Lincoln Park Zoo

Beirut in Chicago: who's responsible?

2010-07-23T03:00:00.011-05:00

1:30 a.m.: The dark spot in the photo at left is just a small pool of stinking urine in the alley behind Allende Restaurant at 2221 N. Lincoln Ave. this hot summer night. I estimate that's the urine of about 20 guys (and probably a couple of gals). Normally, when there is no police presence back there, on a warm July night you will observe a much larger and more malodorous sea of urine, running across the entire driveway -- easily the effluvia of 80 to 100 intoxicated young people, concentrated in a 10' x 10' area. Tonight, police responded to several calls when someone was also seen smashing cinder blocks there. Normally, they don't have time to deter the hundreds of urinators who stroll back there three to four nights a week.

This was at 1:30 in the morning. In the very middle of Lincoln Park, supposedly one of the finest residential neighborhoods in the world.

And not two minutes after the three police cars responding to this mess left, people again began streaming into the alley to relieve themselves, because there is noplace else to go. Police apprehended a young Northeastern University pre-law student who lied through his teeth about it to try to avoid the ticket. He's learning fast.

Is it the young man's fault that there is so much urine in the alley? He is only responsible for what he did, yet he will pay a very high price. Allende Restaurant will never be ticketed for not letting its paying customers use their bathroom (though they can be). Is this their fault? They certainly don't want to clean up after these kids missing the bowl and vomiting everywhere. But they sure are profiting from it all, selling tens of thousands of dollars of burritos a week here at their two locations on the street.

Is it the bars' fault? They certainly aren't ever being ticketed for regularly violating fire code, filling their bars beyond bursting and illegally pumping patrons with $2 Bud Light specials, never stopping until they're puking everywhere. And they're making far more money than Allende.

Is it 18th District Chicago Police Cmdr. Angarone's fault? His officers are stretched to the limit. Mayor Daley insists on cutting police staff. The commander now rotates a single detail car from Lincoln Avenue, to Weed Street, to Webster Street on busy nights. There's just not enough money to go around.

Is this the SSA's fault? Commissioners doling out the money from the Special Service Area surtax on these blocks (which I opposed and still oppose) turn a deaf ear to pleas to stop spending residents' taxes on Chamber of Commerce brochures and flowerpots, and to start spending the bars' money on security, porta-potties, and trash pickup.

But then why would they do that? The SSA was created by the Chamber of Commerce and alderman, originally prompted by Sam "John Barleycorn" Sanchez and Bobby "Kelsey's-Kendall's-Kincade's" Burleson, two of the most successful bar owners in the city. They created and effectively run the SSA, bilking residents out of additional taxes and spending the money to benefit -- big surprise! -- themselves, and Lincoln Avenue residents and small businesses are none the wiser. Is it their fault for being clever enough to know a good opportunity when the see one, clever enough to find just the right way to quietly cheat other people?

Oh, they can't claim that I don't try to get involved -- I asked several times to be placed on the SSA commission and they bent over backward to find others, because they knew I would be a strong dissenting voice in how they spend our money. Sam "John Barleycorn" Sanchez -- who created the tax so that residents can foot the bill to beautify the neighborhood for his own drunk customers -- is an SSA commissioner. Here's an excerpt from the Janary 2010 Lincoln Avenue SSA meeting minutes:

"Sanchez explained that he employs one person to clean up around his Wriggleville [sic] bar after Cubs games and that one person is able to clean sufficiently."

What does Sam's comment tell us? It tells us that in Wriggleville, Sam (properly) has to pay to clean up all of the trash and vomit that his patrons spew on the sidewalk in front of his extremely profitable bar. But at his Lincoln Avenue bar, clever Sam Sanchez can wriggle out of his responsibilities and make residents and small businesses foot the bill. Isn't that just brilliant?

(You can read all of the minutes at http://www.lincolnavessa.com/. There's some interesting stuff in there. A minimal level of transparency is one concession I managed to squeeze out of these thieves with great difficulty. But if residents don't have time to watchdog these crooks, they will get away with whatever they want despite the transparency. Neer Patel, whom I helped get onto the commission as the residential representative -- can you believe that, they had to be coerced to get a resident commissioner on a tax that is being paid 84% by residents? -- doesn't seem to have any objection at all.)

Is this all Sam's fault for being such a shrewd businessman? Residents of Lincoln Park sure think his restaurant's great. And so does Ald. Daley, who holds many of her fundraisers there.

Or is this Gina Caruso's fault? Gina's a high-level commissioner at Chicago's Department of Community Development. Gina and her pal Brad Leibov, another perky city planner, first came up with the sneaky idea of taking a simple statutory tax like the SSA (normally for basic infrastructure, like paving roads) and repurposing it to prey on the greedy instincts of filthy-rich bar owners and cash-strapped chambers of commerce. It's the same thing Daley's clever whiz-kids did with TIFs, except these are on a mini-level that aldermen can fully control.

So, is it Ald. Vi Daley's fault? Vi is the one who has repeatedly ignored my requests for help on these things. Five years ago, I had a meeting with her and (very nicely) asked her for trash cans on Lincoln Avenue and additional lighting in the alley. She completely ignored me, perhaps because I didn't offer her a big campaign contribution at the same meeting. That usually gets a lot done in this city. Instead, she pushed the SSA tax through and packed the commission with her friends.

When, defeated on the tax issue, I made repeated requests to use much of these extra taxes for security services, porta-johns, and trash cans, they giggled and spent it instead on dozens of $800 cast-iron streetlamp flowerpots -- just what Sam Sanchez wanted for Christmas.

I really don't know who's responsible for this. All I know is that it's now 4 a.m. on Friday morning, and Vi Daley's sleeping soundly on Hudson Street while my son and I are wide awake on Lincoln Avenue. The screaming continues outside, and it will go on tomorrow night and the next night.

Vi, maybe you can tell me who's responsible for all of this.

