I was planning on going up to Rogers City this week but I’m staying in Chicago because a REALLY BIG meeting is coming to my ‘hood. The City Council’s Rules Committee is staging public hearings on the new ward maps currently under review. And one of the hearings will be in the 43rd Ward, my ward, this Wednesday.
When I ran for alderman each ward had just under 58,000 residents. With a nearly 200,000 decrease in Chicago’s population from the 2000 to the 2010 United States Census, if we keep 50 wards the population of each ward would be about 54,000 people.
But if there are fewer Chicagoans shouldn’t there be fewer Aldermen.
Doing the math, if we keep the size of each ward at 2000 population levels (58,000) we would need 3.5 fewer Aldermen.
But lets round up and make it 4 less so there would only need to be 46 wards. That would save the city/taxpayers the expense of four aldermen which would be approximately two (2) million dollars per year.
And that money could be used to keep the libraries open.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
When I ran for alderman each ward had just under 58,000 residents. With a nearly 200,000 decrease in Chicago’s population from the 2000 to the 2010 United States Census, if we keep 50 wards the population of each ward would be about 54,000 people.
But if there are fewer Chicagoans shouldn’t there be fewer Aldermen.
Doing the math, if we keep the size of each ward at 2000 population levels (58,000) we would need 3.5 fewer Aldermen.
But lets round up and make it 4 less so there would only need to be 46 wards. That would save the city/taxpayers the expense of four aldermen which would be approximately two (2) million dollars per year.
And that money could be used to keep the libraries open.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.