-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
The city of Chicago proposed last summer enclosing Soldier Field and increasing its capacity from a league-low 61,500, but the Bears repeatedly insisted that the only possibilities they were considering were for the Arlington Heights site. Now the Bears are citing a property assessment they said is too high, so the area is "no longer our singular focus."
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
Why not just leave the State like so many others have? The handouts the Bears get could be put to better use such as funding the pensions. To me pensioned State workers are more worthy of their pensions than to the various cash registers the State pours money into.
Fake News anyone believing the Bears spent $197 millions to play in Naperville or anyway else is Delusional
Leave to government to screw up a good thing.
Do the majority of season ticket holders live in the city or the suburbs? I realize that the threat/plan to move out of Chicago is all amount money, not what’s best for the fans, but if the majority of season ticket holders do live in the suburbs, it makes even more sense to move.
Suburbs. Season tickets are expensive and rarely turnover. Some guy on Reddit signed up for seaons tix in 2009 and got his seasons tickets in 2021. Anecdotal reports of some people waiting even longer. Most seasons tix holders got their tix decades ago and have been living in the suburbs for decades.
I would guess the city since only Mormons like the Bears and the city is almost exclusively half whits.
San Antonio may work.
“… our responsibility to look at other municipalities…”? Yeah? Like where? Don’t forget their effort to look at Gary, when Richard Daley promised to close the Skyway on Sundays. Don’t forget the West Side of Chicago when they tried to encroach on the United Center and got run over by all the community groups out there. Then their floundering around in DuPage County where the infrastructure was, and still is, inadequate. And it is their “responsibility”? To whom? Their own pocketbook? Anybody want to bet they won’t still be playing in Soldier Field ten years from now?