P.S. Here's a tidbit from the end of the minutes of that same January, 2010 SSA meeting, regarding re-election of the commission:

"Sanchez expressed that he is planning on building a new restaurant and needs less responsibility. Patel asked if there were any term limit issues. Dineen explained there were none. Proposed 2010 officers are: Patel-chair; Quartana-vice chair; Simkus-treasurer. Motion to approve 2010 Lincoln SSA #35 officers. Motion seconded. Motion unanimously approved."

Let's set aside the little detail that the SSA is supposed to have five commissioners. Note two things: that multimillionaire Sanchez will momentarily step away from the SSA duties, though he certainly knows just what a powerful, unregulated cash cow this is. But, even more importantly, SSA officers get to re-elect themselves, with no term limits! Now, who came up with that clever idea? It sounds like something the mayor himself could have cooked up!

No big surprises this Sunday morning

2010-05-02T08:55:00.006-05:00

Last night, I walked into the back alley and saw Officer Porrata scrutinizing an (alleged) pisser's license. "Where did you say you were coming from?"

"Uh, way over on Clark Street, Sir, at The Wiener's Circle. I was just walking through here."

"Uh, no," I said. "I just saw you in front of MaxBar not 10 minutes ago, mister. He's lying to you, Officer."

"No, honest, I'm not!"

But that's hardly unusual here. I pointed to my neighbor's garage; the entire driveway was wet with what must have been gallons of urine (I'll prove it with candid video next week). "Did you do all that?!"

"Ha, no, I swear, I was just walking through..."

Officer Porrata let him go. Punish one pisser? What's the point? Another 20 will come tomorrow. I bundled a blanket and a pillow into the car and slept in Vi Daley's neighborhood, where it's quiet. (Really, I did. I slept very well. I've started doing that on Friday and Saturday nights.)

This morning I saw in Oz Park that some clowns had pulled down branches on not one...

but two trees in the parkway. The lady passing with her poodle was surprised when I explained that there had been no lightning last night, that humans did this. But don't be surprised, not here in Lincoln Park after midnight. I've seen people chop down entire trees here on the sly. A couple of years ago, an entire 35-foot city-planted Elm was chopped down in the middle of the night right in front of the very busy Soiree sleezebar at 2438 N. Lincoln. Just a day before the Taste of Lincoln Avenue! That's a crime. Could it have to do with the fact that the tree was totally obscuring the bar's beautiful sign? So, since Ald. Daley and the 19th District did absolutely nothing about that, I can't imagine anyone's going to be very concerned about this.

Oh, here's another little gift, a sign knocked over on Lincoln Avenue. No car impact mark or dent (that would suggest a drunk driver, also no big surprise here); clearly, a few young turks just rocked it until it bent over. A few weeks ago in this spot, there was a big fight, so the bedlam is spreading now that the police coverage has been more dispersed. Just another lovely case of vandalism in this the most sought-after neighborhood in the city. No big surprises this morning on Lincoln Avenue.

Mailbox update

2010-04-30T14:06:00.006-05:00

James Yoo from Congressman Quigley's office informed me that the mailbox at Lincoln and Webster has finally been cleaned of vomit.

I attach a photo of the evidence, sent to me by James Yoo.

It's been about six months. I'm not thrilled with the response from any officials. Vi Daley's office did call the post office. But Congressman Quigley's office followed through when I reminded them of the problem. Nothing happens in this city without follow-through. Thanks to the alderman and the congressman for their efforts. And thanks to me for my efforts, since I don't expect anyone else to thank me. I think I'll treat myself to some Dairy Queen.

If you've got the stomach for it, you can see the original condition in this post.

(P.S. To the genius who e-mailed me suggesting I clean it up myself, I certainly would have -- I've cleaned up many gallons of vomit from this street in the past -- except I would have soaked a boxful of mail and been arrested by the Feds for tampering with government property at the same time.)

Dear Cmdr. Angarone and Ald. Daley: "Where you at?"

2010-04-25T03:10:00.013-05:00

I don't know where to begin. Abraham and I were about to enjoy another blissful Kankakee night with the rest of his Cub Scout pack, under a pelting rain, just like the night before. But a Chicago cop broke it up: the 18th District's Chris Kaporis happens to be our Cubmaster, and he had to end our second spring campout early due to severe thunderstorms. Talk about the long arm of the law; this is a novel way for a peace officer to extend his jurisdiction beyond the city limits.

Still, I wish he hadn't done that, because it forced us to spend a Saturday night on Lincoln Avenue, with our 13 neighbors -- the 13 bars who attract thousands of screaming, vomiting, urinating, brawling, vandalizing, drunk-driving "people" several nights a week. The bedlam doesn't let up until about 4:30 a.m. on Saturdays. Even spending a thunderstorm in a tent would be better. I couldn't sleep tonight in Chicago to save my life.

Cubmaster Chris, please tell me this wasn't a conspiracy from Alderman Daley's office!

I won't go into the regular report, of urinators screaming outside my window; officers yelling at citizens instead of at the drunks who assault them; and of course the magical flying garbage, since Ald. Daley insists the entire block share the one trash can I managed to squeeze out of her stingy ass several years ago. (She punished us for that by levying a special SSA tax on residents on our block. Now, we foot the bill for cleaning the street up after the bars close. See this Reader article for background.)

Anyway, I won't go into all that. You can read the blog archives and newspaper stories. But, take a look at the latest result of this administrative towing mess, through this video:

The police officer is Sgt. Egan, who came in to direct the taxi traffic (that's what the towing was supposed to be for). The video was shot this morning at 2:46 a.m., about three hours after the entire side of the street had been cleared of dozens of cars by city tow trucks. Here is one truck taking away two cars around 11 p.m.

After the police did this, causing the city to rack up over $2,000 in towing and tickets, its scorched-earth effort had a minor effect for only about half an hour.

But I noticed that not long after midnight the parked cars had already returned.

As you can see, by the time the intended taxi lane was most sorely needed, the curb parking that was supposed to have been cleared was totally full with cars again. A complete waste of time -- and guess who pays for it? The people whose cars were towed. "We're doing our best," Egan told me.

Egan is right: the cops did their best. They only have a five-hour window for towing under the provisions that Cmdr. Angarone is using. But the signs are criminally bad, innocent people are getting unfairly ticketed and towed, and it's not helping at all. But Cmdr. Angarone wants to use the temporary signs as a permanent fixture. Not a bad idea, assuming he wants his head handed to him by angry constituents.

