“Mainstream media outlets in the Windy City have lost their ability to control public opinion, and they are not happy about it.”

Choose Chicago said nearly 48.9 million domestic and overseas visitors hit the town in 2022, an amount 60% higher than in 2021. The total is about 80% of the nearly 61 million visitors the agency tabulated for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. It also said Chicago visitors spent nearly $17 billion in 2022, 89% of the level in 2019.

Broadway Armory Park is one of Chicago Park District’s largest indoor and active recreational facilities; During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Broadway Armory Park was used as an emergency homeless shelter. Neighbors worry that this would mean youth and senior programs getting canceled or postponed and would be a loss for the neighborhood ahead of summer.

The Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association has a partnership with the state to offer temporary lodging in hotels for thousands of migrants until they can get on their feet. According to the association, many of these individuals are staying in hotels that are understaffed and urgently require various positions to be filled.

“You spend a lot of time on dinners, stale tactics, showboating, canceling meetings and time with the media, instead of what’s really important, which is getting this $25,000 to people in their 70s, 80s and 90s and plus,” said Evanston resident Tina Paden.

“You’re not treating our own with any dignity and respect, but you’re treating the immigrants with a lot of dignity and respect. I have a problem with that,” said Juanita Eason, who lives on the Southwest Side.

Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters, “The working group’s mission is to find workable solutions with sustainable funding sources to ensure retirement security and taxpayer relief in the long term in time for the fall veto session.”

In 2012-2013, the 49 so-called welcoming schools enrolled a total of 17,301 students. The next school year, when the buildings took in kids from the closed schools, their enrollment shot up to 26,328. Since then, though, they’ve lost an average of about 5% each year and now have 16,281 kids.

The officer, described by Chicago Police interim Superintendent Fred Waller as a 20-plus year veteran, was returning home from dinner Wednesday night in the city’s West Side when he was targeted.

“We don’t have the money for these communities that are in deep, deep crisis. We don’t seem to have the money for more police. We don’t seem to have the money for better schools. Yet, $50 million can suddenly be appropriated in the middle of thin air for this migrant problem,” chairman Steve Boulton said.

According to the report from the Chicago Urban League, the city lost approximately 85,000 Black residents over the last 12 years. CUL is asking the city to consider adopting various types of reparations to counteract past injustices that continue to harm Black residents today.

the number of shelter requests the city receives through its 311 hotline has more than doubled since before the pandemic — a spike that has been driven by what housing advocates say is a rise in street homelessness amid the aftershocks of COVID and a swelling migrant crisis. And while demand is up, the supply of available beds dropped during the pandemic, and city officials acknowledge those numbers have yet to rebound. And funding for the shelter system has remained relatively flat over the past four years.

In Dolton, which shares a border with Chicago, about 15% of families live in poverty. Burdened with some of the highest property taxes in Cook County, homeowners feel the

Tina Skahill’s planned exit comes just months after the ouster of her predecessor Robert Boik, who was fired last August after criticizing former Police Supt. David Brown’s decision to move nearly 50 officers under his command to the Bureau of Patrol. A licensed attorney, Skahill has worked for the department for more than three decades.

Former alderman Robin Rue Simmons, the founder of FirstRepair, a nonprofit group that works to get millions of dollars for black people affected by decades of discrimination, said of Northwestern University, “They have been inappropriately absent from committing to reparations…They should be the first one supporting Evanston but more specifically holding themselves accountable for all of their practices.”

Before Wednesday’s vote, Ald. Ray Lopez asked three questions: “Where the hell did the $112 million” go that the city has already spent on the migrant crisis? Where will this $51 million go? And what is the plan starting July 1, after the latest funds run out?

“We are all grieving today,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after Wednesday’s City Council meeting. “What we saw this weekend was a manifestation of community disinvestment, poverty, trauma that our city has struggled with for far too long.”

Jim Crown, chairman and CEO of investment firm Henry Crown & Co. who will head up the public safety task force, said maintaining Chicago as a nexus of corporate activity was a catalyst for the initiative. “The perception of Chicago as a place with public safety issues, and the reaction to that perception, whether it’s tourism or businesses moving here, or just worker safety downtown, that has gotten worse.”

She will teach a course tentatively titled “Health Policy and Leadership,” drawing heavily on her experiences steering Chicago through the COVID-19 pandemic and grappling with health equity issues.