Selling the vacant schools has proven difficult because of a lack of buyer interest and deteriorating building conditions. Some sales and projects have fallen through and the successful ones can take several years. In all, 14 empty buildings were still publicly owned in January.

The social media tax was expected to raise $31 million during all of 2026. But the city collected $16.4 million during the first four months alone from the 10 companies to which the levy has applied. At that rate, the first-year take would be $49.2 million, 58.7 percent higher than anticipated.

“If we can just work a little harder to balance the negatives, higher housing costs, and speculation, traffic and not paying enough attention to public transit, and displacement, of course, then it could all be a win-win eventually someday,” University of Chicago Professor Emily Talen said.

The delay will give the Finance Committee just five days between when it is first discussed in a public meeting and a recently-disclosed deadline.

He represented the 12th Ward on the Southwest Side of Chicago from 2003 until 2022, when he stepped down just ahead of his election as a commissioner on the Cook County Board of Review, which handles taxpayer appeals of property assessments.

“I had been reluctant to write about Rahm, who in presidential preference polling is barely registering. Illinois’ other presidential hopeful — Governor JB Pritzker — is polling at just two percent. One gets the feeling the country is tiring from Illinois expatriates running the country. Not our best export.”

“…(I)t’s noteworthy that at last week’s County Board hearing on the issue, the Tribune reported that county officials could offer ‘few clear explanations’ for this year’s delay. … Apparently, this year’s can’t be laid at the feet of Tyler (technologies) and is due instead to delays and missteps at some or all of the various county offices responsible for managing Cook County’s convoluted property tax system.”

As of June, 25 office-to-residential conversions are underway in Downtown — more than the last 20 years combined, according to the city’s Department of Planning and Development. And the conversions will create more than 3,900 units of housing and will replace 4 million square feet of vacant office space.

The Chicago-based firm was founded and is led by Ron Huberman, who served as one of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s chiefs of staff. A former Chicago police officer, Huberman also led the city’s Office of Emergency Management Communications, the Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Public Schools during the Daley administration. A city spokesperson said there are no records documenting the competitive process that led to Benchmark Analytics’ selection or any other proposals from other firms.

African American Contractors Association president Omar Shareef said that a total of seven separate subcontractors have contacted him for help with pursuing missing payments in the past several months. Some of the contractors are owed seven figures. They’re willing to settle for less, as long as they can keep their businesses running.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez called the device a “bomb,” though a police spokesperson characterized it as a “suspected firework.” Sigcho-Lopez, who is among the City Council’s most progressive members and who is running for Congress as an independent Democratic Socialist, said the incident’s exact motive remains a mystery, and he has contacted a lawyer to make sure the incident is properly investigated.

“CPS projects that it will have to spend almost $800 million of operating revenue in 2027 to service its debt. In other words, as much as 8 percent of the district’s budget gets spent on repaying debt. … Many of the possible solutions are tied to two of the reasons CPS carries so much debt in the first place — an unsustainable number of school facilities and cyclical fiscal crises.”