Entries associated with the tag "Chicago":

David Hoffman, the city's inspector general, has called a press conference for 2 PM today to discuss the findings in a report by his office "that analyzes the City's decision to lease its parking meter system for 75 years to a private company."

I've got a feeling--to paraphrase the Beatles--that it's going to be a doozy.

We'll keep you posted . . .

Carl Sandburg died in 1967, so it's rather hard to know his take on the city's bid for the 2016 Olympics.

Nonetheless, one of our readers suggests (scroll down to the bottom) that the poet would support Mayor Daley's Olympic efforts, offering up Sandburg's classic "Chicago" as evidence of why we should plow on with plans to spend billions and chew up the parks. 

The lines supposedly in favor of the games come near the end of the poem, when Sandburg writes: "I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: / Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning."

Of course, his darker take on the town comes a few lines earlier, when he talks about "your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys" and "the gunman kill and go free to kill again" and "the marks of wanton hunger" on "the faces of women and children."

At the very least, I think it's unfair to write off Sandburg as some sort of bubble-headed booster, at least in comparison to Nelson Algren. In writing about "Chicago" and "The Windy City," another Sandburg classic, biographer Harry Golden notes: "Both poems make essentially the same point. While the city is a bold enterprise on the part of men, it is also an enterprise which corrupts natural emotions. For some, the corruption is almost total."

Sounds familar, doesn't it? 

Bob Kalebich, a 27-year veteran of the garbage business, recalls when interest in recycling first exploded in the 1980s. “Most waste haulers thought it was going to be a fad and didn’t get into it,” he says.

Instead, as Americans kept producing more and more stuff, recycling grew into a $236 billion-a-year industry that employed more than a million workers. As I’ve written before, the reasons are fairly simple: recycled materials are in demand because they tend to be cheaper than "virgin" products and thanks to technology the costs of sifting them out of the garbage have dropped considerably.

Last summer Kalebich’s employer, Allied Waste, one of the biggest waste companies in the country, opened a new plant in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood to sort and recover the wood, paper, metal, concrete, rock, drywall, and other stuff generated by area construction and demolition work. Demand for this material has swelled over the last few years—the use of recycled products helps qualify buildings for LEED certification and other "green" designations, which helps developers market them to environmentally conscious clients. 

And there’s typically a big supply of it. In recent years about half of the 8.2 million tons of waste produced annually in the city of Chicago has been C & D debris, as it’s known.

But since the economy tanked and construction slowed down—construction starts fell 7 percent in 2008 and are predicted to fall 39 percent this year—the plant has been receiving far less than the 1,500 tons it can handle each day. Kalebich says it has to pick up again at some point. “Right now it’s one of those ‘if you build it they will come’ things.”

Even so, it offers an example of how, in a slightly healthier economy, technology can make conservation economically viable. Here's how it's done.

Trucks dump C&D debris in the plant yard, where a crane scoops it up and drops it into a giant industrial shredder that chops it into smaller parts. From there it’s plunked onto conveyor belts that shoot it into the plant.

Inside, workers grab unusable junk off the piles—plastic rings, plastic bottles, bags, pieces of carpet or insulation. When operating at full capacity and handling lots of heavy material, there's work for 17 employees at a time. The whir and grind of machines requires a near-shout to be heard.

Lately the loads that have come in have been dominated by light material like cardboard, which is produced at the end of the construction cycle, another sign that the building industry is in a huge slowdown. But as Kalebich and operations manager Gary Dyke showed me around, heavier—and far more lucrative—material like concrete and rock came rumbling down the conveyor belts. Kalebich slapped me on the back and said I must be good luck. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked. “Can you come back?”

Workers also pull drywall and cardboard off the conveyor belts, but science handles much of the sorting. Magnets grab the iron and steel, and the “water bath” pictured above separates wood from rock and concrete by applying the simple principle that the heavy stuff sinks and the light stuff floats. After bathing, the wood is dried with a blower and sent to another shredder. The 4,500 gallons of water are reused for three to six months before being flushed.

The shredded wood falls into giant bins that will be trucked to companies that make mulch, wood chips, or fuel products. 

The mixed rock drops to its own conveyor belt. Eventually it’s crushed and sold to firms that turn it back into concrete or other construction material. 

Cardboard and other paper waste ends up in its own pile before being baled and shipped off for recycling.

The whole process takes less than ten minutes.

Good news on the Olympic front, at least for Chicago: the upper house of the Japanese parliament signed on to a plan to fund the 2016 Olympics if the International Olympic Committee awards them to Tokyo.

My condolences to the Japanese taxpayers.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., neither the city or the federal government has yet agreed to back the games. According to a recent Tribune article by Laurie Cohen and Kathy Bergen, this is supposed to be a bone of contention between Chicago's Olympic planners and the IOC, which wants the government (federal, local--any will do) to pony up. My suggestion to the IOC is to forget about Chicago and just give the games to Japan. 

In addition, the local Olympic opposition movement is gearing up. You probably already know about the April 2 rally--it starts at 5 PM at Federal Plaza (that's 50 W. Adams). But now they're going to have a march after the rally, moving north on LaSalle to City Hall and then east to the Aon Center, home of Chicago's 2016 Olympic committee.

"I'm going to pick up the permit for the march tomorrow," says Bob Quellos, a member of No Games Chicago.

I saw a city dump truck barreling down my street yesterday morning, scattering salt and clearing the snow. It's only a side street and there was barely an inch or two of snow to move.

Just a few weeks back, the city didn't bother clearing our street even after we got up to seven inches. To quote the great Bob Dylan, things have changed.

Don't get me wrong--I love my snow removal as much as the next guy. It's just that the mayor and his administration have appeared schizo when it comes to finances as of late. One day they say they have no choice but to cut snow removal services because the budget's hundreds of millions of dollars in the red, and the next they've got the boys clearing away every flake.   

