Dart’s negotiating with Chief Judge Timothy Evans to have the Cook County court system’s separate GPS program watch over people released from the Cook County Jail pending trial. As of Friday, Evans’s staff was monitoring 1,085 defendants for potential curfew violations, including 18 people charged with murder; He says he’ll need about 150 more employees and $23.9 million a year to expand his program.

Kia Banks, chief of staff for the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said CPAA has asked to meet with CTU leadership to discuss several proposals that she said run counter to the objectives of principals: an increase in planning time for elementary teachers, curriculum changes driven by teachers and allowing committees to weigh in on principal performance. Another principals group said CTU’s proposals could undermine school leaders to the detriment of students. The teachers union has not been receptive to meeting, Banks said.

“How we do things is just as important as what we do, and the way you’ve led this process has left the City Council fractured,” Ald. Maria Hadden told Mayor Brandon Johnson during Monday’s meeting.

Previous analysis showed many of these new tax hikes are regressive, hitting poor Chicagoans the hardest and discouraging important economic activity. The $5.2 million increase in fees on grocery bags is one example. Another is $11.4 million from additional speed cameras, which Johnson labeled during his campaign as “an easy revenue grab by the city” and promised not to increase.

During his campaign, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he would prioritize mental health care. The city’s $16.77 billion budget in 2023 allotted $5.2 million to expand mental health services and $15.9 million to double the team of mental health and substance abuse crisis responders. Johnson cautioned that it would take time to create the infrastructure needed to reopen the clinics.

“You caused all this money to go to illegal immigrants,” one resident told Mayor Brandon Johnson during the public comment period. “Anything that you all pass is not genuine.” Another resident said, “He wants to pull a $40 million line of credit and put the city in even more debt. It’s your fault, because you gave half of the money to illegals.”

“Here we are in Chicago, where we [are] supposed to be celebrating a season of joy, love and happiness,” Community activist and Chicago Against Violence founder Andre Smith said. “And a lot of people have Christmas trees and under their trees in Chicago. We are unwrapping gifts of neglect. We are unwrapping gifts of disappointment and heartaches. We are unwrapping gifts of $575 million of taxpayer dollars given to and misallocated to give to illegal migrants. We need solutions, and we need change.”

A review of suburban reports over several months indicates that attacks on retail workers have become more common. Crimes in recent police reports include an employee threatened with a handgun at a Homewood drive-thru window, an Oak Lawn Jewel grocery store worker pepper-sprayed while attempting to stop theft, an Oak Lawn 7-Eleven clerk punched and robbed of their cellphone after banning a customer, a Steger liquor store clerk slapped for refusing an exchange without a receipt, Burbank employees threatened with a knife at Best Buy and an Orland Park Ulta beauty supply store clerk threatened for rejecting a return without

Mayor Brandon Johnson defended the bag tax hike and other increases as necessary to continue funding city services, as well as expanding programs like his signature summer youth hiring initiative. “There’s no cuts to services, there’s no layoffs, there’s no furloughs,” Johnson said. “Services for garbage, for snow removal, for lights, those services are still being made available, even though that there are some individuals that wanted to cut those services. We didn’t do that. We protect working people in this city.”

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education voted to pull the school resource officer program and remove all Chicago police officers from public schools. The issue sparked intense debate on whether officers make students feel more or less safe. Those who oppose officers on campus argued a police presence impacts Black students more and strengthens the school to prison pipeline.

“This means she couldn’t be bothered to spend a little more than an hour a month watching videos that her own office provided,” said a veteran attorney and former assistant state’s attorney. “Burke was not sworn in until December 2. Foxx was certainly told by the (licensing boards) that her law license would lapse on December 1, but she still allowed [prosecutors] to file pleadings in court under her name on December 1,” the veteran lawyer said.

Aldermen voted 27-23 to approve Johnson’s $17.1 billion spending plan for next year after his team proposed a fourth version that completely eliminated his property tax hike in the face of widespread aldermanic objections. It was the closest budget vote a Chicago mayor has faced in decades, and many aldermen used the moment to blast Johnson for leading what they described as a frustrating process that lacked transparency.

An expert on the international criminal group Tren de Aragua (TdA) is warning that if sanctuary city and state policies are allowed to continue, the U.S. will soon be facing a slate of targeted assassinations across the U.S. “It’s no coincidence that so many of these TDA members are in sanctuary jurisdictions like Chicago, Colorado and New York. That is not a coincidence. They know that they can hide behind their sanctuary policies and that is one reason they choose these communities because they know that the local authorities are not going to turn them over to immigration agents for

The mayor’s appointees included most of the current board members as well as losing school board candidates who were endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Four of the election winners were also backed by the union, which ideologically aligns with the mayor. That means 15 of the 21 members could often vote in alignment with his policy preferences, such as borrowing money in order to cover pension obligations and labor union costs.

“He took us back a long way to a time when people couldn’t vote,” Dixmoor mayor Fitzgerald Roberts said of Illinois state Sen. Napolean, also the Democratic Committeeman who led the caucus meeting. “[Henyard] is telling the truth: People couldn’t get in.”