An american city named DeKalb, Illinois says it desperately needs money. But the city council so far refuses to tax gas stations or increase parking fees. Instead, they consider a tax on groceries.

Is local democracy functional in that city? Or is it one of those places where incumbents have made themselves impossible to remove?

Make those poors pay for Frank Freeway's car commute!

Since so many in the comments didn't seem to read, the tl:dr is:

1. There is currently a statewide sales tax in Illinois on groceries of 1% with some items (alcohol, candy etc.) exempt and taxed at the higher state sales tax rate
2. The state is set to end this tax on 1/1/2026 but local municipalities can continue it
3. Dekalb expects that loss of tax revenue to be impactful and is considering it at the local level

There are likely other ways they could make up the revenue but if they wouldn't be implementing a new tax, just keeping the existing one going at a local level.

I'm not familiar with Dekalb but I went to college in a college town where the population doubled during the academic year. There were taxes and fees of higher rates designed to impact the student residents more than locals to make up for the loss of residents during the off time.

Forget sprawl, groceries are driving the infrastructure costs. Eat less, then we need to build less? /s

Groceries, such an old fashioned word. They are saying these days though, these groceries.

DeKalb is really shitty (sorry, that was out-of-pocket, I take it back)

I mean healthy foods are exempt from sales tax.

So it must be implicit that they'll only tax unnecessary/unhealthy groceries like alcohol, tobacco, candy, eggs, and meat. I dont see a problem with this. We should be taxing these things anyway. But I wish the funds would be used directly to lower the cost of healthy foods like rice, beans, vegetables, fruits, flour, oats, etc