continues to actively monitor department spending to ensure we are aligned with our projections by 1130.

Next slide, please.

Um, the land bank has no ARPA funding, so we can go to the next slide, please.

Now we want to talk about our fiscal year 2026 initiatives and our goal.

Our first goal represents the percentage of properties sold for home ownership.

89% of our properties sold this fiscal year have gone to home ownership.

And this covers all non-commercial industrial sales.

This is the core of what the land bank does and what we exist to do.

We convert these vacant tax delinquent properties into pathways to homeownership and generational wealth for Cook County residents.

This ties directly to the policy roadmap as it's the metric that supports vital communities, which centers homeownership as a wealth building tool while discouraging rental conversion of these properties.

I also would like to thank the President Prequinal's Equity Fund, who has contributed to 132 families to date.

Because of this large majority of these properties go to homeowners rather than investor, the equity created stays with the resident and it stays with the neighborhood.

This doesn't flow outside of the community.

That is a direct link between this homeownership rate and the community wealth figure on the next slide.

One is the mechanism and the other is the measurable result.

Next slide, please.

Since inception, the Cook County Land Bank has generated over $309 million in community wealth.

Community wealth represents the difference between the initial property acquisition costs and the post-rehabilitation market value.

This metric captures the real economic impact that we create in our Cook County neighborhoods.

At 61% with roughly 77 months past, this tracks reasonably against our annual target.

This also aligns with Vital Community section that we're generating community wealth in the most disadvantaged communities, helping to close the racial wealth gap by raising property values where it's most needed.

Next slide, please.

As of May 31st, 2026, the Cook County Land Bank has acquired 256 parcels in this fiscal year.

That represents 51% of our original 500 property goal.

Now, as we move into the second half of the year, before it looks like a problem, we do anticipate acquisitions to be a little bit slower in the second half of the year.

That's due to a larger number of properties being redeemed.

We anticipate a volume of about 400 parcels to close for the full year.

This is again, we expect more properties to be redeemed, and therefore our acquisition number will be lower.

This also ties to the policy roadmap and aligns with vital communities as we're increasing affordable housing opportunities specifically in historically and systematically disadvantaged communities.

Next slide, please.

CCLBA has successfully reduced this age inventory by 10.7% from December of 25 through May 31st of 26.

And this is expected to increase through quarter four because we are expecting more properties to close.

This matters operationally because this is not just the number.

This is reducing age inventory, lowers our holding costs, it helps us to balance our budget, and it keeps workload aligned with existing staff resources.

This also ties to the policy roadmap as we are reviving long dormant properties that have acted as ISOs in the community.

Again, we're connecting this to the land bank.

This is what we do to exist.

We're converting vacant delinquent tax delinquent properties into pathways for homeownership and generational wealth for Cook County residents.

Now we're going to go into the status of hiring.

So while we have vacancies, we are actively have access and we are marketing these positions, and we will have them filled by year end.

This continued investment in staffing capacity is what allows us to sustain and increase our operational pace reflected through today's presentation from acquisitions to inventory reduction to community wealth creation.

Again, this position is growth in motion, and we're so happy about that.

Next slide, please.

Grant um this is not apply to us, capital equipment updates.

Next slide, please.

Grant funding.

We recently submitted an application for round three of the strong communities program, which is called SEP, that's offered by Ida, Illinois Housing Development Authority.

We applied for 750.

Uh last uh the last three years, we were awarded 562.

So while we apply for 750, doesn't mean that we will get all of the funds.

In our case, this is where properties are beyond repair and have been negatively impacting our neighborhooding residents.

And this program will provide funds for demolition.

So in cases where properties require renovation, these program funds can also be used if there are some extraordinary circumstances.

We continue to look for federal grant opportunities that will benefit the land bank.

And so we have only seen so far uh technical assistance grants for brownfield remediation and incubative scholarships opportunities available for startup land banks.

That concludes our mid-year budget presentation.

And at this point, we would like to offer it up for questions.

Thank you.

Commissioner Gaynor.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jessica, Daniel, the whole team.

Jesse, you have your whole team here or some of the team back here?

They're watching online.

Yeah.

Um, I I want to thank you guys obviously for all the work that you're doing and have done.

And um, you know, those of you who've been here before, Jessica is running an incredibly well-run organization which allows us to achieve all these things on mission.

Um I know we don't want to go into the weeds on some of the stuff and we'll address it with others.