I thought Mayor Daley would hang tough on his pledge to cut snow removal services, bolstered by the recent Sun-Times editorial that dismissed the gripes of residents slipping and sliding on icy streets as whiners who didn't appreciate the enormous sacrifices our city has to make. Maybe today's snow truck means the budget crisis has passed. 

An old pal who worked at City Hall used to tell me that the mayor's not all-powerful in the way I make him out to be. He said Daley was actually very sensitive to public opinion. If he feels he's gone too far--if he senses an electoral revolt on the horizon--he pulls back.

That's one theory. I'm not sure I buy it. I think the mayor could discontinue snow removal and garbage collection and the mopes in this town would still re-elect him. After all, in the midst of tax increases, fee hikes, services cuts, and layoffs, they're letting him get away with committing hundreds of millions for two weeks of fun and games in 2016.

Or as Bob Dylan said in Idiot Wind:"We're idiots, babe, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." 

Go see Milk, if you haven't already. On top of the captivating story and Sean Penn's brilliant performance, it features two Chicago references.

One is so obvious I won't bother mentioning it--just see the movie and you'll know.

The other is a little more subtle.

An underlying theme in the movie is the conflict between radicals and moderates in San Francisco's gay community in the 70s. The radicals, like Harvey Milk, have no patience for the bigotry and police brutality they face. They demand change--in fact, they expect nothing less.

The moderates--represented by David Goodstein, the well-to-do gay publisher of the Advocate--are much more cautious. Yes, things are bad, they acknowledge; but they warn against moving too quickly for change for fear of upsetting the powers that be. Watch what you say, Goodstein cautions Milk, or you'll get us all in trouble. And in time, if we're good, they'll give us some of what you want.

The movie champions Milk and scoffs at Goodstein. He's the butt of the jokes--when I saw it, people in the theater were laughing at him.

In reality, of course, it's much different. Here in Chicago, for example, most people are like Goodstein (if they're engaged at all): sucking up to an all-powerful mayor, afraid to say what they think, going along with his wasteful boondoggles--like the bid for the Olympics--for fear of getting in trouble.

It's hard to find any Harvey Milks.

When we--a city of sellouts--scoff at David Goodstein, we're scoffing at ourselves.

A couple of years ago First Ward alderman Manny Flores was confronted with what’s become a familiar problem in Chicago and other rust belt cities: the closing of a manufacturing company and the loss of dozens of union jobs. But due to innovative thinking, teamwork, luck, and, quite frankly, a lack of proven alternatives, the building that housed the plant, at 2545 West Diversey, was saved from decline—or condos—and converted into an incubator for sustainable businesses.

It’s too soon to say if the Green Exchange, as it’s known, will become a genuine economic engine, but its early promise has pushed Flores to become one of the City Council’s most outspoken advocates for investment in the new green economy—as well as for discussion about what “green” actually means.

Flores recently sat down for a chat about the Green Exchange, the prospects for green development in Chicago, and his political aspirations.
 

How did this come about?
Several years ago I remember watching TV, and it was either PBS or one of the public access channels, and it was a tribute to a local business doing well. And I thought, Wow, this is great—for once we’re getting news about someone in the manufacturing business doing well! Unbelievably, a month or so later, I got a call from the owners of the company. It was for a meeting. And I remember thinking, This is either going to be really good, or it’s going to be so bad. They came into my office downtown, and they were basically there to tell me about (a) the fact that they were closing their doors, and (b) to gauge my potential support for a zoning change for the purposes of converting that into a residential project. I was upset.

I started thinking about the program I’d just seen a month ago, and I even asked them about it: ‘Weren’t you guys doing good?’ And they said, ‘Did you see the end of the program?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t.’ Apparently they’d been talking about their challenges with competing with China, and the Chinese had started producing the same quality lamps but for a fraction of the cost, and they were just no longer competitive.

A task force was formed composed of workers of the Cooper Lamp building, the Teamsters, the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, the LEED Council, a neighborhood church, and residents. My office became part of it. At first no one envisioned the Green Exchange. It was more along the lines of, ‘Can we bring in another manufacturing facility? Can we convert that into a car dealership? Can we convert it into a grocery store?’ There was even a discussion about converting that building into a charter school for the trades.

Ultimately the property was sold to Baum Development. And then I met a guy named Barry Bursak who’s very tied in to the sustainability movement. Barry indicated that he was going to be opening a green furniture-making company, and he wanted to talk to me about finding space in the ward. The first thing that came to mind was Wicker Park—I’m thinking, the Milwaukee Avenue corridor, it’s like hipster central. And he said to me that he was concerned the rental prices and property values were a little out of his range. So I put him in touch with the Baum people.

They met. And something happened, because the next thing you know, I get a call and they’re talking about this exciting new concept and it’s the first of its kind in the country—why not just simply create a very large, self-sustaining green business community under one roof? And redevelop the building, retrofit it, in a way that it has some green building certification, create a Web site, create some cross-marketing opportunities for new entrepreneurs, and then take advantage of the capacity that they’re all creating for each other? The thought being that if you’re looking to go eat at a green restaurant, you’re more likely to be a conscientious consumer about the home-improvement products you’re purchasing. Or even perhaps do your financial services with a green bank—they’re actually putting a green bank in there.

 
Had you previously been interested in green business development?
It wasn’t just the fact that Barry met with Baum that made me realize the potential of green—it was the manufacturing plant closing its doors, and the impact that can have in a community. There were about 110 employees at the Cooper Lamp plant, most of them Latino and eastern European; for many of them English was a second language. One day they’re working, and all of a sudden they get a notice that their job is gone. And the only thing they’ve ever done is work on some assembly line putting together a component that eventually goes to making a lamp.

