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"When Rahm Emanuel ran Chicago and wanted to boast about the health of the city, the then-mayor pointed to the number of construction cranes across the skyline — 60 at the end of 2017. Almost five years after he left office, that number has dwindled to the single digits. There was just one groundbreaking on an office building last year, and zero are expected in 2024."
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.
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Chicago taxpayers can blame Lightfoot and her Dept of Planning Commissioner Maurice Cox for some of those cancelled development project. Their attempts to divert “downtown” development monies to “economically-disadvantaged” neighborhoods failed miserably. Developers want to develop where it makes financial sense to invest in real estate, where new development projects will succeed. Neither Lightfoot nor Cox liked real estate developers.
BJ Administration appears intent upon continuing that anti-development/anti-downtown agenda.
This is from Phoenix as of last Nov. Low tax rates help with property values. Residential is approx 0.8% of total value.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2023/11/08/construction-cranes-downtown-phoenix/71443826007/
It’s quite simple. Chicago has suffered a worse fate more than most cities because it shut down too soon, for too long, ‘for equity’. Criminality filled the empty void of downtown and everyone changed their lifestyles as a result. Nobody wants to go downtown anymore. It’s a long commute for most people, it’s dangerous, nobody wants to pack like sardines into train cars in the middle of a cold winter, or a hot summer, and deal with the hassle of downtown. I can’t speak for everyone but at least for me, and the people I associate with, the 2nd round… Read more »
It literally was Pritzker, Lightfoot, Foxx and other Democrat extremists who decided to destroy the ‘Mag Mile’ Who does this kind of nonsense? Extremists driven by ideology and cult-like behavior.
The birds stop at Montrose to take baths?
(no need to explain LOL)
For anyone not from Chicago reading this, gay men hang out near a small grove – an actual bird sanctuary – at Montrose Beach, where Montrose Ave ends at the beach. They socialize and then walk into the bird sanctuary to engage in generalized degeneracy. Lori visited in August 2020 and visited a ‘picnic’ of 50 or 100 men wearing speedos. She chastised them for not wearing masks because coronavirus was so risky, even though the real risky behavior was the degeneracy of spreading HIV, STDs, bacterial and viral colon infections and likely involving hard drugs like meth and ecstasy… Read more »
24 hours later all of downtown was shut down, again, due to massive organized rioting and looting and burning and general mayhem. Lori was OK with using hard drugs and spreading AIDS as long as they were wearing masks, and completely missed the organized mayhem that was happening while she was paying attention to the wrong things.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/10/chicago-looting-violence-police-shooting-protests