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“This is not just simply a strategy around policing, you have a collaboration of people to insure that there is activity in Chicago,” he said. The plan is centered around a series of activities and programs for young people funded by $3.5 million from businesses and corporations.
Many disabled veterans in the state are exempt from paying property taxes, which has been received with lukewarm results. “What this does is include veterans of World War II, regardless of level of disability,” state Rep. Stephanie Kifowit said. “These veterans would receive a 100% reduction of their property assessed value.” According to the National World War II Museum, there are just over 6,000 World War II veterans living in Illinois.
During a committee hearing on the budget, state Sen. Chapin Rose asked how a looming union contract with state workers will impact the budget. “This is going to hit us eventually, right, presumably in ‘24. So is it the … departments, plural, are gonna have to live within the means of this budget or are we anticipating another supplemental down the road whenever the contract is released?”
Rep. Patrick Windhorst noted that Attorney General Kwame Raoul has been asking lawmakers for additional authority to take on cases in other areas of law throughout the spring session. “This is the same attorney general’s office that has requested from this body additional authority to investigate and bring actions against crisis pregnancy centers this session, to bring actions against and investigate gun manufacturers this session. It doesn’t seem that the Attorney General’s Office is lacking resources when they’re constantly coming to this body requesting more authority to do things.”
The average price of gas in Illinois is $3.98 – 41 cents higher than the national average of $3.57 as of May 25.
Property tax appeals are a big deal in Cook County. Nationwide only about 5% of homeowners appeal their property taxes, but in Cook County that number jumps to 30%, per the Board of Review.
“You can be compassionate, but you can’t be foolish,” one resident said.
Census estimates indicate that more than 300,000 people live in areas where average summer surface temperatures are hotter than 90% of the rest of Chicago, or an estimated 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the city average. Latino residents disproportionately shoulder the burden of Chicago’s heat disparities, the data show, while white residents disproportionately benefit from living in areas with the coolest average temperatures.
“The staggeringly low valuations of the properties show the poor outlook for suburban office buildings that need major investments to compete for tenants. Remote work’s assault on office demand has created a historic amount of vacancy, decimating property values and pushing many landlords to the financial brink.”
An analysis by the website doxoINSIGHTS found that the average Illinois household spends $2,121 a month on the 10 most common household bills, including a mortgage, auto loan, and utilities. Illinois is the 17th most expensive state for household expenses and accounts for 35% of the annual household income.
State Sen. Jason Plummer characterized such investment strategies as trendy and not good for taxpayers or pensioners. “The data shows that long term, companies that focus on these policies and investment managers that put these policies ahead of traditional investment philosophies generate a lower return over the medium and long term for their investors.”
Republican Deputy Senate Leader Sue Rezin said despite questions about migrants and health benefits, the issue at hand is getting a balanced budget. She said there are other line items that need funding, including dollars towards universities. “Coming out of the pandemic, we owe the developmentally disabled a half a billion dollars from Medicaid payments that have not been paid at a timely manner.”
The company’s binge helped Chicago’s industrial sector thrive, especially compared to other factions of the commercial market, as warehouse vacancies fell to an all-time low to start the year. Plus, a handful of developers are redeveloping old business parks for industrial use, like Dermody’s $232 million redevelopment of the former All-State campus in Glenview. However, the city’s industrial boom is starting to slow down a little bit, according to Craig Van Pelt, Cresa’s head of research.
As of May 3 of this year, for the 2021 tax year — which was billed in 2022 — owners of 73,733 properties in Cook County were behind on their taxes, a number that will drop as people make payments before the next sale season in February 2024, according to the treasurer’s office. Right after bills were due Dec. 30, more than 180,000 people were behind on their payments. The treasurer’s office says the “vast majority” of late fees are leveled at low-income, Black and Latino homeowners and reducing the interest rates will save residents a total of $25 million
Recommendations in a new report by the Illinois Immigrant Impact Task Force, a group created by the General Assembly in 2021 to help immigrant communities, include recruiting and hiring more bilingual staff in state agencies, and continuing to require state employees complete anti-immigrant bias training.
