In a last-minute bid to derail a project that finally appears to have a lot of momentum, opponents of the proposed Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park have released some flashy schematics of how a reimagined center might instead be built elsewhere on the South Side.

Civic Federation President Laurence Msall has significant concerns about the city’s plan to bankroll the new police contract. “It’s good news that this sword-of-Damocles threat of not having a police contract for so many years has been resolved. The expensive news is that it’s gonna be — not just the $365 million in retroactive pay that has to be accounted for. There’s another $300 million in annual increased cost to the city. So they’re gonna have to find ways to either make cuts or identify new revenues to pay for that going forward.”

Lake Zurich parent Peter Demos wants to continue to be able to choose whether his kids have to mask up. “I think if we saw higher mortality rates. If that started to turn, then I would say yeah, maybe turn and start redacting on the mask mandates.”

With the addition of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming, the advisory now includes 14 states and one territory.

“Just when you thought they couldn’t get any more incompetent, there comes up something else,” said CPS parent William Quinlan.

Harvey, Illinois, hired Loop Capital Markets LLC as it pursues a debt restructuring that’s the cornerstone of a consent agreement with a group of its 2007 bondholders who had sued to intercept city revenue in order to resolve defaults.

The nation’s single family home prices rose 16.6% over the previous 12 month period. That’s an all time record for the country. The Case Shiller Chicago area index rose by 11.1%, which is the 103rd consecutive month of gains and slightly more than a 7 year record but, nevertheless, we still remain in last place.

Driven up by the loss of nearly half a million square feet of tenants, the office vacancy rate in the Chicago suburbs rose to 26.1 percent as of the end of June, according to data from real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. That’s the highest mark JLL has tracked in its two decades of data and up from 25.5 percent at the end of the first quarter, which itself marked a record high.

To make schools safer, educators say they don’t want funding for police in schools. Instead, they want more nurses, counselors, librarians, books, housing support, teacher assistants, restorative justice coordinators, and other staff and programs that support student health in a holistic way. “If we don’t address those needs that go beyond the classroom, classrooms are going to remain empty,” one high school teacher said. “[Bringing students back to school] goes beyond hand sanitizer.”

“The problems aren’t new but they’re persistent impediments, beginning with the proposed tax of 40%. That’s better than the absurd 72% rate first proposed by the city, but it’s still an onerous burden for any company looking for a return on an investment likely to exceed $2 billion, especially given that the city’s request for proposals requires a hotel, meeting rooms, shops, restaurant spaces and, this being Chicago, a variety of obligations to use various local beneficiaries as subcontractors and sub-operators.”

“We’re seeing a correlation between property, vacant land, residences and commercial property that have been lingering on a tax sale list that no one wants,” Pappas explained. “We’re seeing 50% of the violent crime in the city, in those areas. They’re saying, ‘I’m not going to stay someplace where there’s a potential for gunshots.'” The areas with the most “scavenger properties” are also home to mostly Black and Latinx residents.

Residents are no longer required to have elevated levels of lead in their drinking water, if there are kids under 18 living in the home, to qualify for a completely free line replacement.

Foxx’s decision in the case came over the objections of police officers, and despite public assertions from Sussman and others within Foxx’s office that prosecutors still believed the evidence showed Reyes and Solache were guilty of the murders.