The figures Lightfoot’s office isn’t releasing despite six days of requests to do so deal with how much more taxpayers in the future will have to pay to in exchange for booking $501 million in anticipated savings in 2021—nearly half the $1.2 billion budget hole Lightfoot had to fill—plus $400 million for this year.

“What matters right now is that every alderman who dreads taking a vote on higher property taxes, which is to say every alderman, step up and propose realistic alternatives…That $1.2 billion budget gap won’t magically close itself.”

“The science on COVID is evolving really quickly,” Board member Sendhil Revuluri said. “The science on kids’ learning and development has been around for decades.”

Lightfoot said she and Pritzker had a “very frank and productive” hour-long meeting Wednesday and “came out of that discussion really committed to making sure that we work hard together.”

“We respect the governor’s desire to address increases in the city’s positivity rate and in hospital admissions for people with COVID-19 symptoms. We, too, are alarmed by this surge. But we also know the Chicago public is gathering unchecked in private and socializing indoors and outside with abandon. We caution that Pritzker’s action to close our restaurants will only drive people to do more of this.”

Inflatable Scabby the Rat is a commonly used by Illinois unions protesting at construction sites for various reasons. The National Labor Relations Board general counsel called for a complaint against a Chicago-area union for using Scabby. The union in that case wasn’t protesting the construction company itself, but an electrical contractor who allegedly wasn’t paying standard wages and benefits for the area.

“The online learning is incredible,’ said Angelica DeLeon, who is a student at Vaughn Occupational High School on the Northwest Side. Angelica, who has autism, especially likes the virtual field trips and the online cooking classes. “She has a routine set up,” said her mother, adding that she has two more kids in regular CPS schools where remote learning is completely different. “Angelica’s seems to be more interactive.”

“The governor has yet to show any data that supports shutting down restaurants or targeting the businesses that he has. As I have said many times, adults can make their own informed decisions and businesses must operate in a way that makes their customers comfortable and safe. I will continue to support the decisions of our business owners,” Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau said.

“For years, we’ve had kids and people design our city stickers. Would it be feasible or even possible by contract to offer that to major corporations? Some of these corporations pay millions and millions of dollars to put their names on a stadium for a five-to-ten-year contract,” Northwest Side Ald. Anthony Napolitano said.

By Saturday, eight of Illinois’ 11 regions will be operating under the state’s resurgence mitigation framework.

“Those numbers are inexcusable and they need to be corrected,” City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin said, responding to a report that found large racial disparities in where banks lend money. But, she continued, it will be difficult to exclude a bank as large as Chase that is “embedded within the city of Chicago’s municipal depository system.” “You’re saying we’re between a rock and a hard place. They can slap us and we still have to pay them to slap us,” said Ald. David Moore (17th).

“Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t make exceptions, and it would be ill-advised to make exceptions to the rules we put in place as the best mitigations to stop the spread,” a spokeswoman for the governor said in a statement. “As the CDC has noted, bars and restaurants are major places of transmission risk. We’ll continue to provide support to businesses that are hard hit through our $630 million in grants.”

“If the governor’s order goes into effect, it’s shutting down a significant portion of our economy at a time when those same businesses are hanging on by a thread,” Lightfoot said during an interview Tuesday evening on the “PBS NewsHour.” But she acknowledged that it was “not looking good” for her effort to convince Pritzker to reverse his order, set to take effect Friday.

At Northside Learning Center, Jeannie Liu’s 16-year-old son is struggling to learn through a screen. She felt the district should have stuck with its hybrid plan this fall, and that CPS took the choice away from parents. Engagement with families has been lacking, she said. “You get a Google survey in your inbox … and you don’t hear what happens to it. You get the survey and then a decision gets made….It’s just so heartbreaking as his mom, I can’t provide anything comforting other than, ‘I know how you feel.’ I can’t say when it will be normal again.”

In comparison, trends in suburban offices are less severe and leasing interest is picking up, brokers said. Some analysts expect the suburbs will emerge as a lower-rent alternative for companies eager to spread out their workforce post-pandemic.