You know, they spend so much time directing traffic on the street that the more I think about it, the more I feel that all of this attention on traffic and taxis is more of a consolation to the drunk barhoppers and the bars themselves than to community residents. After all, how is it helping them cope?

Now, like our street-cleaning signs, the chintzy paper signs are simply unfair, no matter how diligent you are about them. The ambiguity and lack of clarity of these signs is infamous for everyone but the city itself, as it rakes in millions.

The commander's instruction may go through about five people before it ends up being different on the street. The first weekend (see this post), I pointed out the obvious legal ambiguity of writing "4/2 to 4/3 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. The next week, after the commander and I spoke, he made them clearer, with "4/9-4/10 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m. AND 4/10-4/11 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m.". At least it was legally more explicit, if still a bad long-term idea. Now we're in yet a third phase of ambiguity: "4/23-4/25 9 p.m.-3:30 a.m." So, is that 4/23 9 p.m. through 4/25 3:30 a.m., or just two nights? Who knows? Theoretically, all of these tickets should be thrown out because of the ambiguities, but they won't be.

Hundreds of innocent people have been towed on this block this month alone. A few Victory Gardens theatergoers are up in arms. Restaurant patrons enjoying a late dinner didn't notice the signs and got towed. Residents of the block's largest condo association met about this. Three business owners are complaining that it is scaring away customers. And, yes, some drunks have been towed. But they are all innocent of the problems here, which were created not by them, but by the 13 bar owners who control this area -- and they aren't paying a penny for this and aren't affected one bit.

The worst part about it is that this is not solving any problems. They are caused by a combination of reckless bar owners who are overcapacity and overserving, and the fact that the police and the alderman are not handling these problems systematically. In fact, I see less and less of the one entertainment detail on this block. My guess is they are being spread too thin, having to handle other areas far away from here.

This area needs more cops, not less. It needs true crowd control (think Millennium Park and O'Hare Airport, barricades, security everywhere). We need one police or street security officer for approximately every two to three bars on the block (that makes 4 to 6, not the two that we never see anymore). We need permanent, clearly marked signs for taxi lines on both sides of the street, probably starting halfway up the block, where the bars are.

We need enforcement of the 10 a.m.-10 p.m. restaurant and bar patron bathroom access law, and at least two portajohns for the rest of the time. We could use strategically placed barricades. We need plenty of garbage cans on the block. We need bars to get warnings and shutdowns for overcrowding and overserving -- all of them do it on this block. Most of all, we need a public meeting on the bar situation here.

But these are simply things that the people on the block, and Bob and Al, the longtime officers of the 1885B police detail, have been asking for close to a decade. The alderman has done absolutely nothing. The police commanders tend to respond, invariably with unimaginative blitzes of enforcement that do nothing for a long-term solution. Pissers, bar warnings, towing, ticketing. A day later, the problem returns. Maybe, despite the millions that the mayor squeezes out of us, he just doesn't give enough to the police to do what needs to be done here. But I see attention paid in other places, so why not here?

Last night at about 3 a.m., as usual, some loud drunk was pissing right on my window (which had been kicked in last week). With his other hand he had his phone to his ear. "Where you at?" he asked his buddy. He kept yelling, "Where you at?" My son turned fitfully in his sleep.

And I find myself wondering out loud to Cmdr. Angarone and to Vi Daley: "Where you at?" Why don't you provide some real help? Why don't you listen to us? Are you both sleeping well?

The law must be unambiguous and clear

2010-04-03T21:32:00.010-05:00

Anyone towed by the 43rd Ward on Lincoln Avenue (or elsewhere) this weekend, based on the "notice" (I use the term loosely) shown, has a case if they wish to pursue it.

The two most central legal arguments in cases like this are: (1) ignorance of the law is not a defense, but (2) the law must be clear and unambiguous.

You can't say, "D-uh, I never heard of such a thing as towing cars, so therefore I'm not at fault." We are presumed to know the law, as convoluted as it is today. But, from the other side, the law (and the signs, which are law) must, must, must be crystal clear. If you can find any hint of an ambiguity, you have a case.

Let's set aside the woefully inadequate signage, these little slips of white cardboard wrapped around trees that pass as information. If someone misses one of these -- often, they're poorly posted, torn off, etc. -- then it's unlikely you're going to get sympathy from a hearing officer, who probably has a two-car garage.

But, in this case, they were towing cars Friday and Saturday night. The signs say, "NO PARKING -- APRIL 2 & APRIL 3 -- 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m." Now, what exactly does that mean? Is it just the evening of April 2 from 9 a.m. to April 3 at 2:30 a.m.? (They did, by the way, tow cars last night, April 2.) Well, that's how I read the sign when I saw it.

Or is it also tonight, from 9 to 2:30? (They are towing cars again tonight.) If you had your car towed Saturday night (April 3), it is understandable that you be annoyed by the confusion, and you have a solid legal argument, because it is utterly ambiguous.

The signs should read, "APRIL 2, 9 P.M.-APRIL 3, 2:30 A.M. AND APRIL 3, 9 P.M.-APRIL 4, 2:30 A.M." to satisfy a minimum call for clarity.

(I happen to be safely parked on the other side, so I'm not concerned about this for myself. My time too surely will come, so I'm being vigilant. Often, they post these things just a few hours before.)

I spoke to Rich Mahutsky, the 43rd Ward staffer managing this, and pointed out the ambiguity. "It's perfectly clear," he said. "There's nothing ambiguous about it, they're parked here illegally and they're being towed," and he turned around and continued to tow cars.

I've informed Alderman Daley about this problem, but, as is typical, I don't anticipate her taking any position or doing anything proactive to resolve it. Hey, it's just a few working people out a few hundred bucks, and deprived of one of their most valuable pieces of property for several days. Not enough to force her to feel any remorse. She makes over $100,000 a year, you see, and she has a two-car garage.

You can learn more about the nasty habits of the city's parking and towing complex, and techniques to protect yourself, from my longtime friend Parking Ticket Geek, at his site, http://theexpiredmeter.com/.