But the if you look at the next couple of years, what are some of the goals that you um in addition to the increased home ownership that's helpful?

Um, how are you feeling about your budget and how are you feeling about our ability to kind of continue the activity that's necessary to keep us in float?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think it's very important.

Um I know that the county has moved to a zero-based budgeting, so it's very important for us to increase our revenue.

And the way that we increase our revenue is by continue continuing to get acquisitions in place.

Um, as we know that there have been some challenges um with Tyler Technologies, but we are working together with all of the agencies.

Um they have been working with us, they understand that there's challenges, but it we have to be able to get our inventory.

But we're working together and we're sure that that will to be resolved in the near future, and there are ways to work through it.

Um, we're also working on getting um some of our um refunds and exemptions in place, and we're also working with the assessors in the treasurer's office too.

Again, uh issues uh um issues from Tyler technologies, but we're all working through it together as a team trying to work through to get our all of the money.

How much money is the outstanding from either the treasurer or the assessor on the exemptions we haven't received?

Uh one million dollars.

So a million dollars that is the land that you guys have to wait for in your budget because we can't get it out there.

And how many properties do you need to process in a year to kind of stay afloat, keep people uh to keep the budget going in order to enough economic activity?

Yes, so we typically request more than what we need because again, due to our action of sending out the take notices, what typically happens is that we get people to redeem, right?

So while our regular goal was 500 um for this year, you know, we've seen some redemptions, so our goal has now reduced to 400.

So right now we we're putting in about each year a request for about 3,000 certificates at minimum so that we can make our goal of 600 um in our inventory because we don't know what's gonna happen if they're actually gonna make it too deep.

Okay.

And I'll I'll address this with the clerk too.

But I think as we think about like the future of Tyler and what do we need to be successful, we need to process 3,000 pieces of property in order to get keep the land bank moving.

And um, you know, right now that's kind of ground to a halt.

So we need to, you know, come up with uh of a solution, and then hopefully uh a Tyler solution will also be in the offing for the the million dollars because just in the same way the land banks owed a million dollars, there's thousands of constituents that are also owed multiples of that.

So awesome.

Well, listen, you guys are doing an amazing job.

Really excited um about everything that's happening, and uh you know your willingness to lean in on the 35,000 properties is also very appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Lower.

Thank you, Chairman.

Just want to say uh Jessica and Daniel, thank you for everything.

Uh you guys do an amazing job.

Thank you.

Um, Jessica, there hasn't been one time in eight years.

Uh well, however long you've been there, I've been here eight years.

But whenever I reach out, you're there.

And uh we've had many uh conversations, which really are more consultations which you have which you hold, rooted in transparency rooted in what can be done, what cannot be done, uh be it an individual, yes, uh, be it entities or or be it other elected officials.

We've had all those conversations, so I truly appreciate it.

Um the Black Fire Brigade, they will forever be grateful for everything that you've done uh relative to assisting them in in getting housing for our youth as they um on a daily basis prepare our youth either for careers as firefighters or as EMTs.

Q uh Curtis just said to me, Oh, Jessica's speaking, tell her that we really enjoyed working closely with her and her team, they did a wonderful job.

So I wanted to share that in real time.

I reached out to both Q uh Curtis and Terry Winston to see if they had something to say, and all of a sudden I saw the dot dot dots.

So I did want to share that with you.

Um I've often said that the land bank is um just a wonderful initiative.

I I sincerely say thank you to my treasured colleague, Commissioner Gaynor, for your role relative to this.

I say this is where opportunity and dreams intersect, and uh I look forward to us getting uh whatever we need to do in place so that we can continue this impactful work through your office and through Cook County.

So again, thank you.

I'm here to help you.

It's not just a one-way street.

When I reach out, you help me, but if I can be of assistance to you, uh you, Daniel, reach out, and I'm happy to do whatever I can as well as we move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Moore.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Jessica, I I want to uh uh expound upon what Commissioner Lowry said, you're doing an amazing job.

Thank you.

Just a couple questions, though.

Uh as it relates to community impact.

Um, if you could tell me how many formerly vacant properties have been returned to productive usage?

Like this past year.

Yes, we have uh 2505 to date.

505?

Yes.

Thank you.

And then also, like um, can the staff quantify the the increase in local properties tax values resulting from land bank sales over the past few years?

Yes.

Um the property taxes, the total amount generated has been about 38 million dollars, and then redemptions due to our action of sending out take notice has been 37 million dollars, and we're able to track that.

