Chicago's $5.7B Red Line Extension

BUMPED UP.......Illegal billboard again used to post a racist message!

RACIST MESSAGE WAS AGAIN DISPLAYED ON FEBRUARY 11, 2025

How is it that a LED sign is permitted to be erected in a R-1 zoning district? 

This sign was built about 5 or 6 years ago. Was there a notice sent to all the neighbors within 300 feet? Was a special use permit ever issued? Was there even a building permit issued? 

The Beverly Unitarian Church caused a stir when it posted,"Black Lives Matter" on its electronic sign at 10244 S. Longwood Drive in Beverly. The church, commonly known as The Castle, has since changed the sign to read, "Life Matters Risk Loving Everyone." 

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DNAinfo/Supplied Photo

BEVERLY — The electronic sign at the Beverly Unitarian Church no longer displays the words "Black Lives Matter."

The church commonly known as The Castle at 10244 S. Longwood Drive had changed the sign as of Wednesday to read "Life Matters Risk Loving Everyone." The change follows an online uproar that included racist rants as well as some hurt feelings.

Cydni Polk, of Blue Island, snapped a picture of the "Black Lives Matter" sign on Monday afternoon. The Beverly native tagged several of her friends and posted the shot on Facebook with the caption, "Why yes ... yes they do ..." and the hashtags #‎Salute and #‎MyHood.

The worst of the worst, utter incompetence will lead to bankruptcy and soon thereafter the de-chartering of these once great cities

Steven Malanga
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: the Failing-Mayors Trifecta

The dysfunctional politics of America’s three largest cities have produced elected leaders wildly unpopular with their own voters. What went wrong?


Has there been a time in recent memory when the mayors of America’s biggest cities are as collectively unpopular as they are right now? Karen Bass in Los Angeles, Brandon Johnson in Chicago, and Eric Adams in New York are all in their first terms, yet in their short time in office they have squandered so much of the support that got them elected that they now sport disapproval ratings that would have made President Biden blush. Bass and Johnson already face recall efforts, and the leaders of New York’s city council have discussed how they might remove Adams from office amid his legal troubles. Though their circumstances differ, the three mayors are alike in one key respect: they were elected in one-party progressive towns where reform has become increasingly difficult because large groups of citizens vote based on demographic categories like race, ethnicity, or gender, and then discover that they don’t like the results of the policies they chose. What, if anything, will voters learn from these mayors’ failures?

Of the three, Johnson won his position most recently, in an April 2023 election that saw voters dump incumbent Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot. She had angered voters by failing to stem rising crime, for the mounting social disorder in highly visible settings like Michigan Avenue (Chicago’s Magnificent Mile), and for her failure to reopen the city’s public schools after the teachers’ union helped shut them down for extended periods during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lightfoot lost in the initial round of Chicago’s 2023 mayoral race, becoming the city’s first mayor in 30 years not to win reelection.

Johnson was an unlikely candidate to succeed Lightfoot, with crime ranking overwhelmingly as voters' top concern. A progressive former teachers’ union organizer who became a county commissioner with backing from the union, Johnson was a Chicago Police Department critic and branded as “racist” some of its crime-fighting strategies, including the ShotSpotter system for detecting gunshots. His progressive plan for addressing crime included erasing a gang database (he considered it discriminatory) and starting a “treatment not trauma” program that uses non-police personnel to respond to some emergencies. He also proposed raising taxes to fund “restorative justice” social programs in the city’s schools as a way of cutting youth violence. And he backed President Biden’s border surge, pledged to keep Chicago a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, and even proposed establishing an Office of Migrant Protection. By contrast, Johnson’s chief opponent, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, preached a tough-on-crime agenda that included hiring some 700 new cops.