"It's Nothing, Dear, Just the Weekly 2:45 a.m. Riot"

2010-02-28T03:33:00.008-06:00

Yawn. Got woken up at 2:45 a.m. by two guys having a loud and lively conversation while pissing on my bedroom window. That's something that happens every few minutes most nights, along with the screaming, arguments, vomiting, and rampant petty vandalism. Just try to get back to sleep, say the police and alderman. If they break another window, give us a call. Ho, hum. But then I went outside and found this riot. That happens only every two or three weeks. Well, until summer comes, that is -- and then it's every few nights.

And you thought Chicago's Lincoln Park was a nice, quiet community! The 2200 block of Lincoln Avenue has 13 bars. Several nights a week, more than 1,000 drunk young people mill around this block when the bars all close at once. Come have a drink with us! Come vomit on the manicured sidewalks of our beautiful neighborhood!

This is about how much ruckus there is almost every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night on this block. The main difference is all the police, who responded to the fights. More often than not, there's not even one cop here. They've taken our detail, 1885B, and are having it spend more time at STATE and elsewhere.

(It's now 3:45 a.m. and they're still out there screaming, thanks in part to the extra 200 people that Joey Vartanian's MaxBar lets out, thanks to its late-night permit. Good thing Joey lives on Burling, where he can get some sleep.)

Responding police units (that I saw, anyway): 1822R, 1884, 1885D, 1812R, 1885F, 1832R, 1814R, 1811R, unmarked blue, unmarked wagon. Thanks, guys.

(See below for more from a different day.)

Lincoln Avenue, 2 a.m. January 15

2010-01-15T21:30:00.009-06:00

At about 2 a.m. I was awakened by the cheer of what sounded like hundreds of people. Must be football playoffs on at the 13 bars on the block. I rolled over to try to get back to sleep.

Wait a minute. Since when are football playoffs on at 2 in the morning? I went outside to investigate.

Up the street, in front of Lion Head, were hundreds of people. The bar must have just closed and let everyone out. When I arrived, there were hundreds of people surrounding several dozen brawlers, all beating the crap out of one another. The onlookers were cheering and laughing about it, as if it were great fun. They did nothing to stop it. Not one police car was in sight.

This was a riot, people. If it had happened with police around, there would have been about 50 arrests.

Finally, a few minutes later, a police car attempts to get up the street -- in an annoyingly leisurely way. Their lights were on, but they weren't getting there. Granted, they were somewhat stuck behind a long line of taxis, but I wondered why they didn't take the oncoming lane, like they do when there is an emergency. This was an emergency, I thought.

By the time the cops got there, the party had broken up and people were kind of scattering, at least a little. There seemed to be no urgency. I can almost understand why cops would not want to risk their own safety by grabbing a load of idiotic drunks, when they needed to conserve themselves for the actual bad guys. But these drunks are destructive, vandalizing, disturbing the peace, hurting people. They are committing a crime, and they also need to be shown that this kind of behavior is not acceptable at 2 a.m. These are bad guys.

I had grabbed one of the officers and was motioning wildly to him: "There, there's one of the offenders!" One of the brawlers was walking south down Lincoln, bragging to his two buddies, "Did you see? I busted that guy's fucking head!" But the officer took no action. "Apprehend him! Where are the witnesses?" The officer said that witnesses never come forward in a situation like this. Then the guy kicked a street barricade and I said, "Look, he's vandalizing something!" That is when the officers finally took action.

Although there were three guys, they only got the one who had kicked the barricade. They let the other two continue to walk down the street. "But the other two! They were involved! I saw that one dragging a guy around!" But they did nothing. The officer told me that I should come to court and testify about this one guy. "He'll think twice before doing this again," he said, alluding to the hefty fine he would be given for disturbing the peace.

Great. One guy will "think twice." But what about the other 40 or so brawlers, and the hundreds of people who stood there doing nothing? They must still think it was just good, clean fun.

But this was a riot.

And in case you think that this is some remote occurrence in Lincoln Park -- one of the toniest neighborhoods in the world -- it isn't. This kind of brawl happens on the block with astonishing regularity.

I just don't know what to do anymore. Where is the alderman? Where is the police protection? Where is the media? Is there a god?

Update: Went to mail a letter that Monday. Saw that someone had puked into the mailbox. It's frozen on. I called the alderman, who called the post office. But as of February 28, six weeks later, it's still there.

Update: Sent the following e-mail March 16, 8:45 a.m. to Quigley, Daley, Smith: "The U.S. mailbox at Lincoln and Webster still has dried vomit covering the inside of the chute, more than two months after I first reported it. I have reported it to the alderman, the Postal Service, and the congressman. If we mere citizens could clean it off, we would, but that would soak the mail. And so we are depending on powerful people to move this project forward."

Update update: It's April 5, 2010. I've had conversations with the congressman's staff as well as the alderman's staff. It's been over 13 weeks and still nothing's been done. Why doesn't one of them get out there with a pail and a sponge?

CTA does it again -- for yuppie youngsters, at least

2009-12-22T18:20:00.006-06:00

The CTA has just announced that it is offering text notification for bus riders. For a very few bus riders, that is.

I've been complaining for years about the digital-divide and budget hypocrisies regarding BusTracker and related tech wet dreams. (I also wrote several pieces about it for Chicago Journal, which are temporarily offline.) The implementation of this latest feature is -- once again -- geared toward those with smart phones and enhanced phone contracts. Just for starters, the majority of CTA riders, who do not have smart phones but who may (if they're very lucky) know how to use text messaging, will find it almost impossible to key in "CTABUS". I've been using computers since CTA President Richard Rodriguez was in diapers -- and even I am having a hell of a time getting around the interface. I might as well buy a smart phone, eh?

In the mean time, assuming Grandma can find a pay phone anymore, she has less access to CTA route assistants. Once a 24-hour service, the 836-7000 number is now available only from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. So, now, unless Grandma has an iPhone or Blackberry, it is now very difficult for her to know whether a bus route has stopped service for the night or when it will start running early in the morning. She'll be standing at a stop for an hour. She'll be mugged at that street corner before she ever sees a bus. While cutting back more mundane but universal services like phone operators, the $150,000-a-year suits from the CTA are again kicking the poor while they are down, and just in time for subzero temperatures.