So Alex behind me, who's our planning analyst, he's able to track when our notices went out and when those funds come in.

So we're about 37, 471, 317 to be exact.

She's cold, isn't she?

No.

Uh hold on.

No, I'm not trying to stomp her, but I lost my question.

I had them written down.

Um those listening at home, that's 75 million dollars in the county budget.

Right, Tom the um you you mentioned, and I I don't remember where I saw it, and I lost my note that quick, but you mentioned KayMess City as one of the cities that you know we've we've helped to turn around.

Uh are there any others that have significant impact communities, especially in the Southwest?

Yeah, absolutely.

We had a um a meeting with the Dalton of Mayor, uh, the mayor of Dalton recently, and so really working with him actively to move some of the pro um the houses in his neighborhood.

He has about 400 uh tax delinquent properties.

We have about a hundred, so we're really acting actively moving to move those.

Um we're working with Calumet City on one big industrial property.

We are working with also Madison in the village of Madison on um properties, and we're helping them as well.

They have developers who are interested, and we're working with the mayor, and we're making sure to help get some of those bigger and those larger properties back on the tax rolls.

Yes, the portion a portion of the mall.

That's good because it's it's a huge ISO.

Um also the town center to be specific.

Um by some magic wand that uh Commissioner Daly found a bunch of resources for you.

What investments do you think would be the greatest impact if uh you had the money uh to reduce bacon and advanced properties?

Absolutely.

I want to um first credit uh again, President Preckwinkle for the equity fund.

What initiative that we've been working on is really scaling our developers up.

Our developers have started with maybe one or two rehabilitation properties and did that for a while, and now our developers are moving moving new construction.

Um 65% of our inventory is now vacant land, so we need our developers to be able to build from the ground up.

Um we've increased our inventory in Lawdale.

Uh we we have a lot of inventory, Lawndale and several Lawndale developers who are developing there.

Um and we're scaling them up, so they're going from you know, one and two new construction to five, then we're scaling them up to 10.

Um, so if I had one thing that I would suggest is that the equity fund for purchase assistance has been a big help because what we're doing is that six percent is really getting people into homeownership, right?

Um, which is what we want to do.

That's that's one avenue.

Um, another avenue would be of course to get us additional resources.

Um we have been allocated um in the last budget year 3.5 million from uh the budget, and we appreciate that.

But as you guys know, it takes a lot to basically run this land bank.

Um a lot of land banks across the country are are basically fully funded with a lot more resources.

Um it takes us six million dollars a year alone just to um have preservation services.

So for you all who don't know, preservation services is the services that it takes once we've acquired the property, we are responsible for making sure that there's a clean pathway for developers or interested parties to walk through.

We're also responsible for the boarding up, um and we're also responsible for the lawn maintenance and snow removal.

And we keep on an average about 2,000 properties in our inventory, and that costs us about six million dollars a year.

So any additional resources would be fantastic to help help us, um, especially with our properties now selling at a lower rate, you know.

So our um vacant land is selling maybe between five and just say twenty-five thousand, depending on where it is, um, but still that's that's not a lot to cover our operational expenses at the end of the day.

Let me go back.

What was the the amount of general revenue money that you receive from the county to operate your budget?

Um so as of so for the past three years, the county was generous enough to cover our budget so that we can we could catch up.

And then so now and Daniel has those exact numbers, they have allocated approximately 3.5.

It's a 3.5 million.

Yeah, right now they've allocated $3.5 million a year.

How much do you generate on the drive?

Um so on average, last year we generated about $9.6 million, which was our highest revenue since 2018.

Um in the past, um, and on average it's been between five and seven million.

And our budget is about 14 million.

And how many employees do you have now?

I have 21 employees with four vacancies that we're actively filling, so a total of 25, uh but 21 active right now.

So that is yet to be determined as we continue to scale up.

As you know, we're about to take on a really big initiative, and we believe um last year we were given additional six positions to help us to get that started.

We've been hiring from that, but again, once we get started with administering and the full scope of work is done with these um with CCA, you know, we can better determine if there are additional needs over and beyond what we didn't predict.

Thank you.

I think you're doing an amazing job.

Thank you so much.

Commissioner Trevor Chance.

Uh Commissioner.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Jessica.

And yes, she is doing an outstanding job.

Quick question with regard to um municipalities with the number of staff you currently have, have we looked at possibly developing partnerships with the municipalities for the uh upkeep and maintenance of those vacant buildings?

