The new contract reflects recently renegotiated rates touted by Johnson’s team, a move that was necessitated because the city brought on Favorite Staffing to work at its migrant shelters by piggybacking off a state contract for the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial prices for Favorite Staffing employees have led several aldermen to criticize the contract and call for the city to audit the invoices.

Cristina Pacione Zayas, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first deputy chief of staff, said city officials were pleased that President Joe Biden had sent a request to Congress for an additional $1.4 billion for state and local governments providing food, shelter and medical care to the migrants. But the need will be closer to $5 billion, Pacione Zayas said, and Chicago officials will work to get as much of those funds as possible.

The owner of Boneyard Chicago – whose private security guard was surrounded by the thieves – said in the past he went as far as to install concrete barriers in front of his store, but the city removed them without notice. “This would have never happened if the alderman did not come and take our barricades,” Jacob said. “They wouldn’t have been able to do this. They were blocking the store but now this is going to cost us.”

The mock newspaper at Northwestern includes fake quotes from university president Michael Schill “on the situation in Gaza,” poking the president about his refusal to comment, though from the anti-Israel side. The students who put the paper together compared the 200 hostages still held by Hamas to 13 take-out containers missing from the university’s dining halls.

Ald. Julia Ramirez, who was attacked along with her aide by protestors at the site being considered last week, tried to allay the concerns of the crowd. She said: ‘The city is asking a lot of Brighton Park’ and added she had asked for more resources for the area.

Among the actions the group wants elected officials to undertake are providing a “strategic plan and roadmap to reduce crime and increase public safety as soon as possible,” and releasing data showing the effectiveness of violence prevention and intervention programs.

“In the more than a century and a half of immigration into West Town and Chicago, immigration has not been used as a rationale for a municipal government executive to wield ’emergency’ powers depriving current citizens and residents of rights under the law,” the lawsuit states.

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education gave 22 charter schools shorter two- or three-year contracts for the first time. Last year, of 28 charter schools up for renewal, none received a five-year extension. Limiting renewals to two or three years is CTU’s way of effectively wrecking charter schools in Chicago by creating instability.

CPS expects to once again increase property taxes to the cap next year at around 3%, pulling in an additional $166 million. Another $53 million in state funding is estimated to help fund operations and pay for pensions. But CPS projects it’ll lose $118 million in state tax dollars, plus face higher costs because of inflation, health care increases and debt payments. The state doesn’t pay CPS teacher pensions like other districts in Illinois, amounting to another $700 million Chicago doesn’t have available to spend.

The working group formed by Mayor Brandon Johnson in June to tackle Chicago’s acutely underfunded pensions has yet to craft a comprehensive plan to address one of the major fiscal challenges facing the city. The group of state lawmakers, city officials and union leaders aims to craft a comprehensive plan in time to be presented to lawmakers during their spring session, which begins in January, mayoral adviser Jason Lee said.

“There’s an impending financial crisis looming within the school district. Much like the mayor’s sanctuary city allies, Stacy Davis Gates and the Chicago Teachers Union are also clamoring for a blank check of their own…. CPS receives nearly 56% of all Chicagoans’ property taxes and 25% of all state K-12 funding —yet it is crying poverty.”