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The district announced the relaxing of its mandate Wednesday after Mayor Lori Lightfoot took the same step in allowing unvaccinated city workers to test weekly, at least through December. About 15% of Chicago school district employees remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus.
The hearing, by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, is titled, “Waiting on the Mail: Postal Service Standard Drops in Chicago and the Surrounding Area.” Rep. Mike Quigley, a member of the committee, “has heard from over 1,000 of his constituents who have been receiving mail only a few times per week, with some going a week or more without any mail delivery at all.”
“We want to be clear that this isn’t about mandates. For us, this is about public safety. We are both fully vaccinated,” Ald. Matt O’Shea and Ald. Marty Quinn wrote. “Our main concern now is about losing police officers as we face a dwindling police force and rising incidents of crime and violence.”
Witnesses reported hearing up to 28 shots fired outside McDade Classical Elementary School early Wednesday morning. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The incident came one day after a Phillips Academy High School shooting in Bronzeville critically wounded a 14-year-old girl and injured a security guard.
“The lack of appetite to defund law enforcement in Chicago was recently made clear by a survey of residents conducted by the Harris Poll and the MacArthur Foundation…According to the survey, 65% feared that defunding police would lead to a rise in crime in their neighborhoods, and 62% said defunding would not help rebuild ties between police and the communities they serve.”
While prices continue to increase in Illinois, sales have slowed a bit, with a lack of inventory once again being a contributing factor. Statewide home sales in August 2021, including single-family homes and condominiums, totaled 18,492 homes sold, down 2.4% from August 2020.
If passed by voters in November 2022, an amendment to the Illinois Constitution would allow collective bargaining agreements to override state law forever. That gives more power to union bosses than to state lawmakers – and voters.
“We have to put a huge amount of faith and trust in CPS transportation just to put our kids on a school bus with an aide and a driver, and then to say, ‘You should just put them in a random Uber and we will reimburse you — it’s just ridiculous,” said Laurie Viets, a mother of three children with autism.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker was asked earlier this month if he plans to follow California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead in mandating the vaccine for school children in Illinois. “That’s not something that we’re looking at doing,” Pritzker said, but his office didn’t respond when asked why the governor is not looking at mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for school children.
The share of empty office space in the central business district at the end of the third quarter was 20%, up from 19.4% midway through the year, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE. The jump marked the fourth consecutive quarter that vacancy rose to the highest mark CBRE has tracked.
Jim Dey: “Between testimony offered by those present and proposed (Congressional) maps submitted by others invited to participate, the gathering showcased what’s best about self-government. Except, of course, it was nothing like that at all. The gathering gave new meaning to the word ‘sham.’ The hearing lasted all of 24 minutes, a time lapse that raises a fascinating question — why so long?”
The inspector general’s report on the VA Illiana Health Care System in Danville is the first to publicly detail extensive breakdowns at a facility operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The agency runs a system of 134 nursing homes that serve roughly 9,000 veterans a day across 46 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
The ad-hoc organization Illinois African Americans for Equitable Redistricting is seeking a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the new Illinois House and Senate maps, signed into law Sept. 24. The letter to the DOJ says “ironically, these conditions are present at a time when Black leaders occupy some of the most influential offices in the State of Illinois… The Illinois Legislative Black Caucus boasts of its largest and arguably, most powerful, contingent in the State’s history.”
In a response to the audit, City Council committee chairs said they disagreed with the watchdog that using committee staff to perform ward work violated state law, and had obtained a legal opinion backing up their assertion. “All the spending here is within one purpose — personnel — and is therefore permissible,” according to the chairs’ response to Ferguson.
“There are people who are irresponsible, extraordinarily irresponsible, who are going around the state suing because they basically want to make schools less safe,” Gov. Pritzker said. “That’s not right.”
Connecticut, California and Puerto Rico remain the only locations not on the city’s advisory. Officials noted last week that the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Louisiana were close to coming off the list, however.
“You will report to work for your Friday tour of duty and be sent home for not being in the portal. That’s the plan going forward,” the FOP president said in a video to union members. In the same video, John Catanzara said this could reduce the city’s police presence by half over the weekend.
Illinois continues to have the highest wireless taxes in the country, at 34.56 percent, followed by Arkansas (32.04 percent), Washington (31.81 percent), Nebraska (31.36 percent), and New York (30.73 percent).
“Chicago politicians have long been scared of their own shadows…Nowhere else has the ‘social justice’ policy agenda been so recklessly pursued as in Chicago. The current governance of the city and of Cook County, which controls local courts, is a crime against the citizenry.”
This is about something that intrinsically bothers some of us but not others – about conformity and following orders. And it’s personal.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski joins Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on Chicago’s. Morning Answer. They discussed rising crime in Chicago, onerous mask mandates and COVID mitigations.
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