I arrived at the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) headquarters at 10:16 a.m., sixteen minutes after the meeting was scheduled to start.  I know this because the security guard swiped my drivers license and created the time stamped, bar coded, photo-bearing pass shown in the blog photo. 

So, I was late to the meeting. The conference room/board room has a very formal layout.  The Trustees sit in a row at a slightly curved long table outfitted with microphones. Behind them, hung from the ceiling are two large screens on which the proceedings are projected.  Facing their table is a long straight table at which the City College Presidents sit.  Monitors hang over this table on which the proceedings also appear.  Surrounding these tables on three sides are rows of chairs for the City College employees and the public. 

I think I was the only “public” there today.

When I arrived a faculty representative was in the middle of her presentation critiquing a new poster campaign urging one and all to report “waste” to the CCC Inspector General. The concern was that “waste” was not defined in any policy statement and so the campaign could become a witch-hunt.

Halfway through the agenda the Trustees went into executive session. Leaving all of the Presidents and the other forty or so CCC top administrators with what turned out to be about thirty minutes of chat among yourselves time.  Doing the math I figure about twenty-five hours of highly paid time was being wasted during the executive session break.

My suggestion to the Trustees is that they have their executive session at the end of the meeting like some of the other boards do. That way the employees can go back to work.

The most interesting part of the meeting for this first time attendee was a presentation of the findings of a study of a remediation program being tested as part of the reinvention process for CCC.  The study seemed to show that under-prepared students who participate in a series of tutor-led, Socratic-style, eight person remedial sessions augmented by computer-assisted instruction are able to improve their academic performance.  Was this a surprising outcome? Too bad the Chicago Public Schools can’t provide this sort of learning/teaching experience to its tens of thousands of students.

The most startling thing I was told today by a couple of people at the meeting: The Chicago Public Schools don’t have a general performance goal of, for example, making sure every student is college or trade school ready when they complete high school. Really?

When I left the building I asked what happens to the information they gathered when security swiped my drivers license. I was told the info is deleted at the end of the day. Hmmm.

I arrived at City Hall this morning after the Council meeting had started and the second floor Chamber was already full. So I had to sit in the cheap seats in the third floor balcony where you get to look down on all the Aldermen and the Mayor.

The public comment period started with the members of the public deemed important speaking first. These are the people whose time is deemed to be valuable by the powers that be so they get to speak first and do not have to sit around and listen to the hoi poloi.  Today’s VIPs included Laurence Msall, President of The Civic Federation; Jerry Roper, President and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce; Robert A. Wislow, Chairman of the Chicago Public Library Foundation and Sara Paretsky, award winning mystery writer. 

Msall and Roper expressed the support of their respective organizations for the budget. And then answered very well thought out questions from the assembled attentive Aldermen.  These new alderman really want to be legislators.  Y’a got to love it.

Wislow and Paretsky delivered inspirational testimony on the importance of libraries and urged the Aldermen and Mayor to reject the proposed budget cuts to the Chicago Public Library. The audience applauded loud and long after their presentations. The Aldermen asked no questions of these two.

The hoi poloi included employees and users of the public libraries, executive directors of mental health facilities that will lose funding; and patients of said mental health facilities.

Eighth Ward Alderman Michelle A. Harris presided over the hearing.  She was very fair and even-handed. She became a little flustered about procedure when Sara Paretsky wanted to read a letter from an author not physically in attendance and she had Ms. Paretsky agree that she would fill out testifying witness form on behalf of the letter writer.

The only person Alderman Harris got testy with was Burt Natarus, former Alderman of the 42nd Ward, who took the floor and rambled on and on about his youth in the Great Depression, World War II and Bernie Stone and how neither of them wanted to leave the city counsel.  Alderman Harris attempted to get him to stop and he snapped at her about how she had never said hello to him in four years. And she retorted with something and then suddenly Alderman Austin replaced Harris as the presiding officer and Burt was gone.  It was a flashback/déjà vu of how the City Council used to be before so many of the old hacks quit or got voted out of office.

I used my two minutes to oppose the reductions in the library budget, to posit the immediate reopening and renovation of the Lathrop Homes as a way provide housing for the homeless and to raise the concern that increasing the water rates and fixing the whole water system was being done to facilitate the privatization of Chicago’s water system.

 My best line was, “Libraries are an essential service in a democracy.”

The Mayor was not in the Chamber for any of the public testimony I heard before I left at 2:00 p.m.

Today at lunch I met with a colleague from the  Lathrop Leadership Team.  I am very concerned about what the City of Chicago and the Chicago Housing Authority have done to the Lathrop Homes and the Lathrop community over the past ten years.  Below are my remarks to the Board of Commissioners of the Chicago Housing Authority presented at the Regular Meeting held March 15, 2011, at 8:00 a.m. at Seward/Stanton Park-Cabrini Parkside, 375 West Elm Street, Chicago Illinois. I'll be making some of the same points if I get a chance to speak tomorrow during the public comments portion of the City Council meeting.

Good morning Commissioners.

My name is Rachel Goodstein.

In 1978, I moved west of Halsted to the then scruffy area called DePaul.

In 1992, Dan Cotter, now the retired CEO of Cotter and Company/True Value Hardware, recruited me to be a member of the Board of Managers of the Julia C. Lathrop (now the Daniel A. Cotter) Boys and Girls Club.

From 2002 to 2004, I served as president of that board.

I have been part of the Lathrop community for twenty years.

I am here to congratulate your predecessors who got it right eighty years ago when they built the Lathrop Homes.

I am here to urge you to show the same wisdom as your predecessors and repopulate, rehab, and renovate the Lathrop Homes just as you did at Lathrop’s sister property, the Trumball Park Homes on the south side.

Lathrop as it was designed and was being managed is the Transformation!

Lathrop has always been well located: surrounded by market rate private housing, near educational and park facilities, close to jobs, and  served by bus routes.  Lathrop has green space, recreational facilities and community services.  And Lathrop is historic.

But under recent management, over the past ten years, Lathrop has needlessly been transformed into a ghost town.  That’s wrong!  That’s shameful!

The CHA has deliberately set the stage for “waste” (That’s a real estate law term.) of publicly owned real estate.  Lathrop is being emptied because it is well located on desirable land. It is being set up to be a land grab.

The CHA is not fulfilling the mission of the CHA to provide housing for those in need.  There are homeless in Chicago and you, the CHA have emptied habitable units for no reason.

At Lathrop the CHA is setting the stage for a land grab. Turning a public asset into private gain. That is not your public mandate.

Your mandate is to provide housing.

So here is a simple solution. Renovate and rehab Lathrop just like you did the Trumball Park Homes.

As a citizen, as a taxpayer, as an advocate for good government I urge you to act with wisdom as your predecessors did. Repopulate Lathrop. Renovate Lathrop. Rehab Lathrop. Be really truly green and preserve Lathrop.

Thank you.