For me that underscored the need for confronting the challenge that other main streets are facing every day, and that is the erosion of our traditional manufacturing base. What are we going to do as a country, as a society, to respond? Do we just throw in the towel and say we’re going to convert to a solely service-oriented economy? I think we would be foregoing an incredible opportunity for a new age of prosperity, a new age of opportunity, a new age where working folks really have a chance for upward mobility again.

And now you want to make the Addison Industrial Corridor “green” as well?
We are undertaking a study with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the [Chicago] Department of Planning, the [Chicago] Department of Transportation, my office, alderman Eugene Schulter's office, and alderman Richard Mell’s office in trying to figure out how it is we can revitalize this industrial corridor and try to figure out its future uses. I’ve been trying to make the case that what we should do is take the approach we did with the Green Exchange.

Sometimes it’s just about branding, right? So let’s make a commitment and say this area is going to be designated a special green enterprise zone or sustainable industrial corridor. Let’s actually redevelop the corridor with green public infrastructure, getting the companies to be more energy efficient, and to also evaluate how it is that they do business from within—how it is that they treat their employees. What is their impact with their local community? And looking at opportunities of parlaying that into attracting companies that are, for instance, manufacturing wind turbines or solar panels. Someone’s studying algae as we speak right now and trying to figure out how to convert that into biofuel. We have to attract those places.

 
This all sounds promising. But to move any of this along you’ve had to call a bunch of people and get them together—all the layers of politics and bureaucracy. Is this the only way it can happen, one block or project at a time?

I think the way it germinates is by spreading the word about this kind of activity. Then you get into some kind of competition, but it’s a healthy competition—how can we outdo each other at making the earth healthier?

Now, just down the street, east of here, is Lathrop Homes, which is an old community. The way it’s laid out is progressive for subsidized housing, but the reality is that it needs to be rehabilitated. It’s also a community where, notwithstanding everything around it, there is concentrated poverty. So given that it’s going to be redeveloped from a 900- to a 1200-unit complex, I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really implement the principles we’ve learned about sustainable urbanism. At Lathrop Homes we’re looking at the opportunity perhaps to come up with a new way to deliver energy. We may even try to reuse energy—how do we use reuse and recycling within the development of the community? And how do we make sure the residents are fully empowered and fully engaged in the process? Because of their proximity to one another—Lathrop Homes, the industrial corridor, the Green Exchange—we could develop a very powerful synergy and really serve as a model.

 
How much support do you get from the Daley administration on this? I know there’s a certain level of interest in going green, but there are also obstacles on the way, whether it’s budget deficits, a push for the Olympics, or something else.

The biggest challenge I’ve seen is in the coordination of the activities that are being undertaken by the Department of Environment and the Department of Planning and then our activities. The departments are doing some exciting things, and I think it’s unfortunate that not enough attention is given to them. Now what we need to do—and this is where I get frustrated—is to collaborate more with the legislative body and not to work in these silos where this exciting information and these exciting projects are not necessarily allowing for the engagement of others, or the collaboration of others.

Before we wrap this up: Are you running for Congress?

I haven’t made up my decision yet, but I’m seriously considering it.

 
You don’t live in the Fifth Congressional District, right?

I don’t, but I grew up in the district. Now, first and foremost, I am still alderman of the First Ward. Part of the ward is in the Fifth District. But I feel I need to be certain about why it is that I would want to run for Congress. I have been talking with my wife about it, and I’ll have to make a decision soon. I strongly believe that the residents should decide who their next congressman is. What I hope doesn’t happen, whether I’m in it or not, is to have the committeemen basically foisting a candidate on them.

 
Not that there's any history around here of—what did you call it?—'foisting.'

You like that? I paid $100,000 for my legal education.

The Chicago City Council has been moving at a breathtaking clip to sign off on a series of deals forged by the Daley administration that involve billions of dollars--to slash city services and raise fees; sell off public assets; and turn a south side hospital site into a housing complex for the 2016 Olympics. The scale of the deals, and the council's relative lack of scrutiny of them, appears to be unmatched anywhere in the United States.

That said, other city governments have found their own less-than-ideal ways to deal with budget problems, redevelopment slowdowns, and annoying laws against payoffs and backroom deals:

* The New York City Council just approved Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to hike property taxes 7 percent--the kind of bad news Mayor Daley said he was saving Chicago from with his own "bad-news budget." On the other hand, New York's tax increase is, more precisely, a repeal of an earlier property tax cut.

* Los Angeles, facing its own massive budget deficit, is cutting back on police overtime, library book acquisitions, and sexual harassment prevention programs. And it's borrowing money to pay a $20 million lawsuit settlement--a figure dwarfed by Chicago's legal payouts.

* The city council of Kansas City, Missouri, found more than $20 million during its own tough budget times to help a big development project that's already getting another $44 million in tax increment financing assistance.

* In the kind of move that Chicago pols mastered ages ago, several members of the Atlanta City Council are taking a little heat for accepting donations from connected local businesses and using the money to throw parties and "play Santa" with voters whose support they need for re-election.

* The council of Port Angeles, Washington, may have evaded the state's Open Meetings Act when it apparently hired a new city manager--replacing the one who'd recently quit because of "untenable, hostile work conditions--behind closed doors, then held a public meeting to rubber-stamp the decision.

This message from Jesse Jackson Jr.'s office landed in his supporters' inboxes earlier this evening:

"As a responsible citizen and elected official, Congressman Jackson has in the past provided information to federal authorities regarding his personal knowledge of perceived corruption and governmental misconduct. This was completely unrelated to the current federal investigation regarding the U.S. Senate appointment. And it is absolutely inaccurate to describe the Congressman as an informant."

