The decline in arrests comes after sweeping changes were made to how the Chicago P.D. patrols the streets, including restricting their vehicle pursuit policy, ending foot pursuits if a suspect runs from an officer or if someone commits a minor offense. One police officer said that some officers hesitate interacting with “criminals with guns” due to prosecutors having a tighter grip on approving felony charges against criminals.

The Democratic 2024 convention site team will reportedly be visiting Chicago next week. Chicago is one of four cities competing for the presidential convention.

The NASCAR Cup Series will take place Sunday July 2, 2023. It will be the first race of it’s kind in the city and run for the next three years.

“I’ve been given no briefing material, no background information. She’s been doing this unilaterally,” Ald. Brian Hopkins said. Critics of the race have also pointed out the irony of its announcement coming during negotiations over stronger penalties for illegal street racing and Lightfoot’s battle with the City Council to keep in place stricter parameters for speed camera violations.

When asked about the cost to taxpayers for the event, Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed it was still “too early to tell” and said other events such as Lollapalooza generate around $300 million in revenue each year.

Chicago speed cameras have issued 3.8 million tickets since Mayor Lori Lightfoot last March started issuing $35 tickets for speeding 6-10 mph over the limit. That is like sending out 1.4 tickets to each resident, regardless of whether they can drive, in the nation’s third-largest city.

Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, is happy that leisure travel is recovering, but says hotels are still waiting for business travelers to return. “That hurts a market like Chicago more than a beach or mountain resort destination that is less reliant on business travelers.”

In the Central Loop, which includes State Street, the vacancy rate fell to 23.1 percent at the end of 2021, from 26.1 percent six months earlier, brokerage Stone Real Estate found. Vacancies in the Loop hit a record 27.4 percent this year.

“Kim Foxx can only be defeated when she is no longer protected. It is actually chilling to imagine how bad the conditions on the streets will have to become before the Democratic Party elites desert her. Essentially, they would have to feel as if their own jobs were threatened.”

If Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration doesn’t agree to changing its planning and zoning processes, City Hall could lose hundreds of millions in federal housing money.

Patrick Blanchard, head of the Office of the Independent Inspector General “…did not set out to track down PPP fraud, which was not his remit, being a federal program. Actually, he was looking into whether or not the Cook County employees were complying with the rules involving dual employment…So if an inspector general from local government not specifically looking for PPP fraud found it staring him in the face, it suggests that whatever thievery was happening right here in Cook County is merely the tip of the iceberg.”

Paycheck Protection Program loans “did not get here for a number of reasons. A lot of these small businesses were left out,” executive director Kim Close said. “What’s the value of talking to 250 businesses on the Road To Recovery? We know what their needs are, we did an assessment on all of them, we know what their pain points are.”

CPS has said a new school would serve the South Loop, Chinatown and Bridgeport communities, with the Asian American population in the area particularly hopeful for a school that would address families’ language and immigration needs. Officials and advocates predict the school to enroll about 40% Asian American children, 30% Black students and 30% white kids.

The nation’s third-largest public school system with 290,000 students in 513 district-operated, non-charter schools, CPS is hovering around 90 schools with full-time librarians, staffing and budget records show. That leaves more than 400 without one — including about 82% of elementary schools.

Many of the barriers erected by elected officials and civic leaders beginning in the 1930s to keep Black Chicagoans, Latino Chicagoans and White Chicagoans from living, working and playing in the same neighborhoods remain unchanged nearly a century later, thwarting efforts to prevent abandoned properties from turning into eyesores that blight neighborhoods, according to “Maps of Inequality: From Redlining to Urban Decay and the Black Exodus,” a study Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office released Tuesday.

“It makes no sense for us to increase the speed around the parks and schools when we know what the horrific consequences are for pedestrians and for other drivers,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Chicago reported more traffic deaths in the first six months of 2022 than in any year since 2017, despite speed cameras issuing over 1 million tickets – as many tickets as Chicago has households. Two-thirds of the fines were for speeding 6-10 mph.