Johnson won narrowly. He took 88 percent of the black vote, but what sealed his victory was his corralling of 34 percent of white voters, in part by winning among whites in gentrified areas, according to an analysis by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Since then, Johnson’s tenure has been entirely in keeping with his campaign. His “restorative justice” and various other interventions have failed to make a significant impact on crime. He shut down the gunshot-detection system, a decision for which he’s been widely criticized. He’s advocated borrowing $300 million to support a schools budget that gives big raises to teachers. Soon after taking office, he allocated $51 million of the strapped city’s resources to services for the migrants flooding into the city. His decision to turn local hotels into migrant shelters brought sharp blowback from the communities that voted for him. “You’ve got 73 percent of the people homeless in this city are black people,” one woman said at a community meeting. “What have you done for them?”

The result: by November of last year, just 18 months after Johnson’s election, a poll showed that just 14 percent of Chicagoans approved of the job he is doing. That’s the lowest approval rating on record for a Windy City mayor. Now residents are exploringhow they might change state law to recall Johnson.

As in Chicago, crime was overwhelmingly the most important issue in New York’s 2021 mayoral election. A former captain in the New York Police Department who had entered politics 15 years earlier, Eric Adams centered his campaign on reducing crime and talked tougher on the issue than many of the other candidates in the Democratic primary. (He even expressed support for the controversial policing policy known as “stop and frisk,” though some cops were skeptical of his enthusiasm for crime fighting.) Though Adams got just 30 percent of the vote in the first round of the city’s ranked-choice Democratic primary, by the time counting was done he had squeaked by former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia with 51 percent of the vote. Crucially, polls showed he won more than four times the backing from black voters as any other candidate in the primary. In November, he easily defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in heavily Democratic New York.

From there, it’s largely been downhill. Though Adams has notched a few victories, such as declines in homicides, other crimes rates have risen. In a Manhattan Institute poll last April, crime remained New Yorkers’ top concern, with 62 percent saying that the city was less safe than four years ago. New Yorkers also scorched Adams for his handling of the migrant crisis, with more than half saying they disapproved of his handing out debit cards to illegals to pay for services. Even most Democrats said that under Adams the city was headed in the wrong direction. Since then, Adams has also been indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges. Though he has promised to fight the charges, one recent poll found just 8 percent of Democrats would back him in a primary.

Like New York City, the Los Angeles 2022 mayoral race began with a crowded field of 12 candidates on the ballot for a nonpartisan election to succeed the term-limited Eric Garcetti. Karen Bass, a congresswoman representing Los Angeles County, stood out with a series of high-profile endorsements, including former California senator Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a cluster of entertainment-industry glitterati such as Jane Fonda, Norman Lear, Steven Spielberg, and former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner. After she entered a run-off with real-estate developer Rick Caruso, Bass also boasted endorsements from Barack Obama, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who traveled to Los Angeles to campaign for her (Sanders had also traveled to Chicago to support Johnson).

Bass focused on addressing homelessness—the leading priority among voters—pledging to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build new affordable housing. In polls, voters gave her the edge in fixing that problem; they rated Caruso stronger on crime. Bass won a convincing but not overwhelming victory against Caruso, a former Republican turned Democrat, by garnering about two-thirds of her party’s vote. Pre-election polls showed her winning two-thirds of the black vote and, significantly, about six in ten white votes in the liberal city. By contrast, Caruso garnered support from a majority of Hispanic voters. Bass’s victory was hailed as historic because she became the first woman elected the city’s mayor.

But even before the Los Angeles wildfires, Angelenos had begun to sour on her leadership. In an April poll last year, residents’ satisfaction with local quality of life had shrunk to its lowest level on record. Pointedly, 60 percent of those polled said that homelessness—the issue on which voters gave her the advantage over Caruso—was getting worse. Only 42 percent had a favorable rating of Bass. Around that time, Bass faced strong criticism of her handling of the city’s budget—the result of an unanticipated fiscal emergency triggered by the big pay raises she handed out to city workers. This led to widespread cuts in city agencies that, critics noted, would hamper the city’s ability to improve quality of life. The cuts included now-infamous reductions in the city’s fire department budget, contributing to the city’s lack of preparedness to fight wildfires. A memo composed by the fire chief prior to the wildfires warned of “unprecedented operational challenges” due to cuts affecting the department’s “capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous material incidents, and large public events.” Bass, who was also denounced for traveling to Ghana despite warnings from the National Weather Service of potential wildfires in L.A., now faces a recall effort that’s gathered more than 150,000 signatures.

