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The board voted unanimously in passing the spending plan, but members urged further fine-tuning in future years to address communities’ concerns while remaining fiscally responsible as the district faces a financial cliff in three years’ time.
The 1% grocery tax applies to “food for human consumption that is to be consumed off the premises where it is sold,” except for “alcoholic beverages, food consisting of or infused with adult use cannabis, soft drinks, or candy, and food that has been prepared for immediate consumption.”
State Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, is now calling on the Illinois Auditor General to audit the Chicago Public School system to find out where the extra funds were spent. “What we need to know is, was Chicago not honest about the money, we would expect anyone who received money that’s not theirs to know that they were given more and return it.”
Doug Brown, an engineer with Springfield’s city-owned City Water Light and Power, continues to warn of the potential of power supply issues. “This isn’t something that’s going away next year. It’s going to be around for maybe five, seven years. We don’t know.” He confirmed that Illinois state government operations won’t be part of the rolling blackouts.
President Biden Wednesday called for the suspension of the federal gas tax for 90 days, something that could save drivers a little more than 18 cents a gallon. He urged states to follow suit. “Already, some states have acted. In Connecticut and New York, the governors have temporarily suspended their gas tax as well. In Illinois and Colorado, governors delayed theirs to give families a bit more breathing room as well.”
In February, IHSA board members voted to change its playoff seeding system for most football classes, approving a 1-to-32 seeding proposal for Class 1A through Class 6A. Now, however, the board has reversed course, voting to return to a system under which teams in classes 1-A through 6-A are split into north and south divisions and then seeded. High gas prices drove the decision.
Former state Sen. Thomas Cullerton, 52, plead guilty in March to accepting nearly $250,000 for a fraudulent job entailing little to no work for Teamsters Local 734. He was also a sponsor of the bill asking voters Nov. 8 to put union power guarantees in the Illinois Constitution.
Caterpillar follows Topgolf Entertainment Group, OpTic Gaming, Boeing Global Services, Addus HomeCare and thousands of residents from Chicagoland to North Texas. So what’s the biggest economic difference between the third- and fourth-most populous metros in the country?
If the courts ultimately rule in favor of the state, the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association will provide member gas stations with signs to post. The proposed sign reminds motorists that “Illinois politicians have more than doubled the gas tax since 2019.” It also states lawmakers “have decided to delay their tax hike until after the election.”
In testimony scheduled to be delivered this morning, the federation said that it opposes a budget that, overall, calls for a $310.8 million – or 9.2% – increase in the district’s property tax levy. An increase of that magnitude is “tone-deaf,” said federation President Laurence Msall in a phone interview. “To ask for this much just because you can isn’t right.” With the federation’s backing, “every level of government, from federal to state to local taxpayers, helped CPS with extra aid during the pandemic,” Msall added. “We can’t back this.”
“I’d like to be recorded as thoroughly embarrassed and ask our colleagues to cease and desist so we can continue proceedings,” Ald. Andre Vasquez said.
“The Civic Federation opposes the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) proposed budget of $9.5 billion for FY2023 because the District has not provided sufficient justification for raising its property tax to the maximum amount of 5% allowed under the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL) by $140 million at a time when taxpayers already face serious economic strains and when CPS has alternative options available.”
Perhaps most significantly, the new policy makes clear that the days of officers giving chase just because someone tries to get away from them are over. “People may avoid contact with a member for many reasons other than involvement in criminal activity,” the policy states.
IDPH staff was on-site to respond to this outbreak hours after the tests came back positive. Hartigan explained last week that the department provided IDVA staff with full protection, testing, and additional care for those testing positive and any close contacts.
See Wirepoints’ rebuttal to this linked here.
Rolling blackouts, in 15-minute increments, are a last-ditch effort to prevent much wider and longer-lasting outages. CWLP says the chance of those rolling blackouts will likely be greatest in July… and warns the problem is only expected to get worse next summer.
“While Lightfoot’s vision obviously involves change, her statement should provoke several consequential questions: What is Chicago changing into? What exactly has the mayor been delivering? Where has Chicago gone on her watch? …Thus far, the defining themes of Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign appear to be a distillation of ‘fairness,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘systemic inequality.'”
“To hear Pritzker deny it and the press dismiss his denials, the Chicago multibillionaire thinks he’d fit in well behind the desk in the Oval Office. And to read media accounts of Pritzker’s speechifying before audiences of partisan Democrats, he killed.”
The so-called “Peacebook” ordinance calls for diverting 2% of the Chicago Police Department’s $1.7 billion budget — $34 million — to fund job training and violence prevention programs led by young people in Chicago neighborhoods plagued by gang violence.
As CPS officials ask the Board of Education to approve their $70 million share of the project on top of $50 million from the state, they have yet to make a case — beyond the clamoring from the area for a school — for whether Chinatown, the South Loop and Bridgeport’s needs justify spending so much of the school system’s resources on a new building amid plummeting enrollment citywide.
Nelly Martinez said her son attended an overcrowded high school on the Southeast Side, where the moldy water fountains wouldn’t work. Almost 10 years later, her daughter is facing similar issues in the same school: unbearable heat, undrinkable water, leaking ceilings, poor air quality and exposure to asbestos. And just last Tuesday after a severe thunderstorm, a beam in the high school’s dropped ceiling fell down, injuring a security guard and exposing live wires, according to the school’s teachers. A video of the collapse was shared on social media. A ceiling collapsed in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus
Lawmakers at a McLean County Chamber of Commerce briefing Tuesday at Illinois State University said they expect utility rates will be the big thing during the fall veto session of the General Assembly.
The name copi is a nod to how “copious” the fish are, officials said in a statement, copious being a generous description of the way the invasive fish have overrun Midwestern waterways. The trick has been to get people in the U.S. to try Asian carp, fish that are eaten in other parts of the world but not so much stateside.
It’s a disturbing trend reported in other cities, now seen here: Brazen thieves caught on camera crawling under a truck and draining fuel from the gas tank. It’s just another sign of what people will do when gas prices soar above $5.00 a gallon.
Political winds are likewise blowing strongly in favor of school choice.
Ted was on with Dan and Amy to talk about Gov. Pritzker’s New Hampshire speech where Pritzker unabashedly laid out his extreme progressive worldview. They also discussed Illinois’ $1.9 B in unemployment insurance fraud and the future of School Choice under Iowa Governor Kim Reynold’s efforts.
“This Court finds that minority representation in each promotional rank of the city of Chicago Fire Department has increased substantially since entry of the Albrecht Decree,” Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer wrote in a short ruling. “The Court also finds that city of Chicago has made good-faith efforts to comply with the decree, and dissolution of the decree will not limit or hamper future challenges to alleged employment discrimination in the CFD.”
Officers reported that fights broke out at the beach before and after the shooting. Police moved people off the lakefront after the shooting, and more fights erupted as the crowd made its way inland.
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