With the old contract due to expire next summer, union president Stacy Davis Gates has started “talking turkey” with her members about their priorities for any new deal. In negotiations, “the driving force has always been inequity and injustice that Black and Brown students and their families experience in this city. And that injustice did not roll away on April 4. We just got another gladiator in a place of power,” she said.

CPS is already facing a projected $628 million structural operating deficit in 2025 that Board of Education members have been warning about for over a year. It has long been apparent that many of the city’s school facilities need serious upgrades for healthy and safe learning, with kids often learning among hazards such as lead

Legislation brewing at City Hall that would set carbon emission standards effectively banning the use of carbon-emitting gas in most new buildings in Chicago has yet to be introduced amid opposition and competing priorities, but it is likely to move forward later this year.

The latest estimate of costs associated with migrants arriving in Chicago from August 2022 to the end of the year could reach $361.3 million, a whopping $58 million more than the previous projection. Gov. JB Pritzker sought to distance himself from the city’s tent encampment strategy as well as from provider GardaWorld, even though City Hall’s $29.4 million agreement with the company was made possible by leveraging an existing master state contract.

The criteria for shelters are: spaces must fit 200 people or more; spaces must have no major repairs needed; and spaces must have access to showers. Most of these locations seem to favor brick-and-mortar – not inclusive of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s base camp proposal, for which the mayor recently signed a $29 million contract.

One in five Chicagoans living in poverty has a bachelor’s degree. Those without a high school diploma are four times more likely to live in poverty.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s most recent federal report reveals just 17% of its spending in 2023 was on representing teachers, but it tripled its political spending from the previous year. Nearly 500 teachers left the union.

Recent video shows a chaotic scene what appears to be Chicago minors and adults attacking a group of migrants. Fifteen-year-old Asdrubal was hit twice with a bat and kicked several times, leaving him bruised with broken ribs and a black eye. Another student was hospitalized after being kicked to the ground and hit with a bat.

“I have concerns about it, and we continue to have conversations about it,” Pritzker told reporters after his keynote at a cannabis business conference in downtown Chicago. “With a lack of existing buildings to put people in, I know the city has looked at this as one of its options. But I don’t think this is the only option.” Pritzker said the state has made grants available to cities that offer buildings to migrants, but that it’s not viable to move migrants to rural communities because they lack services.

Because no single department head is responsible for the finance general expenditures, those appropriations receive relatively little attention during the budget hearings, and are subject to minimal direct questioning or oversight from alderpersons as part of the public budget process.

Though aimed at increasing affordable housing in Chicago, experts say the tax burden would be shifted to owners of small apartment buildings, forcing them to raise rents and actually decrease the city’s affordable housing.

Called Moving to Work, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program allows public housing authorities to use money allocated for housing vouchers and public housing for other purposes. Last year, CHA redirected an estimated $74 million in federal voucher dollars to other uses through the program, keeping more than 6,000 families from getting off the waitlist. Expenditures include summer jobs for youth, college scholarships, meals for seniors and youth, and hiring service coordinators for 49 senior buildings.

If passed, the South Shore Housing Preservation Ordinance would, among other things, reserve all city-owned vacant lots in South Shore for affordable housing, invest in programs that would redevelop vacant homes and apartment buildings into affordable housing, give grants to homeowners for repairs and provide down payment assistance.

This rise of arrivals has left over 2,000 sleeping in police station lobbies and O’Hare International Airport. About 9,200 people are living in 20 city-run shelters, up from 6,600 on Aug. 31. There’s 223 people living in the 9th District police station alone, according to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

The longtime operator of the Signature Room restaurant near the top of the former John Hancock Center has closed the business. “Unfortunately, economic issues after the closure of our city and restaurant due to the COVID-19 pandemic persist. Chicago and Michigan Avenue have been slow to recover. Safety issues and negative publicity continues to deter visitors to Chicago. All of these issues are negatively impacting the health of our restaurant and are issues that are completely out of our control.”

Under the proposal, pushed by the statewide group Reform for Illinois, taxpayers would be on the hook for more than $260,000 in funds over a four-year election cycle, given the current size of the city budget. Ald. Tom Suffredin voted against the measure after ascertaining that — unlike the federal presidential campaign fund checkoff on tax returns — residents would have no choice about whether to have their money used to fund the program.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere off limits for crime in the city of Chicago anymore…Innocent people are being hunted down like prey in the City of Chicago,” Lopez said.

Sgt. Michael Edens said there would be an increased police presence in the area this weekend in response to the uptick in robberies. But for residents such as Jordan Litwin, those efforts are a little too late. “I’ve completely given up on Bucktown, I’m moving to either the suburbs or further north,” Litwin said, adding that it seems like the police department “has no plan” to immediately address the robberies. “I don’t think they understand how upset and frustrated people are.”