At the very least, the thing that needs to be done is to make this text service free through any Chicago cellular provider, like the 911 SOS service, so that anyone can resort to this service from any phone -- even a disabled phone -- not just those with fancy service contracts. And it should be designed numerically for ease, not with alpha keying. They should call in someone who understands what "user interface" means. This should be the top priority. That is how stranded most of the poor are in Chicago.

Of course, this further buries the real problem: Why has the CTA never bothered to sit down with aldermen and the mayor's famous DPD to talk about why buses are not on time? BusTracker is just an excuse to institutionalize the late bus problem, which is rooted in traffic congestion, which is a solvable crisis. But what can you do? If you're going to do things bass-ackwards, you should at least be making it a priority to have it available to the neediest.

As currently implemented, this is a typical CTA technocratic feature geared toward exciting the media, who are already pimping this to the young, middle-class adopters of cutting-edge technology. It's not for the West Side grandmothers who are stuck in the snow, in the dark, trying to get home from Aldi at 8:01 p.m. They may never know when their next bus will be, if ever. They'll be mugged. Thanks as always, CTA.

Are they trick-or-treating?

2009-10-30T23:48:00.010-05:00

After all the talk with the new 18th District Cmdr. Angarone and pronouncements that he's put more units here; after heartfelt discussions with Sgt. Wu and Lt. Egan about being punched in the head by an angry drunk; after having pumpkins thrown through the window one year, feet kicking windows in the next, and scores of urinators every year, it's Halloween eve again -- there are at this moment somewhere around 2,000 revelers on this 2200 block of Lincoln Avenue, inside and outside the bars -- and there is not one single, solitary police officer here. Ahh, here's the first pisser now, right outside the window.

I called the 18th District station -- 312-742-5870 -- and spoke to the watch commander, Lt. Sarletto, who said she would "check the cameras right now and look into it."

Later: Halloween night, and the situation is even worse. There are, by my count, approximately 600 people loitering in the street, screaming, vomiting, etc. They are walking into the alley creating a river of urine on the window, just near my son's bed. I stepped out and walked to the end of the block. Again, there is not one single, solitary police officer here. I called Sarletto again just now (11:50 p.m.): sat on hold for five minutes, am told I should probably call back later.

I would like a barricade on this alley on nights like these -- just like Wally Reid has, behind me -- but I certainly can't afford to buy an alley from my alderman like he did, and I don't want to block my neighbors from access to the alley, like he did. What can I do?

I would like a security person on this alley, just like the bars have security people at the door. But they would never want to pay for something like that.

I would like limits on the amount served at these bars, and the number of people they let into the bars, just like the law reads. After all, the fact that hundreds of people are screaming at the top of their lungs in unison is an indication that they are quite drunk. The fact that they are vomiting all over the streets is an indication that they are drunk. That should be enough for some bouncers and bartenders. But apparently it isn't.

SSA powerwashing at 3:30 a.m.

2009-07-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

[As if bilking residents of $200-$600 annually for powerwashing wasn't enough of an outrage, they've decided they can do it in the middle of the night.]

Please forward this to the SSA manager.

Wash Around the Clock, apparently an SSA vendor, was washing the sidewalks on the 2200 block of Lincoln Avenue at 3:30 a.m. Monday morning July 13, using at least three trucks with high-velocity compressors. A neighbor called me and said it was keeping her awake. I went out and informed the foreman of the Noise Ordinance and told him he could begin work at 8 a.m. He said he'd never heard of the ordinance before, and that he's "been doing this two years with no problems." He asked if it would be all right to work in front of the hospital, and I made him aware of the Quiet Zone ordinance.

I later saw them spraying during the day and they didn't seem to have any difficulty.

I called 911 and in addition notified the watch commanders in 18th and 19th:

4:15 a.m.
Called 911

4:30 a.m.
Called districts:

18th District
312-742-5870
Officer Vargas

19th District
312-744-5983
Officer Watson

Peter Zelchenko

> To whom it may concern
>
> I am from Wash Around The Clock,we have been hired to power wash
> sidewalks by Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce .This is our second
> year doing this service.Last year we called the city of Chicago and
> was told we didn't need permits.We were here during the filming of
> public enemy and we were cleaning sidewalks from approximately 12
> am thru 3 PM each day without any issues.This year we are having
> problems with police and other miscellaneous people(block
> captains)etc .what I was wondering ,if there is any way you could
> help us in this matter.All we are trying to do is make the city
> look beautiful and clean.If there is any help in this matter or
> what we need to do.Your help would be appreciated.
>
> Thank-you
>
> Joe Dolgach
> Wash Aroun The Clock
> 847-515-2395
> WATC01@AOL.COM

The Biggest Bar Crawl

2009-06-06T09:52:00.005-05:00

Well, the bars of Lincoln Park have done it again.

Since nobody's watching the store (I mean The Store), or helping us with the state we're in (I mean STATE), they think we're all a bunch of Fools. At least a dozen bars all over Lincoln Park are hosting The World's Biggest Bar Crawl all day today, starting at 10 a.m. and going all day, and even some of the bars don't know about it. (I just went across the street to Sterch's and they were getting ready for a rugby game; the bartender said that the organizers didn't even tell him what the specials were supposed to be.)

They didn't tell the alderman. They didn't tell the police or fire departments. They didn't tell neighborhood groups. They just decided to do it.

They did tell select media, through a professionally done PowerPoint media kit. It's obviously a professionally organized, well-funded event. But they didn't tell neighbors a thing. They didn't appear at the CAPS meetings, they didn't go to a community meeting. They didn't do what the business community is obligated to do when borrowing our neighborhood for a day.

The promotional materials they deemed fit to send to The Reader nitelife pages say: "An army of over 5,000 barflies will march on Lincoln Park's bars, intent on crushing the world bar crawl record, currently held by New York." They know it's going to be bedlam.