Though Democratic politics have dominated many large American cities for decades, it wasn’t so long ago that a true diversity of ideas made reform possible. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg won five successive elections in New York City on Republican and independent lines; on their watch, the city improved consistently for more than 20 years. Republican Richard Riordan won the Los Angeles mayoralty and served two terms in the 1990s, lowering crime and leaving the city “a better place,” as even those who disagreed with him attested. Today, however, the crowded mayoral fields in these cities are dominated by progressive politicians preaching variations on the same ineffective policies. What else could account for why Chicago voters, who named crime as their primary concern, opted for Brandon Johnson?

It’s one thing for voters to say they disapprove of the performance of someone for whom they voted. It’s quite another for them to decide that next time they’ll choose someone with different ideas. Until that day comes, change will remain impossible in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

The entity known as the city of Chicago will disappear and be replaced by metropolitan government. The populations Los Angeles and New York will shrink as its inhabitants are forced to migrate to less dense and more manageable locales.

Hey Mayor Johnson, why don't you try spending cuts.......20% across the board...... except police and fire

After calling off budget vote to avoid certain defeat, Mayor Johnson must consider ideas he had ruled out including, vacations to London

 

test of leadership.....can he cut the fat?

Tent Cities Surge Along Chicago’s Lakefront: Residents Demand Answers

Migrant in Chicago gets $70 MILLION approval in funds.

city residents know they are being neglected

City Council Members Push for Leadership Change at CTA

Bring on the strike!

 

CITY HALL

Chicago Teachers Union demanding 9% annual raises, won't rule out a strike

Having former CTU organizer Brandon Johnson in the mayor’s office won’t keep the union from walking out if needed, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates told the Sun-Times, adding that “we’re a labor union that understands the power of solidarity and the power of work stoppage.”

I wonder if they understand the power of the word "no"?

Chicago Businesses Collapse.........Nobody Cares

Mayor Johnson is trying to destroy the city's main source of revenue

 

 

 

perhaps does not understand the repercussions if the tax passes

 

 

refuses to criticize  Biden's border policy

City counting on state, federal funds to handle migrant crisis — or reserves could be at risk
A top official said Chicago could be forced to raid its reserves, even though that would almost certainly cause Wall Street rating agencies to reduce the bond rating, increasing how much it costs the city to borrow money.
By Fran Spielman
Oct 31, 2023, 1:12pm CDT




Chicago City Hall, with the Board of Trade building in the background.

Without a major infusion of state and federal funding for the migrant crisis, Chicago may have no choice but to raid its reserve funds, endangering the city’s bond rating, a top mayoral aide warned Tuesday.

Budget Director Annette Guzman brought up the reserve funds when asked where Mayor Brandon Johnson would turn first if the $150 million Johnson has earmarked for the care and feeding of asylum-seekers in 2024 runs out.

“The city has put forth a budget that includes the money that we are willing to contribute to this. But the city does have reserves and things like that, which we do not want to use because it does support other things within the city’s operations,” Guzman told the Sun-Times.

Guzman acknowledged raiding the reserves would almost certainly cause Wall Street rating agencies to reduce the bond rating, which determines city borrowing costs.

“Exactly, which is why we’re not willing to do that. But it is an option on the table,” Guzman said.

“At the time that half the year comes around — if we are in the same [go-it-alone] situation we are now — we will be back at the table discussing this with all stakeholders plus [City] Council as well as the mayor’s office.”

