Checking the Chicago papers on line at the library I read that Lori Healey (pictured at left) and the NATO host committee were “shocked” that the Feds were going to beef up security around in the section of the Loop that contains lots of Federal buildings.

The Feds are calling it “Operation Red Zone”. According to the printed report of a WGN story, “federal law enforcement will wear “battle” gear and carry weapons that shoot bean bags.” (Is there really a weapon that shoots beanbags?  When I get back to Chicago I’ll have to go to the “Red Zone” to check this out.)

Well, I’m not surprised that Lori and the gang are surprised. Their performance at Mercy Hospital earned a no-confidence-in-their-preparations vote from me.

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At the Fair Board  meeting last night we discussed having a cash raffle this year instead of raffling off a prize.  Last year they raffled a tractor. But the consensus seems to be that a cash raffle would appeal to a broader audience.

One of the groups I’m involved with up here is the Wacky Weeders. 

We are a group of volunteers who meet Wednesday mornings and help out the Public Works Department by maintaining plantings/gardens in the city parks, the Presque Isle Historical Museum and the 40 Mile Point Lighthouse. We are guided by Deb Stiler a local artist who sends out an email every week so we know what we will be working on.

We meet at 8:30AM and by about 10:00 we finish up our gardening and all go off and have breakfast at Karstens, a wonderful dinner on the Third Street.  (During the winter, the Wacky Weeder walks on Wednesday weather permitting and then go and have breakfast.)

Today we prepped the soil in the wildflower garden which I think is technically part of North Shore Park. There are nine parks in this town of 3,000 people. Amazing.

The Wacky Weeders are a fun group. helps keep Rogers City the cleanest neatest city I have ever seen!

Then at noon I went to the lunch meeting of the Zonta chapter.  Our snowbird members are starting to come back north so we had a good turnout. 


This just in from Chicago.  The City Council did approve a revised version of the Infrastructure Trust ordinance. Though there was strong dissent again.

We lost a few of the no votes from the Finance Committee, Aldermen Cochran, Dowell and Lane.  But we picked up a few others. So the “Magnificent Seven” who voted no were: Bob Fioretti (2nd); Leslie Hairston (5th); Toni Foulkes (15th); Ricardo Munoz (22nd); Scott Waguespack (32nd); Brendan Reilly (42nd) and John Arena (45th).

So that means, at some point TEN Aldermen said no to the mayor on this issue.

I’m Up North in Rogers City, Michigan.

So, I’m missing the action on the Infrastructure Trust ordinance in the Chicago City Council.

But I am still living civically. 

I got into town last Friday (April 20) just in time for the meeting of the Ad Hoc Growth Committee of the Rogers City City Council.  I am on the Committee and we are working on no and low cost initiatives to promote this wonderful town on the shores of Lake Huron.

I am working on an initiative to develop relationships with the travel writers/editors at media in Michigan.

Then, tonight I’m going to the Board meeting for the Presque Isle County Fair.
I on the Board and we are busy reinventing the Fair.

While I’m up here I rely on the local branch of the Presque Isle Public Library for computers.  So my postings will probably be shorter.

I submitted the following letter to the editor to both the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune.

I attended the entire Finance Committee meeting on Monday and yesterday’s City Council meeting. I applaud the Aldermen who during the committee meeting asked pointed questions on behalf of their constituents and who exercised their political power to produce the legislative delay.

Here are four of my questions regarding the private investor-public infrastructure plan being considered by the City Council.
(1) If the impact of a one-time summer event, the 2016 Olympics, required public meetings in all fifty wards doesn’t a privatizing investment infrastructure program with potentially multi-decade financial implications deserve the same public examination and input?

(2) Why is the structure being contemplated called a trust? What legal definition is being used?

(3) Can anyone explain how public assets/infrastructure can generate revenue/income/returns to satisfy private investors without requiring user fees of some kind for the public’s use of the public assets/infrastructure subjected to the private investment?
(4) The only example of the kind of private investment contemplated by the proposed investment plan cited during the committee meeting by the city’s Chief Financial Officer was the construction of a toll way near San Diego that turned out to be a boondoggle bust. Is there a positive (i.e. good for the public and the investors) example of this kind of infrastructure investment plan?

High drama at the City Council.

The Infrastructure Trust ordinance was “DNP’d”. Deferred and published. A parliamentary procedure used to delay consideration of a matter to the next meeting.

The story is who “DNP’d” the ordinance. It was the Mayor’s guys, Alderman O’Connor, the Mayor’s floor leader and Alderman Burke, Chairman of the Finance Committee.

We thought that a couple of the dissenting Alderman would have the guts to do it. But the mayor finessed the situation by having his people delay it.

