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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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What good is cold water for washing or bathing? Hot water is also a right!
Can’t cut off the gas either,,,free water, free gas, what next? Wheres my free stuff???
You’re right… poor people need their gas but we also need to stop allowing people access to natural gas as it’s killing our planet. I’m so confused.
There’s no such thing as free stuff–somebody has to pay for it !! But Pritzker thinks you can create money by moving numbers around on a spreadsheet. It’s amazing what you can do with a wireless mouse.
In reality, gov bon-bon has created numbers only on a spreadsheet. He couldn’t try to spend all his money in a lifetime even if he tried.
They could always go to Schiller Woods to get water. There is one hand pump there that as legend says has medicinal health benefits. My parents and I went there over 60 years ago and is still operational. When the pump handle breaks in winter people call the park district immediately and they fix it pronto.
This to me seems like one of these situations where the mayor claiming to be doing one thing – taking progressive action for poor people, but in reality, shes she’s really just limiting water dept and streets and sans union employee overtime hours. You see, in nearly all of these neighborhoods where the water bills are being unpaid. the water billing is on the old water bill system, where the homeowner is billed a flat rate regardless of usage; the shut off at the ‘buffalo box’ off the street requires a crew of 4, 8 or 10 union streets and… Read more »
Less than one in ten shutoffs needs to be dug. And 9 out of 10 of them are in the parkway grass; so easy restoration. My crew of 8 workers does 3 roundway valve + b-box replacements in an 8 hour shift. The overtime is always broken water mains and never shutoffs….
Interesting…..do you think that the amount of work required to do those shut offs – 8 people for 3 shut off and box replacements in a full 8 hour day has anything to do with Lightfoot’s new guidelines? 10,000 shut offs at 3 a day with a crew of 8 people seems like a lot…
Yourcityplumber–correct me if i’m wrong.The far bigger scam is the city uses its own water dept crews working on t&m with there obsered work rules to replace water mains instead of competively bidding out on contract basis. Because thats what was negotiated with city unions. Who knows how many $100s of milloins have been wasted. Nobody in press reports on it
In 2018 chicago replaced 85 miles of water main. (Mains, not services). City crews did just shy of 40 miles and private contractors did roughly 45 miles. Water management currently has 19 crews (roughly 7 persons per crew) putting in new water mains. The number of new pipe installation crews was not negotiated with the unions. (The private contractors are union too so the unions dont care if the work is done in house or farmed out). And what I will guarantee you (believe it or not) is that there are expected minimums of linear feet of main installations per… Read more »
It’s not three shut offs per day per crew. Its three valve digs and replacements per day for one crew. I’ve already stated that only one in ten shutoffs needs to be dug. A shut off crew when no digging needs to be done consists of a driver, a laborer and a plumber. They can do roughly 20 a day.
When I was a kid in Chicago water was free, no meters on houses. When you filled your pool you’d use 3 hoses, yours and your two neighbors. If lightfoot truly believed potable water was a”right” she wouldn’t mess around and just go back to the way it was for everyone! “Rights” are inherently free, they have to be, religion, speech, livelihood, etc. if a right costs anything at all then it’s not a right. So what is it lightfoot? Why should people skip out on their bill and suffer no consequences?
Don’t forget the city’s water bill collection court call is every Saturday morning at 400 W. Superior. They’re still aggressively pursuing collections just not wasting dozens of union employee hours to dig up a buffalo box in englewood.
That sounds like a TV show situation. During the 80’s I got a ticket for jaywalking and I had to go to the courthouse to pay for it. I had to stand in line with some other people who owed money for tickets and couldn’t pay for them. They were trying to explain their situation to a nice girl who talked to each of them about the status of their tickets. Good grief–and that was during the good economy of the 80’s.
The kids should be happy. Some of their parents will have the money to buy them a Nintendo Switch this Christmas, or maybe an Xbox One with “StarWars Jedi, Fallen Order”.
Ironically, they’ll have more money at Christmas, but then when the credit card bill comes due in February, the large tax refund gets intercepted by the city’s collection department to pay aforementioned unpaid water bill. They aren’t giving it away for free, she’s stopping the union’s giveaway to go out there and shut off the water. it’s not like they can just flip a switch a switch at city hall to shut off water like your cable company can, it’s a labor intensive process to dig up the buffalo box to shut it off on locatoin.
What a surprising lesson in human behavior. It would appear that people who don’t really have to pay their bills don’t, in fact, pay them.
Just declare it a human right and someone will sue to prevent being charged for it. As in “it’s a human right to breathe clean air.” Stop taxing me for CO2 emission remediation.
Why don’t Progressives understand that people change their behavior as their incentives change? As the cost of Lake Michigan spirals upward, in my house we take shorter showers, run clothes and dishwashers only when full and even use rain barrels to water the outdoors plants, and now the mayor is giving water away?
My list of reasons for leaving Illinois continues to grow…
Let’s hope the deadbeats at least get some threatening phone calls. Incidentally, is the water department forbidden from turning over the unpaid bills to collection agencies?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/robocall-scams-exist-because-they-workone-womans-story-shows-how-11574351204
Showers cannot be diminished or impaired.
Omg. Funniest thing I’ve heard all month.?
See my thoughts above about this, it might be more expensive to actually send a union city crew out to the location to dig up the buffalo box, shut off the water, (possibly install a new shut off too) and repave the hole; only to return a few days later and repeat the process. She’s still actively enforcing collections through the city’s administartive courts (every saturday morning at 9:00am!) she’s just not wasting money to shut it off. The city can’t just flip a switch like the cable company, or turn a knob or two like the gas/electric company, to… Read more »
Watch the you-tube vid “Is tourism harming Venice?” I guess that’s one city that’s (literally) sinking faster than Chicago. The city has the same problems you would find in any broke city in the USA–abandoned apartments, squatters, illegal AirBNB’s, etc. The city is around $1 billion Euros in debt. All of those famous structures in the city are built on wood posts and some high-tech solutions are being discussed to save it. And then there’s the Netherlands pension crisis. Watch the you-tube vid “Deplorables”. I wan’t aware that Europe was so screwed up.
Europe has been screwed up for millennia. The last time it was decent there was a guy named Hadrian in charge. That’s why most but not all of america’s ancestors left the continent to come to the new world.
I also believe part of the reason she did this is because a property can never change hands in the city without the back water bills being paid in full. The city will eventually get the $. It will just take a long time.