How UIC has cost Cook County taxpayers $1.2 million

Over the past decade, the University of Illinois Chicago has leased storefronts in its University Village Maxwell Street to a private preschool.

Under Illinois law, the university is supposed to tell the Cook County assessor's office about any new tenants. That's to help ensure that tenants, like the University Village Montessori School, that lease and operate on government property get billed every year for property taxes — money that, in Chicago, largely goes to the Chicago Public Schools and city government.

But UIC officials repeatedly have failed to obey that law. So the preschool hasn't been billed for hundreds of thousands in leasehold property taxes, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

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How UIC has cost Cook County taxpayers $1.2 million

The university never told county officials it was leasing to a preschool — which could be on the hook for over $800,000 in property taxes. So the bills went to a past tenant — which refused to pay the county over $400,000 in taxes but was allowed to renew its lease.

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