There will be urine flowing through the alleys like a river of spent beer. Probably some fecal matter to go with it, as I've reported numerous times. Spatters of vomit on every sidewalk. Broken windows. Damaged cars. Panties. Food on the ground. And screaming like we've never heard before.

And they didn't tell anyone but their friends. What a shame.

There ought to be a law. In fact, there is. They're charging admission, they're assembling a large number of people. There are laws associated with that.

Let's help Alderman Daley (773-327-9111, vidaley@cityofchicago.org) enforce this law. Rachel Goodstein has already contacted alderman, police, and fire departments, and none of them knew about it. She and I have been trying to do what little we can with 36 hours' notice. Contact today's 18th District watch commander, Capt. Crotty (312-742-5870) and Engine Co. 22 on Armitage (312-664-5028) if you see any problems (vandalism, bar overcrowding, illegal behavior). They will want to know. I'll be taking a few pictures for show-and-tell.

And let's bring it up at the CAPS/DAC and community meetings over the next few weeks. This is what happens with the "strong mayor, weak council" perversion of government we have here.

Our state bird seen near Oz Park

2009-04-10T12:12:00.003-05:00

On this sunny and brisk spring morning, I spotted a beautiful cardinal just off of Oz Park.

I have a car (three, in fact), and yet people ask me why I spend so much time on public transportation, bicycles, and on foot. They also wonder why I bend over backwards trying to make carpool plans instead of traveling alone when these alternatives are not possible. Forgive the pun, but this picture represents the cardinal reason. A personal vehicle gives us amazing freedom, but there are trade-offs. Our personal needs get in the way of other things that need to use the right-of-way.

Every bus on the street means 50 or more cars off the street; if you want to know why buses tend to get bunched up, it is because there are always several hundred cars in the way, jockeying for pole position with every bus, slowing them down and interfering with their schedules. There are many other bizarre aspects of our car culture, including the very complicated funding scheme that subsidizes our street and highway systems with everything but direct taxes on automobile use. If car drivers were paying by the mile for their use of our streets and highways, it could cost as much as $10 per mile to travel by car. But the costs are hidden elsewhere, mostly in federal income and city property taxes, and buried in such strange places as defense budgets on the federal level and chamber of commerce activities on the local level, such as we've seen with the Clark Street SSA, where residents paid for the street's resurfacing and streetscaping and most of them aren't even aware of it.

I use a car only as a last resort, and when I do I try to keep in mind what a great privilege it is to have one and to be able to use it.

I have a handicapped placard on order from the state, and I've just applied to Vi Daley for a handicapped space in front of our house, for my mother, who now travels in a wheelchair. Every day I see people abusing handicapped placards. You can only apply for a handicapped placard if there is someone in the family who cannot walk without assistance. You can only use a handicapped placard when that person is traveling with you. If anyone ever sees me abusing my handicapped parking privileges, I hope they publicize it.

Constitutional convention

2008-09-23T00:17:00.002-05:00

My mother roomed with Zorita "Zoe" Wise in Hyde Park in the 1940s when they were both idealistic college students, even before Zoe met her future husband Abner Mikva. They were involved in political organizations even then. And I personally remember everyone in our family -- children included -- working very hard at Dawn Clark Netsch's first political campaign office in Old Town. The Mikvas and the Netsches were dreamers once upon a time. Their present-day position requires some explanation.

Once in the clouds, it is difficult for a person to see clear to the ground, where the rank-and-file citizen is stranded. Netsch and Mikva have traveled for too many years in the glamorous, rarefied air of our state's realpolitik, and my experience has shown me that they are out of touch with the people's needs in many ways.

"Lakefront liberal" is now an oxymoron. The people who power these organizations understand the system too well to do us any real good. They are blinded either by their loyalties -- as I believe Mikva and Netsch sometimes are -- or else by their ambitions -- as is the younger generation that is sucking up to them. This has gradually redefined what "liberal progressive Democrat" means in Illinois and across the country. It is time to step back and take a very close look at things. A constitutional convention will do that.

Netsch and Mikva deserve our gratitude for their decades of service and their consistently progressive platforms. But they are out of touch. They do not appear to be willing to acknowledge that our political system is rotten to the core. The movement of massive campaign dollars coming from powerful interests is impossible to resist, because if you resist you will not survive politically. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to oust an elected official who is doing wrong for our state. But that is the only power Netsch and Mikva trust us with. It's like giving us a rubber hammer so we won't hurt ourselves.

Many people I worked hard for to get into office over the years have the appearance of serving us well, and when I confront them they do make a persuasive point that they are indeed accomplishing some things. But the fact is that they are bound by masters more powerful than they are. These masters permit them to make the appearance of achieving big things for their constituency, but they do not let them get uppity.

When all is said and done, they cannot buck the status quo in meaningful ways, for fear of losing their funding or being targeted by a bigger fish. They are too cautious, because they want to stay in office for a very, very long time. But this is inconsistent with the notion of democracy -- of "people rule" -- because enough time in Springfield, swimming in corporate lobbyists and cocktail parties (not to mention all of the out-and-out bribes), will take the "person" out of even the most moral of us.

The question of a constitutional convention hinges on this schism of ensconced politicians on the one hand, and the average citizen on the other hand.

This is our best opportunity to bring real real people to the table, to put them on a level playing field with all of the vested interests, from big corporations to fat-cat politicians to -- yes, admit it -- often myopic big-media outlets. A constitutional convention gives you and me the opportunity to make real change, to dream of a future where people can once again believe in the political system.

Stop the Boot! Sign the petition!

2008-09-12T22:39:00.003-05:00

My old friend the Parking Ticket Geek has had his great site up, theexpiredmeter.com, since March. I have always admired this masked crusader for the intrepid way he deals with parking tickets. Now he's on a mission to stop Mayor Daley's two-ticket Denver boot proposal.

PTG tells me that Daley's plan -- which we all know is just more of the same revenue-at-all-costs (to us) doctrine that the mayor has espoused since taking office -- will hit working-class folks the hardest, but it will also take its toll on all neighborhoods. He urges everyone to sign the online petition right away to "Stop the Boot."