You know what they love it when we take over because it doesn't come out of their budget.

So, yeah, that's a partnership.

Um so it in a sense, well, um by law, they have to waive transfer stamps and any other liens and fees.

So again, a lot of these municipalities have very small budgets, so that's their contribution towards the partnership, and um and basically you know we're paying for that preservation, so it kind of balances out because again, we're putting the property back into productive use, and so um they feel that the waiving of the transfer stamps that they do is part of their uh partnership.

Uh, we also, of course, partner with the South Suburban Land Bank as well, and uh we sometimes transfer properties to them for a profit sharing split.

With regard to the um 1,485 aging properties or aging yeah, properties in the inventory, um, can any of those be returned to the municipalities with some type of guideline as to when they need to have them restored for uh for use?

Absolutely.

Um I I I have been going around to the municipalities meeting with all of the South Suburban mayors, and in we like to work with the municipalities first, right?

So if they have interest in properties that they would like to move forward for any of their economic development plans or if they have an economic development corridor, we would glad gladly work with them to you know return the properties back to them in a fashion so that they can have them in their inventory.

Um so we do work with the municipalities to make sure that they their needs are met first.

I appreciate that.

And then lastly, with regard to priority, is there any type of priority given or maybe even some allowances that are given to make nonprofits that are seeking to purchase commercial properties?

Absolutely.

We work, and if you haven't had an opportunity to read our uh year of economic impact, this shows all of the nonprofits that we've worked with in just in the past year.

So that is a priority of us, absolutely.

So we we have the inventory and we want to implement their vision.

So when they come to us and they speak to us and they say, hey, you know, this is what we have and this is what we're interested in, we make a uh asserted agreed um allowance to make sure that those properties are allocated for them through what's called our land banking agreements.

And so those are the agreements that we have that allow us to work with those nonprofits.

Thank you for that, and I truly appreciate the work that your team has done in the Southland, just coming out doing the informational sessions.

It has really been informative and they all seem to feel like it's helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Basquez.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, so my compliments as well to you, Jessica, and to your team for all of the tremendous work.

I also would like to thank uh Kevin Garvey from your team.

Okay.

Um so we worked with Kevin very recently.

Um unfortunately in my district, there was a property that was purchased from the land bank by an owner who was not abiding by the contractual agreement, um, and there were various issues that we had at that property.

Um after this individual was fined by the city, um, we were able to work with Kevin uh to send letters and basically threaten legal action for not complying with the um the agreements made uh with the land bank.

Um and so Kevin was super helpful, and I just want to thank him so much for his work with us.

Um that did that did I think make me a little curious in terms of enforcement.

Um, and you know, I think by and large, what happened to us is an exception.

Um, but I'm just curious if there is any enforcement post um sale when it comes to developing the properties um that are sold to these uh private owners and developers.

So um, yes, there's a release.

So we add a $20,000 mortgage is nothing we pay or nothing that they have to pay or that we give out, but just to make sure they are are abiding by our rules.

So I'm not familiar with the exact um situation, but we do have parameters in our agreement so that they can go through.

So basically, they have 12 to 18 months to complete the rehabilitation of the property.

And our asset managers, such as Kevin, in order to get the release, they have to go out and they have to see that the property was complete.

They check to make sure that the permits were pulled, so there's nobody you know doing anything that they shouldn't do in order to get that release for the property.

Now, because we have this uh $20,000 um uh title cloud title, they can't just sell the property without you know, or flip it or do anything because we have that, so we would be notified.

So we do have provisions in place and we do get notified if someone tries to, you know, um sell a property without doing what they're supposed to do.

Um and then given the large amount of property that we are acquiring, how many of these um asset managers are there to help, particularly with that enforcement piece?

Yes, so right now we have a team of four asset managers, and as you can see that we have one open position for asset manager right now.

So again, um the asset managers also manage vendors as well, so there's a lot they manage in all all of the properties, but right now we have four.

Thank you.

And then um regarding the new parcels that are acquired, how quickly is the turnaround for listing?

Um so it takes about 60 days, and I'll tell you why.

Um it takes 60 days because sometimes we're not informed immediately when the judge has signed the deed, right?

On the property, so we don't know how we own it.

So then once we get notification that the judge has signed the deed, are then asset management specialists, then begin to assign what's called vendor services to the property.