More on this later.

Yesterday there were BIG issues at the Chicago City Council Committee on Finance.

First, the refinancing of the debt for the City’s acquisition of the Michael Reese Hospital site. 

Back in 2009 when Richie Daley was Mayor and he had a dream of bringing Olympic gold to the developers of Chicago, we the taxpayers of Chicago doing business under the name City of Chicago BOUGHT the Michael Reese Hospital to be used for the 2016 Olympics.

The most we should have done in 2009 is bought an option to buy the property IF we got the 2016 games.

But Richie had to outright buy the site and enter into a multi-million dollar contract to demolish the buildings. No biggie, except the site was the only site in this architecturally proud city of buildings designed by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus.  I think one of his still exists but the rest are rubble. ARCHICIDE perpetrated by Daley.

From a press release on the Preservation Illinois website:
“The only hospital building scheduled to remain—at present—is the Singer Pavilion, a 1948 structure co-designed by influential architect Walter Gropius. Seven other Gropius buildings, along with a dozen other structures and landscapes were demolished by PBC (Blogger’s note: this is the Public Building Commission mentioned in my April 10 entry) in late-2009 and early-2010. This action prompted the National Trust for Historic Preservation to call it one of the “worst” preservation stories of 2009. In December 2009, the Illinois Sites Advisory Council (IHSAC) had voted unanimously to forward a National Register nomination for the hospital campus to the National Park Service (NPS). However, this did not prevent the city from undertaking demolition, since no federal funding was involved.”


This digression was just to set the stage for today’s political drama. The current aldermen being asked/told to approve the renegotiation of the debt.  Some of them asked questions and they balked and the item was tabled for another meeting. 

Too bad a majority of them didn’t balk back in 2009 when we could have avoided buying this site and destroying architecturally significant buildings.

But the REALLY BIG STORY of the day was the five hour long session devoted to the mayor’s ordinance to create an Infrastructure Trust to use private investment in some undisclosed ways to fix our public infrastructure.

Chicago is in bad financial shape. Richie Daley is in good financial shape. These two situations are connected.
The so-called  “corruption tax” of the Daley era has been estimated to be in the range of $500 MILLION A YEAR.  Well, if you multiple $500 MILLION A YEAR times the number of years in the Daley dynasty (even just the reign of Richie Daley) you have to hear the late Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.”

All those $500 MILLIONS didn’t get used to keep up Chicago’s infrastructure. 

So now we are poor and the roof leaks. What to do? Find international financiers to “help” us on terms to be disclosed later, or maybe never, whichever comes first.

Well, some Alderman are asking smart questions about the mayor’s ordinance.  And they don’t like the wishy-washy answers coming from the Mayor’s Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Scott.

Ms. Scott and her legal advisors were the only people who presented scheduled formal testimony at this committee meeting on a piece of legislation that would change how infrastructure could be funded.

I found this odd because this ordinance will affect all the sister agencies.

(Quick name them, like the Seven Dwarfs or Santa’s reindeer—Chicago Housing Authority, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Park District, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools)
 
And none of them were there to give testimony.

In my own brief testimony I noted the absence of the other agencies. And opined that there absence must means something.

Nine people provided testimony as members of the public. (I.e. not invited or scheduled by the committee to speak.)

Some of the Aldermen actually asked questions. They quizzed both Emily Miller, Policy and Government Affairs Coordinator for the Better Government Association, and Julie A. Roin, the Seymour Logan Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, about the application of the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act to the proposed ordinance. The answers Ms. Miller and Professor Roin gave conflicted with those of the Mayor’s CFO. 

The committee did vote 11-7 to pass the ordinance but there was strong dissent:
Brendan Reilly 42nd;
Leslie Hairston 5th;
Pat Dowell, 3rd;
Lona Lane, 18th;
Willie Cochran, 20th;
Ricardo Munoz, 22nd;
Scott Waguespack, 32nd.
Dissent strong enough to seek to block the ordinance in the full City Council meeting.

Participated in the Lathrop Leadership Team planning session this evening. 

Working on an up-coming teach-in.  Details are hush hush to surprise the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). So I’ll have a report after the event.

Taking it easy to day.

I went to the City Council Committee on Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation.

I picked this one because the agenda filed on March 30, 2012 and available online indicated that there would be a resolution credited to the 1st Ward recognizing the work of Timothy “Tim” Mitchell as Superintendent of the Chicago Park District.

Tim has been part of the former Daley administration in lots of positions.

He became the Superintendent after the illegal destruction of Meigs Field so I got to see him at a lot of meetings about the issue. 

But when I got to City Hall there was a new agenda and the recognition item was deleted.