Lincoln Parkers are particularly aware of the problems with parking tickets. You will recall in 2006 when I publicized a screwup around Lakeview and nearby streets, where hundreds of cars parked on blocks with the experimental new street-cleaning signs were ticketed on the wrong day! The city was unapologetic, suggesting people simply pay the tickets, until we raised holy hell and they backed down.

The Parking Ticket Geek is reporting on and answering questions about this sort of mess full time, and a lot of us are grateful. One amazing story similar to our Lakeview eruption involves a renegade towing company, reportedly acting on Mayor Daley's orders to boost tows, hitting an entire block of cars in Pilsen one quiet weekend morning. District 12 police took the residents' side and ordered the cars be taken off the hook.

We can only guess who did this...

2008-07-25T05:48:00.016-05:00

Who would be motivated to chop down a beautiful 35-foot elm tree on Lincoln Avenue in the middle of the night?

I was actually up late because of the usual 3 a.m. wake-up call by the thousands of winos. I saw a drunk kid surfing on top of a moving Flash taxicab, straddling the topper light, and I pointed it out to some cops, who pursued the cab up Lincoln Avenue. Someone then smashed the cab's window out with his foot in front of Children's Memorial, with the cops right there, and the three young men riding in the cab just walked away while the poor Jordanian driver was busy pursuing the vandal. Naturally, they stiffed him on the fare. Didn't even help him.

But this kind of lawlessness is pretty much a nightly occurrence on Lincoln Avenue, where our public servants assume everything's just fine here. Last week, it was firetrucks and cop cars lining the street, bedlam in front of Halligans. The cops ordered me not to film it -- I don't even want to ask. And of course the piss on the walls flows like water here. I feel like I'm living in Beirut, but then who the hell cares what I think? I'm not some alderman or anyone who matters. My dad didn't matter much either; in fact, he used to drive for Flash. In any event, none of that is out of place here on Lincoln Avenue, one of Chicago's rowdiest night-life strips.

No, but when I saw a tree lying across most of the street at 2438 N. Lincoln Ave., I knew that it was something more out of the ordinary and I walked over to investigate. It was directly in front of Soiree, the new bar on the 2400 block.

Strangely, the Water Management worker who'd stopped and made the call about the tree to the police noticed that all of Soiree's cafe boxes were surrounding the tree while it was still standing, "to hide it," he supposed. I think the worker may actually have seen the tree fall. (He moved it out of the street onto the sidewalk.) A worker at Clark's across the street said it fell around 4 a.m. and there was not a soul in sight.

Who could have done this? The only people I can think of who would have a motive is the owners of the Soiree nightclub themselves. I have seen this kind of thing before: a business gets an expensive new sign or awning and they don't like how the tree on the street obstructs the view. So they do a little vigilante justice on the tree. The last time I saw this was about three years ago, on the 2200 block, the day after a nail salon got its new sign.

Now, the one three years ago was sawn through, and then a car hit it and knocked it down. It was a much smaller tree. But this tree in front of Soiree was obviously done with a hatchet. Every year I log a friend's land in the Upper Peninsula and we use chainsaws, and only occasionally axes to trim. Chainsaws are very, very fast: even on a thick 80-foot spruce it takes just a few seconds. Why would someone use a hatchet? So as to make a few inconspicuous cuts at a time, instead of all at once? And to make it look more like a prank rather than a very deliberate act?

It had to have been cut after the bar closed, between about 2 and 3:30 a.m., or at least late, perhaps with whomever was doing it surrounded by Soiree's boxes. How did they escape detection? It would have taken some time to do. But surrounded by the boxes, it could have been done in stages. With an axe, you can get a few chops in and just put it down if someone appears to be coming. No electrical cords, no sound, no mess.

What's more, as you can see from this picture (click it to enlarge), the cutting was done with considerable care. Cutting in the wrong direction would have sent the tree right through the awning, destroying it! Once you have most of the chopping done, the "felling cut" can be made on the other side and it would take only an inconspicuous push to get the tree to fall. This was methodically done. The crime was engineered.

Soiree just got their awning up, just after the filming of Untouchables ended two weeks ago, and just in time for Taste of Lincoln Avenue this weekend. (There was even a sign on the poor tree declaring No Parking this weekend.) How convenient that the tree should come down at just this time! You can imagine how much Soiree would want their sign to stand out, with thousands of drinkers milling around in front of it. They certainly wouldn't want some big elm to obscure it. And you can be sure that this elm was blocking the hell out of it.

Who else would have any motive to do such a dickheaded thing?

Don't people realize it's a serious crime to do this, to cut down a public tree like this?

I guess it doesn't matter much, because the bar sucks. Yelpers already hate it, proclaiming it's lame. It's cheezy and overpriced, with its "ghetto" back room, on a lifeless street during an economic recession. It will likely go belly-up within a couple of years. The new elm I ordered this morning (311 Ref. No. 0801429883) to be planted will be there for many decades after the punk who chopped it down is dead and rotted away.

Shit II & III

2008-06-22T22:16:00.004-05:00

(Well, it's certainly not the second and third time I've had to clean human excrement from my Lincoln Park alley -- it's the second and third time I've publicized it online. The first time, I got shit for it from Chuck Eastwood... The first image here is from March. The second is from this weekend. At least the second time they wiped themselves with napkins.)

I went to the 1812 CAPS meeting last week (Armitage to Fullerton, Clark to Sheffield). Residents on the 900 block of West Webster were complaining about the nearby State nightclub. The owner is a cousin of State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, whose bank's business ethics have been questioned. Costa somehow magically got a liquor license over the unanimous objections of neighbors, who are now living in a hell that begins to bear some similarity to what we have experienced on nearby streets like Lincoln, Halsted, and Armitage. One woman has already complained about scraping unconscious drunks off of her front stairs. Naturally, there is shit in their future.

At the meeting, I showed video footage of the drunkfest that happens on the 2200 block of Lincoln Avenue three to four nights a week. Thousands of screaming, puking, urinating, defecating, vomiting, window-breaking drunks, from around midnight until 4 a.m. during non-blizzard conditions.