Of course, that's exactly how he's been described in news stories across the country and beyond since Channel 7 reported last night that Jackson first spoke with the feds months ago about the wheeling and dealing of governor Rod Blagojevich.

For the umpteenth time in the last week, I'm left with the profound question: WTF? The statement from Jackson spokesman Ken Edmonds doesn't clear a whole lot up; now we have a defensive clarification of a story that already sounded a lot like an attempt by Jackson's camp to pull him out of the muck he's been wading through since last week.

Maybe this was an instance where the cure was as bad as the ailment.

Jackson has said he's not a target of a federal investigation and hasn't been accused of misconduct. In fact, the criminal complaint [PDF] against Blago had two counts, neither of which involved the Senate seat. 

But politics is as much about perception--about the public's confidence in someone--as it is about the law or government. As an elected official, you don't really want to have to call a press conference to explain that, no, actually, you're not being watched by the feds. And I don't think it's that much better to have to come back and dissect the meaning of "informant," let alone your "personal knowledge of perceived corruption." Fairly or not, lots of people will draw a conclusion from all of it: This guy's up to his neck in something, and I don't like how it smells.

Whether the Senate seat is filled by appointment or election, Jackson's chances of getting it are shot. Instead, he's going to need to take good care of his district over the next year; the kind of news he's been in the middle of lately tends to generate primary challengers. But if he does have extra time and energy, maybe he'll pay some attention again to City Hall--given the pace and scope of deals going down there recently, a little political grandstanding from someone who doesn't report to the administration can't hurt at all.

Then again, Jackson can take comfort in what happened to another City Hall pol questioned about his knowledge of corruption by the feds: he was re-elected with more than 70 percent of the vote.

While you were away following the governor's legal problems, a few other things have been going on.

* The city doesn't have enough money for its usual snow and ice removal, but this morning it's asking the City Council's Committee on Finance to approve "A communication recommending a proposed substitute ordinance concerning the authority to acquire property located at 2929 South Ellis Avenue"--that is, an $86 million deal to buy the site of now-shuttered Michael Reese Hospital with plans to turn it into the Olympic Village.

* The finance committee is also set to authorize a $2.5 million payout [PDF] in another police-related lawsuit. 

* Through mid-December, homicides in Chicago are up from 421 last year to 487 in 2008, the Sun-Times reports, and violence continues between cops and civilians--at least two more civilians were shot by police between November 30 and December 11 (14 others were shot in the three-month period from July through September, according to the Independent Police Review Authority), and a civilian shot a cop at the end of last week. Meanwhile, the police department is moving ahead with plans to arm officers with assault rifles, and the City Council's Committee on Police and Fire will meet this week with one item on its agenda [PDF]: an ordinance approving the donation of a used ambulance to Ghana.

* The Illinois Gaming Board, made of Rod Blagojevich appointees, appears to be getting ready to hand out the state's tenth casino license. The matter is on the agenda [PDF] for the board's meeting Tuesday.

* Former governor and current inmate George Ryan decided now was the time to issue a public apology to the people of Illinois, and in particular the Willis family.

* Illinois is one of several states running out of money for unemployment insurance.

Every three months city officials present a report to aldermen detailing their efforts to build and preserve housing for low- and moderate-income families. During the last few years they’ve been the bearers of pretty good news—through taxes and other programs, the citywide development boom yielded millions of dollars for “affordable” housing—and the council hearings were dominated by debates over who was doing a greater job of making it happen.

Needless to say, times have changed.

At the housing committee meeting Thursday aldermen still had plenty of praise for housing commissioner Ellen Sahli and her department, and committee chairman Ray Suarez still defended the Daley administration’s record even when it wasn’t being attacked. “Chicago has probably, in my opinion, the best housing plan of any city,” he said.

But the economy and housing crisis are obviously having an impact. Since the beginning of the year, Sahli said, the city has earmarked about $129 million to build affordable rental housing, $124 million for single-family homes, and another $14 million for preserving existing housing; the city anticipates that it will have set aside a  total of $378 million before the end of 2008. But that would be down significantly from last year’s total of about $661 million, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Chicago Rehab Network.

The need, of course, has gone in the other direction. Chicago had a shortage of rental housing even before people started losing their homes in staggering numbers--10,268 foreclosure filings [PDF] in 2006, 13,872 in 2007, and 13,799 this year just through just the end of October [PDF].

While some of the properties may have been resold and reoccupied by now, thousands are vacant and boarded up. Over the last several months aldermen, police, and other community leaders have been worrying aloud that the empty buildings are already pulling down neighborhood property values and contributing to crime, especially in parts of the south and west sides where the foreclosures are clustered.

Sahli told aldermen that some help is on the way from the feds: $55 million expected to arrive early in 2009 as a result of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program passed by Congress last summer. The money will go to buying and rehabbing foreclosed properties and putting them back on the market for low-income families. City officials say they'll focus on 25 neighborhoods with the highest foreclosure and subprime mortgage numbers.

But Sahli warned that the money won’t go as far as it might sound—the value of the property foreclosed in Chicago in 2007 alone was $1.2 billion; the entire stabilization program has just $4 billion to allocate nationwide. “We have to be strategic about how we use our resources," she said, "and magically turn $55 million into a whole lot more.”

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it turns out that Republic Windows and Doors--the north-side company whose abrupt shut-down has spurred a labor takeover--received about $9.6 million in public funds from our always-generous mayor and City Council.

The money came in the form of--what else?--a tax increment financing subsidy approved back in 1996. It was intended to help the company develop its Goose Island facility. That would be the same facility where dozens of Republic's employees have gathered for the last several days to protest being laid off with only a three-day notice--and without the vacation or severance pay required by law. 