Chicago created short-, medium- and long-term reserve funds after former Mayor Richard M. Daley sold the Chicago Skyway and the city’s parking meters to private investors for a combined $2.98 billion.

Although the corporate fund was supposed to receive interest earnings only, Daley started raiding the parking meter fund in 2009 to subsidize his operating budget. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel stopped that practice and amended the ordinance to prevent similar raids, then embarked on a multiyear plan to rebuild the parking meters reserves.

Against that backdrop, raiding the reserves would be financially perilous — but for Johnson, raising property taxes would be politically perilous.

He campaigned on a promise to hold the line on property taxes and honored that promise, forgoing $90 million in revenue that would have been generated by taking advantage of an automatic escalator his predecessor, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, put in place to lock in annual property tax increases to match the rate of inflation.

Guzman was asked whether Johnson has options other than raising property taxes or raiding the reserves.

“I can’t think of anything [else] off the top of my head,” she said.

Questions about Johnson’s decision to earmark just $150 million for the migrant crisis in next year’s budget — as the city already spends more than $30 million a month — dominated Council budget hearings.

Alderpersons from across the city pressured the mayor’s budget team to identify “Plan B” after Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch slammed the door on more migrant funding during the fall veto session.

Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee defended the lowball figure, insisting Chicago taxpayers have “no appetite” to shoulder the other half of the cost alone.

“Tell me the alderman who is standing up saying, ‘I want the city [to] pay $400 million or $500 million, and I would approve that budget.’ You can’t have it both ways,” Lee said.

The budget director wholeheartedly agreed.

“The City Council has said both — [that] there’s not enough money in this budget and there’s too much money in this budget for the migrant issue. And so there’s not even a consensus on the figure that the mayor has put forth,” she said.

Guzman said she does not believe Johnson’s urgent appeal for federal funds will fall on deaf ears, in part because of the political embarrassment President Joe Biden would suffer if he is renominated next summer in a city overwhelmed by the migrant crisis.

“It’s really important that we’re able to demonstrate how we can handle situations like this, because it goes to how we can lead — not only our city, but our country,” she said.

Once the Council approves the mayor’s budget, attention will turn to the urgent search for additional revenue — a task Johnson has punted to a subcommittee led by freshman Ald. William Hall (6th).

Guzman expects the options presented by that subcommittee to include broadening the sales tax umbrella to cover a host of professional services favored by the wealthy and business interests.

The idea has been talked about for decades, only to hit a dead end in Springfield.

But, Guzman said, “We’re in a place now where people are more open to this idea. We’ve seen the dramatic shift in how people purchase things. It’s shifted more now toward services over goods. … Sometimes, it’s all about timing. … I look at it as a way of sharing the burden more equitably.”

"tax businesses and the wealthy"? Not going to happen....cut that sh-t out

Mayor Brandon Johnson gives budget address — here’s what to know on how he’ll spend on migrants, crime, mental health
The $16.6 billion 2024 city budget Mayor Brandon Johnson unveiled Wednesday will “begin the critical investments necessary” to deliver on his campaign slogan to “build a better, stronger Chicago.” Supporters also must wait to shift the tax burden to businesses and wealthy Chicagoans.
By Fran Spielman



Mayor Brandon Johnson, shown delivering his 2024 budget address to the Chicago City Council on Wednesday.


Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times



Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on a promise to deliver Chicago from violent crime by making $1 billion worth of “investments in people” bankrolled by $800 million in new or increased taxes that level the playing field between the haves and have-nots.

His supporters will have to settle for a down payment on the spending front. And they’ll need to wait a while for the tax burden to be shifted to businesses and wealthy Chicagoans.

What could go wrong?

Mayor Brandon Johnson Wants to Open Taxpayer-Funded City-Owned Grocery Stores
By Mike LaChance Sep. 14, 2023 10:15 pm



Now that so many businesses are fleeing crime-ridden Chicago, including grocery stores, the city’s new Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to open grocery stores that would be owned by the city.