In February, the governor proposed adding $100 million for early childhood education capital investment, but the document released by his office indicates that number has decreased to $50 million. The Monetary Award Program, which provides funding for students from low-income families to get into colleges, could receive an increase of $100 million – what Gov. JB Pritzker asked for in February. The program’s overall budget would be $701 million.
The City of Chicago filed suit against Westforth Sports, located in Gary, Ind., in April 2021, alleging the shop repeatedly violated federal gun laws, often resulting in criminal charges against straw purchasers. Attorneys for Westforth Sports argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the city’s allegations concerned transactions between Westforth and residents of Indiana.
In a 2020 statement on faculty, free expression and diversity, he wrote that the U. of C. “does not limit the comments of faculty members, mandate apologies or impose other disciplinary consequences for such comments, unless there has been a violation of university policy or the law.”
The near-$1 million price tag would be the largest service area patrolled by P4 in the city, according to the company. Fulton Market and the West Loop, which are in the 12th Police District, have experienced an increase in crime year over year, including carjackings, robbery and theft, according to police district data.
Graphic Packaging International produces sustainable cups, lids, to-go containers and more, all from renewable materials. A spokesman said they will employ more than 1,000 people in the next few years.
Over the next five years, JPMorgan Chase is planning to triple the number of advisers in its Chicago private bank catering to wealthy families and individuals. “We don’t see anything to make us believe that trajectory is going to slow,” one of their bankers said.
The report states that the Neighborhood Policing Initiative officers reported spending as much as 80% of their time filling in for beat officers on patrol, often far from the small sectors of the city that are their assigned neighborhood policing areas.
The CPD Vehicular Hijacking Task Force touted its 27.4% reduction in carjackings to date.
Jim Dey: “It would be unfair to conclude, based on these two extreme examples, that all state spending is haphazard, that so much money is moving in and out that few pay attention to where it’s going. Yet these grotesque displays of lack of oversight and irresponsible legislating actually happened, and they involve real money.”
“Reparations and sanctuary cities have long been the bread and butter of identity politics. For years, Democratic politicians have campaigned on these ‘moral imperatives’ in passing sanctuary laws and setting up reparation task forces. It is the equivalent of a compounding interest on credit card debt. Each election Democrats used these issues for short-term political gains. Now those bills are coming due and Democratic leaders are balking.”
The new mayor’s allies lay out their agenda: ‘First We Get the Money.’ The mayor’s pals say a “city budget is a moral document.” Readers can decide what kind of morality lets criminal gangs run wild while shrinking the police force and chasing taxpayers out of the city.
K-12 students who attended the closed schools and took the SAT averaged under 800 points of a maximum possible 1600 — in the 14th percentile nationally and about the same as kids from the comparison schools, the analysis shows. Of the children who could have graduated by the spring of 2022, only 62% did so from an Illinois public school — slightly under the number for students in the comparison schools and lower than for kids citywide.
Left on the cutting room floor was the Invest in Kids program, Illinois’ closest thing to school choice. State Rep. Brad Halbrook said there appeared to be bipartisan support for the program, and that was evident when a letter supporting the program was distributed. “Several of us put out a letter last week, it was all Republican signatories on it,” Halbrook said. “Some of the Democrats were approached about it, they spoke favorably, but they didn’t want to sign.”
The plan would be an amplified version of temporary shelters that Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez has set up in Pilsen and which he said is already an improvement on the “dire situation” of asylum-seekers and unhoused people staying in “inhumane conditions in police districts, in airports, in viaducts.” Based on the cost to run the Pilsen facilities, a facility housing 200 to 250 people was expected to cost around $875,000 annually.
The Illinois state legislature approved a plan last week to spend $20 million dollars to help small local grocery stores stay open and to help new co-ops or municipal governments open up grocery stores in food deserts. It would run a lot like a public utility, according to Deputy Gov. Andy Manar, who said Illinois hopes to emulate a plan in rural Kansas. He described it as “the public option for grocery.”
State Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, State Rep. Lakesia Collins, State Rep. Nabeela Syed and State Sen. Celina Villanueva: “Our state ranks 49th in the country for funding and support of the estimated 300,000 Illinoisans with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families, who deserve an opportunity to live safe, full and meaningful lives. Forty-ninth out of 50 states — that is unconscionable.”
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