The company said it had to suddenly halt operations because the Bank of American had cut off its line of credit. Bank of America received some $15 billion in federal assistance--with $10 billion more on the way--as part of the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, aka the banking bailout bill.

So the company gets a TIF handout from the city. And the bank gets a handout from the feds. And the workers get kicked in the teeth.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Five aldermen voted against the parking meter lease deal [PDF] Thursday, and one of them, the 32nd Ward's Scott Waguespack, sent constituents an e-mail message this morning blasting the agreement as a big money loser for the city despite the $1.2 billion cash infusion it provides. Here's the message in its entirety:

On Thursday, the City of Chicago signed a 75 year lease of our citywide parking meters with  Morgan Stanley/Chicago Parking Meters LLC for $1.15 billion.

I voted against the sale of this public asset because it was a bad deal for Chicago.

On Monday, we received word from the Mayor's Office that a deal was to be signed with Morgan Stanley. While I did receive the draft ordinance, no financial analysis was forthcoming, so my staff and I put together our own financial analysis to determine if the $1.15 Billion was a good deal or not.

According to our analysis, the city would receive about $1.5 Billion if we sold as is.

If we quadruple the prices of some meters, as Morgan Stanley will do on January 1, 2009, and increase again by 2013, our analysis shows that the actual value over 75 years is closer to $4 Billion.  

During the Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday, I argued that the city was not getting a good deal, and that at a minimum the Council should see the City's numbers. They instead argued our numbers were wrong (without having seen them). I was then told I could see some numbers, but not before the vote. That refusal to provide financial data sealed my NO vote.

Morgan Stanley and LAZ Operators will raise meters from $3/hr to $3.50 Jan.1, and to $6.50/hr by 2013. Neighborhood parking rates that are typically $.25/hr increase to $1/hr on Jan. 1 and increase to $2 by 2013. After 2013, the City must raise rates by a yearly inflation rate to meet contract requirements. The City still receives the increased revenue from enforcement, but the parking meter revenue stream is lost for 75 years.

While the City receives a quick shot in the arm of $1.15 Billion, I believe the alternative; a long term revenue stream from well managed City owned meters would have been a better deal for parking meter users and taxpayers. Selling a major asset that is designed as an urban planning traffic tool while providing a positive revenue stream is simply wrongheaded.

Furthermore, the fact that we fail to maintain a decent cash reserve for a city our size is awful, and I argued during budget hearings that the FY 2009 $1.5 Million reserve (one point five million) was further indication of the need for major structural reforms in the city finances.  (This week's snowfall cleanup cost us about $500,000 for one day, and it is not yet 2009.)  

As expected, the full City Council signed off on Mayor Daley’s plan to lease the city’s parking meters to an assortment of private interests led by Morgan Stanley. Since word of the deal first emerged—a whole three days ago—the dramatic fee hikes that will result have pissed off people around the city.

But as annoying, and potentially burdensome, as they are, they’re not half the story. A few other points worth reiterating:

·        This is the second time in two months that the city has leased—for the better part of a century—a revenue-generating, publicly owned asset to a for-profit entity. And before the meters and Midway Airport, the city handed off the Skyway and downtown parking garages. More of these agreements appear to be on the way.

·        No hearings were held to gather public input on any of the deals.

·        The City Council took less than a week to examine and consider the meter deal—as with the one for Midway.

·        The only financial analysis offered to the City Council or to the public was the one provided by the Daley administration.

·        City officials told aldermen this week that they haven’t determined the names of individuals behind many of the interests making up the bid-winning partnership, known as Chicago Parking Meters LLC.

·        The administration has not released the number or names of any of the meter lease bidders except for the winner, nor the figures they bid.

·        Chicago Parking Meters LLC will have “supplemental enforcement” power—that is, the authority to write parking tickets. The city will keep the money from ticket payments.

·        The city still has the right to remove meters or even lower rates, but it would have to return some of the money.

·        As a matter of sustainable public policy, experts say it’s a wise idea to tax driving—if the money is going to be invested in alternative forms of transportation. This money isn’t.

·        Much of the $1.2 billion from the deal will be spent in the next few years:

o       City officials say $400 million will be set aside to cover the revenue the city will lose by turning over control of the meters; if this money collects 5 percent interest, it will produce $20 million annually, which is about what the meters now generate. But this assumes a consistent interest rate and doesn’t take into account the gains in revenues the city could reasonably expect by raising meter fees between now and 2084.

o       $325 million will go toward balancing city budgets through 2012.

o       $100 million will go into a “human infrastructure fund” that will help pay for existing social programs.

o       $324 million will be poured into a “budget stabilization fund”—also known as a “rainy day fund.”

Earlier today the city's Department of Law handed aldermen copies of the accompanying flow chart (click on it to make it bigger) to provide them with some "clarity" on what business entities would be assuming control of the city's parking meters under a proposed $1.17 billion privatization deal.

Needless to say, it didn't exactly clear things up. 

"Can anyone understand this chart?" finance committee chairman Ed Burke asked his colleagues. No hands went up, though it was eventually suggested that various Morgan Stanley entities appear to have the largest stake. A few minutes later another alderman dropped a copy of the chart in front of me. Across the top he'd written "CLARITY."

Of course, the committee still ended up signing off on the ordinance [PDF] that authorizes the deal. More on how and why shortly.

We know it'll cost more to park on major city streets, and lots of minor ones as well. What's not certain is whether the parking meter lease deal is good one for taxpayers. The mayor and his administration argue that it is; next the city council will have the chance to weigh in. But the whole billion-dollar agreement could be wrapped up as soon as Thursday morning--just three days after city officials first viewed the bids on it. Here's the timeline of the deal:

Friday, February 8, 2008: The city issues an RFQ inviting firms to bid on leasing the meters. Chief financial officer Paul Volpe says it's a way "to be innovative in our approach to managing city assets." Final bids are due December 1.

