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“The windy city has seen shocking numbers nearly every weekend over the past months, also earlier this month over a bloody Labor Day holiday weekend which saw a whopping 51 shot, including 10 deaths.”
City CFO Jennie Huang Bennett told members of the City Council’s Finance Committee Monday that several measures long favored by progressive aldermen would do more to hurt than to help the city’s dire financial condition – the so-called LaSalle Street Tax, a monthly head tax and video gaming, among them.
Joe Shanahan, owner of the Metro, said there’s no end in sight. “We just need an umbrella right now because it’s raining. It’s gonna stop eventually, but how long.”
“It is unbelievably difficult. This struggle is really, really tough,” said bar owner Andrea Kardaras. City liquor sales stop at 11 p.m. Establishments close at midnight. “Something has got to give, and it has to be that timeframe. We need longer hours,” Kardaras said.
“This state has more government units than any other: nearly 7,000 of them, including villages, townships, housing authorities and drainage districts. Every one takes its share of dollars from you, the taxpayers. Many of these taxing bodies operate without much scrutiny and offer services that could be handled by others. Many provide taxpayer-funded pensions.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been steadfast in his administration’s opposition to resuming football and several other fall sports. “I want fall sports, all fall sports, I really do. These are very, very hard choices, and my job, in part, is to weigh in on those choices and listen to the doctors.”
The body won’t have much power to enact reparation plans, but aldermen who support the idea nonetheless view its creation as a big step after decades in which the prospect of reparations gained very little traction in the council.
Terry Duffy, chairman and CEO of the CME Group, explained that the CME is “no longer four walls with a trading floor.” It no longer owns any real estate in Chicago. It leases offices that can be moved out of the city at the flip of a switch. “We’re not talking about an idle threat.”
State Sen. Paul Schimpf, R-Waterloo, said he doesn’t think the testing data has been complete in Region 4 because it doesn’t include the negative results from Illinois residents who use a hospital system in the St. Louis area. He said the mitigations keeping bars and restaurants from allowing dine-in service is “destroying livelihoods.”
Macoupin County Farm Bureau Executive Director Mark Dugger said farmers have been hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they implement best practices handed down from generations before them. “(T)hese guys would rather have free trade and a free market than a government check.”
“Lightfoot made a rash, unnecessary decision that was obviously unaffordable, and she soon decided she had to reverse it. But she refused to share that information with her unsuspecting constituents.Thousands of Chicagoans have lost money as a result. They have gained some wisdom about the honesty of politicians.”
Pritzker said looking to colleges or the NFL isn’t a fair comparison because they are doing more testing, cleaning and quarantining. “I mean it’s a lot different in high schools across the state in Illinois. High schools can’t afford to do that kind of thing.”
One parent said the last few months have been very tough on her family, with unclear communication on a final decision from the school district. “I just think kids need a plan. They like to know what they’re doing and have a plan.”
In a written statement, a city spokeswoman said, “(The Mayor) made explicitly clear that ticketing is continuing during the pandemic and reiterated there would be an emphasis on public safety reasons. To make it even more clear to reporters, the Mayor again explicitly stated that this does not mean that there is ‘free parking all over the city.’ On top of that, the Mayor stated that residents will continue to have to feed the meter during this time.”
“I deeply regret the comments I made about Ken Mejia-Beal and reached out to apologize to him this morning. These comments do not reflect my heart or my faith,” Republican state Rep. Amy Grant wrote on Facebook.
“Access to government offices, hospitals and hotels cannot be impeded by illegal parking, including metered spaces,” states the letter signed by Jennie Huang Bennett, the city’s chief financial officer. “Police, fire and other first responders performing essential public safety functions cannot be hampered in their duties due to any type of illegal parking in these zones.” In effect, City Hall was suggesting that a vehicle parked at a paid meter was safer than a car parked at an unpaid one.
“In terms of the politics of this, I believe strongly that the Republicans should listen to their own words,” he said. “They’re the ones who dictated back in 2016 that Merrick Garland should not be considered by the Senate until after the election, until we knew who won the election. These very same senators now seem to be hypocrites changing their position.”
“I know it wasn’t easy to implement all the health protocols,” Pritzker said. But he pointed out those centers are critical for working families and are a potential bottleneck in the effort to get parents back to work, and that it was up to government to fund the upgrades rather than force already-struggling working families to pay more tuition to cover them.
“I see my kids and I know that we can do better by them,” said CPS Spanish teacher Lori Torres. “I’m watching kids have struggles to stay focused, one. Two, to stay awake.”
Among them, temporary outdoor structures that hold multiple parties must have at least 50% of the sides open to allow air flow, and enclosed structures, such as plastic domes, may be used for individual parties and must have adequate ventilation to allow for air circulation.
“High levels of inequality distort free markets, reduce investment, impede entrepreneurs and slow overall economic growth.”
Federal prosecutors have charged Czernek with fraud and receiving more than $280,000 in kickbacks related to phony invoices for dump and storm sewer projects. He is one of three people charged, all of whom pleaded not guilty Friday.
In this summer of COVID-19, a good day at the restaurant means making just 30% of pre-pandemic sales. Even a drizzle can be the difference between breaking even and losing money. “Remember that last year on Halloween Day it snowed,” owner Michael Roper said. “Some places are of course saying, ‘Let’s put heaters out.’ But once it’s windy and sleet and ice and snow and really really cold weather, those heaters are useless.”
Ashley Galvan Ramos, a constituent services liaison in Ald. Daniel La Spata’s office, tweeted July 18: “The aggression and brutality on YOUTH last night was a direct attack on YOUTH. Lori Lightfoot and her wife wanted to create a networking group for YOUTH to ‘stay off the streets’ but can’t even call her pigs out? She can’t even see wtf she’s doing wrong.”
About half of Chicago households surveyed for a recent poll done by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said the impact of COVID-19 has left them facing serious financial problems, with Black and Latino families particularly hard-hit.
For the new study, the international assessors’ group looked at 1,643 business property sales throughout Cook County in 2018. It found that in the county as a whole, properties were assessed at a median of 61% of their actual sales price, far from the group’s acceptable range of 90% to 110%.
Mack Julion, president of the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers, advised workers to stop delivering in areas where they feel unsafe. “We are not going to have another situation where the letter carrier is shot down.”
Monday marks six months since Illinois’ stay-at-home order went into effect in response to COVID-19; The state says that since March its distributed nearly $16 billion. But one mother of young children, waiting since March to receive benefits, says, “The only thing that was told to me was that they were as confused as I was and that it will be given over to a different department for them to contact me.”
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