The big issue was the vote to allow the selling of tickets for the seating in the Petrillo Band Shell in Grant Park during the Taste of Chicago. The resolution passed. If you want a real seat you’re going to pay twenty-five bucks. 

The lawn is still free.

I set a personal best for public meetings attended in one day. FIVE.

10:00AM Chicago City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate

I picked this one because the committee was going to rubber stamp the Mayor’s appointment of Harriet Johnson to be a Commissioner of the Chicago Housing Authority. She is a long-term Chicago Housing Authority employee and will complete the unexpired term of the late Hallie Amey. The term ends July 7, 2014. Johnson, a systems administrator, has been with the CHA since October 2010.

No surprise, the Committee, chaired by 31st Ward Alderman Ray Suarez, approved the appointment.

I am involved in the campaign to preserve the Lathrop Homes so the composition of CHA’s Board of Commission interests me.

11:00AM Chicago City Council Committee on License and Consumer Protection
 
This one made my list because my alderman, Michele Smith (43rd Ward) introduced “02012-1368, an ordinance to amend Section o4-60-023 of the Municipal Code of Chicago to disallow additional alcoholic liquor license on portions of West North Avenue.”

(Michele and I both ran for Alderman in 2007. Her campaign asked me to drop off the ballot. I didn’t. With four of us running against the incumbent Michele made it into a runoff in 2007 and lost. Michele ran again for the open seat in 2011. Once again Michele made it into the run off. This time she won. And the combined cost of her two campaigns were in the neighborhood of three quarters of a million dollars.)

Turns out Michele’s legislative initiative is intended to keep alcoholic sales out of the little strip mail near the el stop at Sedgwick south of North Avenue.  Folks in need of a little somethin’ before riding the el will have to stop at the Walgreen’s a few blocks away.

1:00PM Community Development Commission

This is the group that determines/rubber-stamps the allocation of TIF funds. The TIF’s generate $500 million or so a year.

The agenda item that caught my eye was  350Green LLC, a Los Angeles company, seeking $800,000 in TIF funds for the redevelopment and leasing of space at 2500 West Bradley Place. This location is near WGN’s facility.  (Not an area I think of as blighted.)

So, taxpayers are subsidizing the rent of this company that got a $1.9 million contract in 2011 from the City of Chicago to pay for part of the cost of installing 280 electric vehicle charging station (73 DC fast-charge units and 207 Level 2 charging stations) that 350Green will own, operate and maintain.   The fast chargers cost a user $21 for three 15-minute sessions.

Level 2 stations are free.  FREE? How do these 350Green people get FREE electricity to pass on to there customers?  Maybe it isn’t really free; maybe it’s sorta subsidized by taxpayers thru TIF gifts.  I guess it ain’t cheap for the taxpayers to be green.

2:30PM Public Building Commission (PBC)

I really like this one. All of the Head Honchos come together to review and agree upon building things. The Mayor presides.

Most interesting item to me was the Cook County Forest Preserve seeking $300,000 for Building Needs Assessment and Preventative Maintenance Plan Services Project. $300,000 is chump change for the PBC.

What ought to be amazing about this expenditure it that such study hasn’t been done before/yet. But then you have to know/remember that the Cook County Forest Preserve has been THE preserve of patronage since its inception.

6:00PM NATO Host Committee at Mercy Hospital

Mercy Hospital located at 2525 South Michigan is the closest hospital to McCormick Place where the NATO Summit will occur in May.

A friend who lives in the south Loop invited me to accompany her to the presentation by the Lori Healey, executive director of the NATO host committee and representatives of the police, the security consultants, and the office of emergency management featuring dogs and ponies and smoke and mirrors.

The audience was comprised of people who live and work and own business right near McCormick place.

They had direct specific questions like which streets would be closed, what would public transportation be for their employees, how would marchers/protestors be disbursed from the area even if their actions are all peaceful.

The answers were not so detailed and seemed to minimize the possibilities for bad stuff to happen.  I don’t have much confidence in Lori et. al.

I took time off form public meetings to attend a continuing legal education (CLE) seminar. The state of Illinois requires an attorney to complete a minimum of thirty hours of continuing education during each two-year period. The deadline for me is June 30, 2012. 

So, I spent the middle of the day learning about “Legal Issues with Music Festivals”. It was the most enjoyable CLE seminar I have ever attended.  These were the topics: “Legal issues with the band”, “Legal issues with the venue”,  “Legal issues with the Chicago Park District”, and Legal issues with the proceeds”.

The dullest was the Chicago Park District piece. The most interesting was the presentation by Frank Nicotera, In-House Counsel, Milwaukee World Fest, Inc. (a/k/a Summerfest). He had the best stories to tell and he gave away free tickets to Summerfest.