February-March: City officials review initial application information submitted by potential bidders to determine whether the firms are qualified. The city won't say how many bidders were rejected, how many were accepted, or how many were involved altogether; that won't be released until the deal is approved and underway.

Thursday, August 14: Volpe announces that the city faces a $420 million budget deficit. The figure grows to nearly $500 million in the coming weeks as revenues from real estate transfer taxes dry up. 

Wednesday, October 8: Less than a week after most aldermen were first briefed on it, the City Council votes 49-0 to approve the Daley administration's $2.5 billion deal to lease Midway Airport.

Wednesday, October 15: Mayor Daley releases his 2009 budget, which he hopes will be balanced, despite the city's "financial challenges," with hundreds of layoffs, service reductions, cash from the Midway deal, and an anticipated $150 million infusion from a parking meter lease deal.

Wednesday, November 19: The City Council approves the administration's budget, with some line-item changes, by a 49-1 vote.

Monday, December 1: It's the due date for the lease bids, and even though city officials are supposed to be looking at them all for the first time, they move quickly to establish that a deal's in place. "We open the envelopes and the winning bidder is the highest bidder," budget department spokeswoman Lisa Schrader explained later. Of course, the City Council needs to sign off before any agreement goes into effect. Early in the work day--at 8:34 a.m.--a staffer for 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke, chairman of the City Council's Committee on Finance, submits an agenda [PDF] to the city clerk's office for the committee's December 3 meeting. It has one item on it: consideration of the parking meter lease deal. At 3:03 p.m. the clerk's office receives a letter [PDF] from Mayor Daley calling a full meeting of the council for December 4 "for the sole purpose" of taking up the lease deal. Also that afternoon officials begin leaking news of the deal to City Hall reporters and Mayor Daley calls a press conference for the next morning to provide details.  

Tuesday, December 2: Daley, Volpe, and other city officials announce a spinoff of Morgan Stanley, which in 2006 leased the city's downtown parking garages, will pay the city $1.15 billion in return for 75-year control of the parking meters. Rates will start going up in 2009 and may climb to more than $6 an hour within five years. 

Wednesday, December 3: The Finance Committee will meet at 10 a.m. If precedent is any indication, aldermen will have questions but the deal will be approved. 

Thursday, December 4: The full council will meet to consider the lease deal. Same deal with precedent. Some aldermen will probably wonder, as they have before, if the city will find anything to lease in 2009, given that Daley has predicted $200 million deficits for each of the next several years.

Whatever your feelings—whatever your understanding—of the various government bailouts under way or on the table, it should be increasingly evident that that the country’s economic problems are multilayered (that is, complicated as shit); and that rescuing various Fortune 100 firms may accomplish a lot of things, but it simply won’t do enough to help the millions of people and thousands of neighborhoods already devastated by job losses and foreclosures.

New Yorker writer Peter J. Boyer’s revealing and heartbreaking “Eviction,” the story of 90-year-old Addie Polk’s mortgage troubles in Akron, Ohio, illustrates why and how this is true, and puts it in sobering context: “By the end of June, there were 2.4 million homes in foreclosure or prolonged delinquency, accounting for 4.5 per cent of all mortgages in the country—the highest level ever recorded.”

Closer to home, the Chicago Rehab Network’s latest analysis finds that this city alone experienced 12,861 foreclosures from January through September, leaving some blocks on the south and west sides pockmarked with boarded-up buildings—and thousands of families forced to find other places to live in an already tight rental market. If you click on any of the monthly reports, you’ll see that some of the lenders doing the most foreclosing are also the ones asking for the most help from the taxpayers.

Not coincidentally, Chicago has at least 13,000 more unemployed people than it did in January. And that doesn’t include the people who’ve stopped looking for work.

Economists stress that the bank and lending bailouts are necessary to keep the credit markets from closing up. Without money to borrow, businesses can’t make investments that result in hiring people.

Makes sense. But I’ll state the obvious and point out that people need to work now, not just in a few months or years when loans come through. President Bush’s last stimulus plan—sending out checks—didn’t do much to get the economy moving; Barack Obama’s, whatever it ends up being, may not be the answer either, but something else has to happen.

Just before aldermen began debating the Daley administration’s 2009 city budget last Wednesday, Mayor Daley himself looked completely unworried about its fate as he stood in the lounge behind council chambers, telling stories and joking about state and national politics with a group of reporters.

He had reason to feel relaxed about the vote—aldermen ended up approving the budget 49-1, and even some of his frequent critics went out of their way to praise his leadership during rough economic times.

Of course, before voting aye, they also complained and worried aloud for a couple of hours—and nothing seemed to bug them as much as the much-panned new levies on alley Dumpsters.

One alderman after another stood and said the new fees—which would run between $80 and $780 a year for each Dumpster—would be passed on from waste haulers to their customers, thus amounting to an onerous tax on commercial and large residential buildings during an economic downturn. “I have a major problem with the Dumpster tax,” 41st Ward alderman Brian Doherty said in a typical assessment. “It could really hurt smaller businesses.”

But that wasn’t enough to keep Doherty or any of the others from voting to approve it. Doherty noted that the tax wasn’t scheduled to go into effect until April, and he hoped that before then it would be amended or scrapped by a new subcommittee that Ed Burke had promised to form (in a late-hour maneuver designed to get budget skeptics on board, though Doherty didn’t mention that part).

While others made similar arguments, alderman Helen Shiller, of the 46th Ward, went even further, arguing that the subcommittee shouldn’t limit its scope to the Dumpster tax. “Unless we include in this discussion the importance of reusing our waste, making sure that as much as possible of it is recycled, looking at how necessary it is, how it’s impacted, how people are actually doing it, how we can do it better than we’ve been doing it, unless we look at the markets for it, we cannot see the whole picture.”

