“Take a look at the South and West Sides, where there’s thousands of empty lots,” Ald. Gilbert Villegas said. “We’re trying to get some economic activity [and] property back on the tax roll, so that way we’re not having to pull the levers that we’ve traditionally had to pull in order to create revenue, which are property taxes, increasing fines, increasing fees and TIFs use.”

Zekelman Industries attributed the closing of the Chicago plant in part to what it described as a “surge” of imported steel from Mexico, saying the U.S. was not enforcing a Trump-era trade agreement that would allow it to tax Mexican steel imports at a higher rate of 25 percent.

“It’s frustrating for me because I know 70 – at least 70 percent of gunshots being fired in the city go unreported and that’s troubling,” ShotSpotter official and former police superintendent, Eddie Johnson said. “The fact is, people don’t call police for whatever reason.”

“It is drowning the taxpayer. It is forcing everybody’s rent to go up. It’s forcing everybody’s mortgages to go up, because the property taxes are going up. There is no stoppage for the illegals who are coming up here, because you guys have already magnetized our city,” Chicago resident P Rae Easley said.

“There is a lot of turmoil going on in city government right now. And a lot of good people are being forced out because they can’t deliver on this agenda that is driving this city into bankruptcy,” said Ald. Anthony Beale, one of the mayor’s most outspoken critics.

Surveillance footage provided by the owner shows a man pacing back and forth late Sunday evening last week. The man appears to be on the phone at one point and then makes his way to the front of the business, where the sounds of glass breaking can be heard. This, the owner says, is when the man smashed the window and fled.

“On the local level, Democratic-dominated polities like the state of New York are still pushing through mandatory class-size reductions, which—surprise!—requires hiring more teachers even as the student population declines. And certainly, muscle-flexing groups like the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) will find it advantageous in contract negotiations to be bargaining with a former CTU lobbyist they helped elect.”

The research group is making use of a new lab in a former COVID-19 testing facility in the Illinois Medical Center campus on the West Side, harnessing DNA sequencing equipment formerly used to test for COVID-19. The headquarters for its parent organization, the University of Illinois System’s Discovery Partners Institute, is proposed for vacant land on The 78, the 62-acre South Loop site where the Chicago White Sox also want to build a new stadium.

“The mayor continues to pursue a hard-left agenda that is failing to win public support. Just like mayors, aldermen have to be accountable to voters, so giving the benefit of the doubt to a mayor with a deeply underwater approval rating — especially over the opposition of influential unions like Local 150 of the Operating Engineers — becomes a political risk not worth taking.”

Police have not confirmed if the robberies are connected. No arrests have been made.

CTU’s financial house is teetering. Under the leadership of Davis Gates, the union ran its first reported deficit, spending nearly $500,000 more than it took in. It spent just 17 cents of each dollar representing members, a decrease from each of the previous years reported, and it spent three times more on politics than it did in any previous year reported.

A vicious cycle is set in motion. Homeowners can’t fully pay their property taxes, leaving municipalities deeper in debt, which results in service cutbacks. Dissatisfied residents leave, and businesses that lose clientele shut their doors.

“My personal property tax bill surged from $1,939.34 in 2022 to $9,237.36 in 2023, a staggering increase of $7,297.42. The brass-tacks consequence is a nearly doubled monthly mortgage payment…. We may not know the full impact of this usurious tax increase for years. In time, it may become evident in the number of foreclosed and/or abandoned homes reported, or evidenced by the number of new-construction housing developments that spring up in these currently beleaguered cities.”

Brutal assignment of blame for the migrant crisis as woman responds to sign saying black people should not “hate on” immigrants because they “should know better.”

Last weekend, at least 31 were shot, 5 fatally, in Labor Day weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said.