The vendor services that we have in each area basically go and they assess what needs to be done, whether it's um if it's fly dumping on there and they need to clean up the yard, whether you know the walkthrough that we said for the pathway for developers or any of anybody who wants to purchase the property and that is boarded up, it has a code.

So it takes us a total of about 60 days to really get it on the um marketed on our website.

Okay, thank you.

And uh the other compliment I would give Kevin and is he has notified us when the properties are in the eighth district, uh which I find incredibly helpful.

So another compliment uh to him from our team.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Jessica, let me just join in thanking you and your entire team.

Uh the impact that you've had on individuals' life is unbelievable.

Have a home is the is the best anyone could have.

And of course, uh Commissioner Gaynor, too, that you started this with this concept.

Um back when people really question it, and I salute you and thank you again.

Thank you.

Can I mention one other thing?

Yes.

Um is that Jessica made a comment about most of the other land banks around the country, in fact, all of them are funded by portions when they generate taxes, they get to keep portions of it, either a portion forever or a portion for part of the year for a limited amount of years.

So the money that is received from the county is a portion just this year of the chat taxes that are generated.

So it isn't just a grant.

It's also you know, a single digit portion of what the land bank has generated for the entire county budget.

Oh now I'm down to about 720,000.

That's different.

Anything else?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um, I think uh Commissioner Vasquez already uh addressed it, but given the constraints we're gonna have in 27 and 28 in the the amount of property that we that the land bank owns, and you said the turnaround is 60 days.

Is that from the beginning to the actual sales of it?

No, not the sale.

That's it, that's the time it takes us to get it advertised.

Advertised.

See, it yeah.

So from the time so we it takes us 60 days to get it advertised because we have to clean the property.

We have to uh make sure that it's you know right for people to go into the property and safe.

And so once the conditions are safe and we put what's called dog's doors and a code on the property, and that's how we allow outsiders to get into the property after they filled out our application.

So that's just to market a property.

After to after we market a property, I would say it takes about a full six months to get it sold, maybe three months under contract and maybe three months to close, depending.

Any any brokers involved or that's strictly with the county?

We have brokers involved in the larger commercial properties, everything else goes through us.

So all of our um acquisition specialists are real estate um uh brokers, so they're able to assess the price of the properties that they are listing.

But for the larger properties, we do have what's called a broker's price opinion that is done for the commercial properties so that we can truly assess the value.

And remember the value is reduced by the amount that the uh the property needs improved.

So it's not like a market rate value, it's a very reduced value.

Yeah, because that seems to be a quick uh quick way for revenue for the county.

I mean, is there a way to maybe cut the red tape where we can just get the property and get it out there and have someone to buy it?

I mean, and I I don't understand real estate, I mean the price of real estate, but I know it's time it could take time, but is there a faster way to just get rid of it or sell it?

Um fast so a faster way to get rid of the property once we brought it into inventory?

Yes.

Well, you know, it's very important to make sure that we um as a part of our uh laws and policy is that the property is marketed properly, and so we have an application process and a period.

So the reason I said three months is because once the property is listed, there's a a kind of a two-part process.

We first have what's called an initial application, and that just tells us whether or not the person is able to even apply on our offer application.

Then we have an offer application that basically where they have to present their financials and show their capacity, capacity versus financially and the ability, you know, physically that they've demonstrated the success to or their contractor to do the property.

So once they've done that, we take in all applications on a monthly basis, then they're reviewed the next month.

Um, once they're reviewed the next month, then it goes through the approval process, and then we move into a purchase and sale agreement.

And then what takes a little bit of the time is the title and the water certificate.

So we can never um we don't know how long that's gonna take.

Typically, it's the water certificate that takes a little bit longer, and then once we get that water certificate, we can move to close.

So it's kind of I don't I think that we've did a great job extremelining the process as fast as possible.

Um we're always open to other suggestions, but this is the process that we have, and we think it's pretty streamlined.

What's like the window when you when you when you advertise a property and the window when you have different people, I think they have the bid phrase to see who's the best offer.

What's the timeline with for the bidding process?

Um so we have dates.

So we have a rolling date on the um the website.

So each month is a rolling date, um, if that makes sense.

So there's a date every month, so it's once a month.

Once a month, everyone can apply for a property, and then they'll receive a response within a month, unless they have outstanding items.

So for instance, if they miss something to include in their application, that takes a little bit back and forth.

That's probably the quickest and the best way for revenue for the county, that's why I'm asking is Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, we can we just sell it the quicker the better.

So okay.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

No other questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

All right, thank you all.