None of her colleagues responded directly to her remarks, and in an interview, Shiller said she was frustrated that more political and business leaders don’t see how the city’s garbage is tied to its economic future as a potential capital of a green economy. “We are uniquely situated in the city of Chicago—we have the knowledge base, we have the transportation systems, we have the land, and we have the financing potential,” she said. “Think about what would happen if we just looked at the reuse of glass. One problem we have right now is that restaurants and businesses say no one wants to take anything [to recycle] but paper. But if we can create a business that uses glass, we can create jobs that won’t go away.”

Shiller speaks from more than enthusiasm—more than a year ago she helped launch a pilot program in her ward aimed at increasing recycling in a variety of high-density residential buildings, which are served by private-sector waste haulers. She said most of the buildings that participated—20 formally, dozens of others informally—dramatically improved recycling rates and saved money on garbage collection because their recyclable “waste” ended up being valuable. The keys to collecting it efficiently were getting building managers and waste haulers to work through logistical problems such as where the recyclables should be stored, then making sure building staff and residents were educated about the process. “It’s an issue of creating the demand, being a catalyst, and getting people to do it,” Shiller said.

She and First Ward alderman Manny Flores recently proposed an ordinance requiring developers to create space for recycling collection in any new residential building with more than six units. And in a few weeks, she said, she hopes to share a “tool kit” with other high-density buildings around the city to help them replicate what’s worked in her ward. “People keep saying to me, ‘Why isn’t the city doing this?’ Well, the city’s never going to do it.” The city should require and enable people, she says, but they're going to have to do it themselves.

Markets for recyclable commodities have dropped in recent weeks because demand for the materials from Asian manufacturers has sunk—which is itself a result of Americans buying less stuff. Shiller said that’s why Chicago needs to create more businesses that use the commodities right here. She also notes that landfill space in Illinois is declining, and the cost of trucking garbage to landfills depends with the price of fuel.

All of which leads back to the debate on the Dumpster fee. In a sense, it should encourage recycling, since only garbage bins will be taxed; some aldermen have even been making this argument publicly. But its primary purpose is to create short-term revenue for the city—an estimated $9 million next year.

Over the summer, the city proposed a radical reorganization [PDF] of the city’s private waste collection system and trumpeted the new plan's environmental benefits. Shiller said she’s not opposed to the idea, since it’s her understanding that similar waste franchising systems have worked in smaller cities and suburbs. “I understand the desire to lesson the impact on our alleys, and to find efficiencies,” Shiller said. “But the other reason it got pushed out so quickly was that it was seen as a revenue source.”

But Chicago officials announced their plan before they’d sold political or business leaders on it, and it didn’t go over well—at all. The city withdrew the plan pending further discussion.

“That’s how we ended up with the fee on Dumpsters,” Shiller said. 

This just in from New York: "A new wind is blowing in Chicago."

According to a New York Times article by former Tribune scribe Jeff Zeleny, Chicago "is basking in a moment of triumph."

The main reason, of course, is that the country elected Barack Obama president.

But there's more: "A spire is finally poised to be placed atop the Trump Tower here, bringing the skyscraper to 1,361 feet, the tallest American building since the Sears Tower was built three decades ago."

Also, "a new Modern Wing for the fabled Art Institute is set to open next spring, including a Renzo Piano bridge to Millennium Park."

And a whole bunch of famous locals--Rick Bayless, Scott Turow, Jeff Tweedy--think Chicago's a wonderful place to live.

Look, I like Chicago too. And I was overcome with joy on election night as well. But, c'mon, people, let's be real-- a new wind? To me, it looks, smells and feels like the same polluted gusts.

Yes, Trump built his tower, but the downtown condo market is so soft that even the great Donald is having trouble peddling the units.

And, true, a nice new bridge will soon connect the Art Institute to Millennium Park, which, by the way, was so over cost that we had to sell a bunch of parking garages [scroll down]  to pay off the bills.

Even as president-elect Obama marches off to Washington to change the world--with Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod in tow--Mayor Daley and his hacks are cutting up the underfunded spoils of their seedy little empire.

In the race to replace Emanuel, they're conniving to figure out how to muscle out the only true independent, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley.

In the city council, they're staving off bankruptcy by booting more cars, increasing fees on garbage collection, and holding back on hiring new police officers.

Mayor Daley's dream to expand O'Hare Airport all the way to Alaska, or wherever, is stalling because, like pretty much everyone tried to warn him, the airlines are too broke to pay for it.

To fund the proposed Olympics--another big-ticket mayoral dream we can't possibly afford--Daley sold Midway cheap (I'm starting to think the Indians got a better deal for Manhattan), and continues to siphon property tax dollars away from our cash-starved public schools.

We still have public school kids running in hallways because we still don't have one indoor public running facility; and they're planning to kick the softball teams, tennis players, joggers, nature lovers--in short, ordinary, taxpaying park users--out of Washington Park to free it up for an Olympic stadium. Just as the mayor and his minions continue to look for new ways to loot the TIF accounts to move the masses out of the near south side.

Have I mentioned our world-class public transportation system? As I write this, the train that runs outside my house has stopped. I'm sure there's a good reason, though at the moment it's not apparent. The conductor is looking out the window. Wait, wait--an update.... The train's moving, at a crawl. Ah, yes, high-speed rail comes to Chicago. Oh, by the way, the CTA is raising its fares.

In short, it's business as usual in Chi-town: treachery, back-room deals, bad planning, wasteful spending, land grabs, and robbery of the poor to benefit to the rich. Sweet home, Chicago.