Does Johnson think that city owned stores won’t get robbed like privately owned supermarkets?

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) is looking into opening taxpayer-funded, city-owned grocery stores in areas in which businesses have pulled out due to rampant crime.

Imagine the task at hand!

Johnson on his first 100 days: ‘It’ll take time to right this ship in its entirety’
The mayor is more concerned about building consensus than he is about checking boxes on his list of campaign promises.
By Fran Spielman




Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday made no apologies for his go-slow approach and said he is “grateful to have a four-year term” because it’ll take time to “right this ship in its entirety.”

Most of Johnson’s goal-oriented predecessors have come into office with a precise agenda for the first 100 days knowing they will be measured at that benchmark.

Johnson is more concerned about building consensus than he is about checking boxes on his list of campaign promises.

I say that a department head hired by Beetlejuice should be presumed as already destabilized. Let Mayor Johnson do his job!

Arwady: Abrupt firing was ‘unnecessarily destabilizing’ to health department — and could hurt search for successor
In an interview with NBC Chicago, former city health chief Dr. Allison Arwady, who was appointed by ex-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, said it was ‘disturbing’ that she was fired without a meeting with the mayor or saying goodbye to her staff.
By Kade Heather




Dr. Allison Arwady, after months of lobbying to keep her job, was fired abruptly on Friday by Mayor Brandon Johnson.

In her first interview since being ousted as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, Dr. Allison Arwady said the manner in which she was fired was “unnecessarily destabilizing” to the city’s public health department.

Arwady said she respected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s right to name his own public health commissioner, but she was concerned the abrupt manner of her termination will make it harder to attract a successor with the necessary background and expertise to do the job.

She received a phone call from Rich Guidice, Johnson’s chief of staff, Friday evening and was told in a meeting that she was being terminated, Arwady said in an interview Monday with NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern.

RELATEDJohnson quotes Tupac, dances around questions about health chief’s firing

“I said that is not a major surprise at this point, just knowing the mayor, of course, has the opportunity to bring on whomever he wants, but then what really was disturbing to me is I said, ‘Let’s talk timeline,’ and he said, ‘It’s effective immediately,’” Arwady said in the interview.

Arwady, who became a prominent face of the city through frequent news conferences during the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was appointed to the position by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

She said Johnson didn’t meet with her prior to her firing, and that her abrupt dismissal didn’t allow her an opportunity to say goodbye to her staff.

“I kept hoping that there’d be an opportunity to talk with him and meet with him, explain the work that the department does,” Arwady said, adding that despite being in some of the same cabinet meetings as Johnson, the two “never exchanged three words.”

She said the outcome was “not a surprise, but the manner of it, I think, was unnecessarily destabilizing to my department.”

“I’m respectful of this decision. I’m just concerned that the way it was made will actually make it harder to bring in a new commissioner, like someone who really understands public health and has the expertise and the knowledge to lead this department.”

The public health commissioner oversees a number of programs that include mental health, opioid addiction, HIV and other infectious diseases and environmental protection.
RELATED3,700 CPS workers have been vaccinated or offered a shot, but teachers criticize disorderly rollout

During a debate shortly before the April runoff election, Johnson, a former CPS teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, said he would fire Arwady, if he was elected.

He walked back that statement in later interviews, saying he would meet with her before making a decision, but noted his displeasure about her role in reopening Chicago Public Schools amid pandemic safety concerns.

At an unrelated news conference Monday, Johnson dodged questions from reporters about Arwady’s firing and whether the dismissal was “payback” for her push to reopen schools sooner than when the CTU wanted them open.

In the interview with NBC Chicago, Arwady said she didn’t know of any intentional reasoning behind her firing and that she understood the mayor’s desire to make his own appointment for the job.

In a Twitter thread posted Friday evening, Arwady described her tenure leading the city health agency as the “best chapter of her life (so far),” saying it was “critical” that the city’s health department receive the funding it needed to “remain strong.”