The more I think about it the more I realize Obama was smart to get out. He realized it would easier to be elected president than clean up this town. 

When city officials first made their pitch for bringing an exclusive franchising system to private garbage collection in Chicago, they pointed to several other municipalities [PDF]  that they said had boosted their recycling rates, cut garbage disposal fees, and reduced emissions from garbage trucks after implementing similar plans.

They didn’t bring up the example of St. Louis County—and understandably so.

To be sure, the layout of the unincorporated areas around St. Louis is far different from the city of Chicago’s. As are the politics, the demographics, the economics, and probably many other factors.

But a recent editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows that the county offers a telling example of another sort—how a decision to impose a franchising system over and above the opposition of waste haulers and residents has created a confusing, costly mess.

Chicago’s plan has prompted a wave of concerns that something similar could happen here. When Chicago Department of Environment commissioner Suzanne Malec-McKenna testified during City Council budget hearings last week, several aldermen bluntly told her they weren’t on board with the new proposal. She promised that it was by no means in its final form, and reiterated the point in an interview this week.

“While there’s been consternation and misinformation and confusion about the whole thing, over the last two months we’ve gotten tremendous input from hospitals and retail associations, et cetera,” she said. “We’ve now taken that information and we’re back with their suggestions and saying, ‘Okay, if this is an issue, how do we work with it?’ So our next step is to bring back the representatives of all those organizations, including the National Solid Wastes Management Association, and our goal in the next phase is to have a set of meetings with all the representatives and talk through what we’ve come up with and see if there are alternative ways to do it.”

The conversations will likely continue at least through the winter, but Malec-McKenna emphasized that the city is committed to the goals if not the specifics of its proposal. “Who knows what it’ll end up looking like, frankly,” she said. “But I can’t see that anybody who will say they’re opposed to increased recycling and decreased costs for consumers--well, there may be some people opposed to that--and improved environmental impact. It's kind of a no-brainer."

They're having a reverse political insurrection in New York City, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg teaming up with leaders of that city's council to do away with term limits so they can run to stay in office for at least another four years.

Their main argument is that only one man in all of New York -- Mayor Bloomberg -- has the brains, experience, fortitude, etc, to lead New York through the tough times brought on by Wall Street's current volatility.

Ironically, I was always a little envious of New York City precisely because it had term limits. In fact, if not for term limits, New Yorkers might have been stuck with a third term of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who, if you recall, tried to postpone his departure from office on the grounds that he was the only man with the brains/experience/fortitude/etc to lead New York through tough times brought on by 9/11.

Meanwhile, here in Chicago, we would never even dare to imagine term limits. It's assumed that only one man -- and you know who that is -- can be mayor, which is why we we're apparently willing to put up with, among other things, waste, scandal, and the selling off of assets.

Tread carefully, NYC. 

There was an Olympic rally on the south side this morning, but it wasn't like the rallies staged by Mayor Daley.

Instead of bringing in out-of-town celebrities to join the mayor's chorus -- Olympics good, Olympics good -- the newly formed coalition Communities for an Equitable Olympics raised the possibility that maybe, just maybe, staging the games in 2016 wouldn't be such a hot idea for Chicagoans.

It was a glorious sunshiny morning, and many of the leading south-side community organizations were there: the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Action Now, Centers for New Horizons, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

Facing a horde of reporters and camera crews, they stood on the steps of Michael Reese Hospital, at 2929 S. Ellis, which the city -- as busted as it is -- is preparing to replace with a 37-acre development that could serve as the Olympic Village.

Think about this for a moment. The city's $400 million in the red, we're in the midst of a crisis in low-income health care, and the condo market's soft. But the mayor's gearing up to sink $85 million into a 7,500-unit condominium complex that will take the place of a hospital.

For the moment the activists are playing things diplomatically. "We're not here to hurt the Olympic bid," said Denise Dixon, a member of Action Now. "We're here to enhance it."

The coalition wants to force the city to sign a "legally enforceable benefits agreement" that would, among other things, guarantee that as much as 20 percent of the units in the Olympic Village development would be affordable for working-class and poor people who currently live in the area.

At the risk of sounding like the jaded old coot that I am, I don't know why they would trust any promise that the city makes when it comes to affordable housing. As best I can tell the whole point of the Olympics -- other than putting an international spotlight on the mayor -- is to move the poor people out of the south side.

I can only hope that if the city turns down the residents' demands they'll move to plan B: opposition. I say the sooner they get there the better. Until Mayor Daley can show how he would pay for the games -- other than with property tax dollars -- we shouldn't be spending millions to try to have them, 'cause we can't afford them.

When I think about it, there should have been people from the north, northwest, southwest and west sides at today's rally as well. After all, tax dollars are coming out of their pockets too.  

This just in . . .

Not only are we not Detroit, we're now the new Nashville!

Yes, that's right, Chicago's emerged as the political capital of America. It wasn't easy. We had to overcome Nashville and Little Rock. But, darn it, we did it!

And we owe it all to Mayor Daley because -- everyone together now -- our mayor is responsible for all that is good in the universe. Even Barack Obama.

So one more time: Thank You, Mayor Daley. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Over the last few years, Mayor Daley's boosters (like his father's) have had one standby response (see comments below posts) to any criticism of his reign: without him, we'd be Detroit.

It's a curious response. I know it's code for something, but I'm not sure what. I mean, of all the cities to compare Chicago to, why Detroit? Why not, oh, I don't know, Minneapolis or Seattle or Toronto?

Do the mayor's supporters really believe that whatever differences may exist between Chicago and Detroit come down to Mayor Daley and his leadership?

If so, what exactly has Mayor Daley done to keep Chicago from becoming Detroit?

For that matter, are there parts of Chicago that actually are like Detroit?

If so, why hasn't Mayor Daley helped them?