“My top priority has always been protecting the health of all Chicagoans,” Arwady wrote. “Public health must always be driven by science and medicine, and never politics. … As a physician and public health leader, my work to advance health, equity, and justice, particularly for those on the margins, will continue.”

Mayor Johnson will not be bullied.......he needs to take his time with this

Slow down, Chicago Bears? Johnson won’t be rushed into deal to keep team in the city: ‘We’ll get there’
Mayor Johnson has not yet offered an alternative stadium site to the Bears if the team is determined to leave Soldier Field. He says he’s using this time for relationship building.
By Fran Spielman




Mayor Brandon Johnson has met twice with Bears President Kevin Warren in an effort to build trust and rapport that hasn’t existed before between the Bears and City Hall.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday he has not yet offered a specific Chicago site for building a new stadium for the Chicago Bears and won’t be rushed into offering an alternative to Soldier Field.

The Bears stalled stadium touchdown drive in Arlington Heights has cracked the door open for Johnson to keep the team in Chicago, but only if he’s willing to spend the enormous political capital it would

$27,000,000 grant....cool....

New life for stalled renovation of landmark Congress Theater
The City Council’s Finance Committee extended the life of the tax increment financing district until Dec. 31, 2027, and gave the development team tackling the project a $27 million city subsidy.
By Fran Spielman
Jul 17, 2023, 1:52pm CDT




The Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee Ave. in 2012. The theater has been closed since 2013.

Shuttered for a decade and deteriorating fast, the 103-year-old Congress Theater where Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis once strutted their stuff is at a crossroads.

One fork “leads to demolition” of the ornate movie theater-turned-concert-venue. The other road ends with what 1st Ward Ald. Daniel La Spata hopes will be a “complete rehab” of the landmark theater at 2135 N. Milwaukee Ave. “as a genuine community development project.”

All these politicians and their spouses and all of their relatives are getting two or more public pensions....Who is going to pay for that?

 

The Coming Crisis of Cities: Reinvention or Bankruptcy

Those who got out early (i.e. now) will be glad they acted promptly and those caught in the decline will regret their faith in a high-cost system that was no longer affordable or sustainable. 

Our confidence that cities are forever is misplaced. History informs us that cities arise and decline just like civilizations: cities decline when the material essentials needed to support their vast populations are no longer affordable or available in sufficient quantities, or when the economic benefits produced by the city no longer outweigh its immense costs. 

Let's start by reviewing why cities have been features of human life for thousands of years. 

Disappointing times

Divided City Council approves $51 million in migrant crisis funding
The raucous meeting saw speakers shouting each other down, prompting appeals for decorum from Mayor Brandon Johnson. In the end, the funds transfer passed 34-13 — enough to carry Chicago only through June 30.
By Fran Spielman




A tension-filled debate, filled with shouting and pleas for civility from Mayor Brandon Johnson, preceded the vote to approve transferring $51 million in funding to help the city cope with an influx of migrants.

A divided City Council agreed Wednesday to slap a $51 million Band-Aid on Chicago’s burgeoning migrant crisis after a cathartic and racially charged debate that reduced one member to tears.

The 34-13 vote will provide enough funding to carry Chicago only through June 30.

For Negotiation Purposes Only...Watch Beetlejuice take the bait

 "I was a Bears fan since I was born and even before then"

BEARS SIGN OPEN-ENDED PURCHASE AGREEMENT FOR ARLINGTON PARK RACECOURSE LAND FOR STADIUM

“We remain committed to continuing to work to keep the team in Chicago and have advised the Bears that we remain open to discussions,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement.

By Patrick Finley Sep 28, 2021, 10:56pm CDT


Three-and-a-half months after putting in a bid to buy the Arlington International Racecourse property, the Bears have signed a purchase agreement for the 326-acre plot, a mayoral spokesperson said late