Can this be managed? Not by 18th District police, who say they are understaffed. I know that they can do a better job, but I've been told that their priorities are skewed, to put it mildly. The responsibility rests on the commander and his lieutenants, and yet they also need more resources. I'm recommending a new way to look at Special Service Area taxes, where bars pay the majority as a percentage of liquor revenue, and a large number of area residents pay a tiny amount (let's say about $20 a year per household) over and above their property taxes. This revenue would go toward managing this nightmare in Lincoln Park. But this implies amending the current SSA's in the area, of which I've already written plenty, not only here (see below) but also in the papers.

Related shit:
Boulevard of broken windows
The beginning of the end?
Hypocrisies of new Lincoln Avenue tax increase
While Vi slumbers (Part II)
Shit.
While the alderman slumbers on her cozy Old Town sidestreet...
Lincoln Avenue SSA commissioners
Reader SSA Article

Cops in 18th need new school supplies for area kids

2008-06-13T18:53:00.002-05:00

From Alds. Brendan Reilly and Vi Daley: 18th District Police will be accepting donations of new school supplies from July through September 5. Collection boxes will be located in the 18th District Near North Station located at 1160 North Larrabee.

Let's not forget the kids in the Cabrini-Green area whose parents' lives are often so troubled that they can forget or can't afford something as simple as pencil, notebooks, and backpacks that the good cops of the 18th District will help them out on that. I've heard some compelling rumors lately about racism and protection rackets among certain 18th District cops, but I also know many genuinely wonderful cops in our district. Take the time to get to know these people.

Oriental 33 Masonic Lodge (formerly located at the Cathedral) also collects funds to buy these same kids Christmas presents every year. It's never too early to be generous. Contact me for details.

Children's Museum vote passes 33-16

2008-06-11T12:31:00.004-05:00

A bad way to run a city is for a powerful mayor to coerce perfectly reasonable aldermen to totally disregard the obvious facts of an issue through threats and pressure. You are hearing the sound of 33 aldermen ignore the basic fact that Grant Park is hardly the only proposed alternative for the Children's Museum. A few highlights:

Ocasio: It's the back yard of our city.
Shiller: "It belongs in the center of Chicago." (That's surely an option. Even Brendan Reilly acknowledges the possibility. Just not in Grant Park.)
Fioretti: It's irrelevant. What's important is that kids are being killed and we need to stop the violence. (Nonsequitur.)
Ed Smith: "If you give your word, you've got to stay with it." (Even if you witness debate that should make you change your mind? That's interesting.)
Cardenas: The media has caused this division in our council. They should stop the spin about how we're taking green space away.
Balcer: Isn't this a great country?
Lyle: If everyone else is using their clout, why shouldn't the Chidren's Museum? Arguments against it are "not intellectually sound."
Burnett: Was hoping that we'd be able to "just stay out of it except to just come down and vote, the way we do." (The inveterate feudal lord also sucks up to Daley: "I commend you" for letting us change the name of the park from your dad's park to the Children's Museum park.)
Carothers: Reilly's got to be crazy for turning down a children's museum in his ward! (Distracting us from the main point. It's already in his ward. Reilly probably wants to keep it in his ward, just not there.)
Jackson: "Saddened" that it's leaving Navy Pier, but also that they're spending so much time on this issue instead of the violence. (Diverting the debate.)
Burke: Ward decision rules for an "unobstructed view" of the lake. This does not obstruct the view. (The only rational counterargument of the bunch - but he's still purely motivated by politics, as he has always been one of Daley's greatest allies. The rest of his commentary was on Burke's charming cop-turned-pseudointellectual historian, and also on boasting about his wife's power as a Supreme Court justice.)
Banks: "Land grab" is nonsensical and it doesn't make any sense, since the Park District still owns the land. We're on "firm legal footing."

The two most powerful and dangerous characters on the City Council are Burke and Banks, who know the law and always construe it strictly or liberally, depending on how it may accrue to their political advantage.

Any emotional appeal about kids deserving their share of downtown is irrelevant, since nobody is disputing that. In fact, many alternative places downtown have been proposed. This is foremost about Grant Park's and the lakefront's special status.

Any discussion about aldermanic privilege is not important either, and it never should be. All we should be talking about is reason and fairness. And that's not what we were hearing today.

RLTO Amendment

2008-05-21T10:58:00.005-05:00

On April 9, four aldermen proposed changes to Chicago's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance to further exempt student housing and dormitories.

But I just helped a resident of University of Chicago's famous International House who for months was being harassed with lockouts and finally threatened with overnight removal by university police. A Greek national, she was quiet and paid her monthly rent reliably, but she disputed certain fees she says were not in her housing agreement.

I need your help to stop the amendments and to bring colleges, universities, and other nonprofit institutions that are currently exempt, under control of the RLTO. Please read on and e-mail me today with your comments so that I may compile them and forward them to the aldermen. I especially need comment and support from students and other residents of this kind of institutional housing who have experienced difficulties.

E-mail me your experiences and other comments
Read the proposed amendment to the RLTO at 5-12-020(c)
Read my counterproposal

Last week, with the help of Christine Kellogg of the Lawyers Committee for Better Housing, we filed an injunction to put a stop to the university's punitive actions against the I-House resident. But the resident told me that other students have been targeted in the past, most notably Amadou Cisse, the Ph.D. student who was shot to death last November while walking home off campus. After a six-year residency at I-House, Cisse unaccountably left the safe confines of International House two months before he was to finish school.

The RLTO, hard-won by housing rights activists in the 1980s, adds to existing state protections for both tenants and landlords, helping to govern their behavior. U. of C. incorrectly assumed that because they are exempt from the RLTO, they are also exempt from all laws regarding eviction, including 735 ILCS 5. I want to go back to the question of why they are exempt from the RLTO.

The proposed amendment would further exempt the very categories of resident that we should be protecting:

"5-12-020 Exclusions: Rental of the following dwelling units shall not be governed by this chapter, unless the rental agreement thereof is created to avoid the application of this chapter:

"(c) Housing accommodations in any hospital, convent, monastery, extended care facility, asylum or not-for-profit home for the aged, temporary overnight shelter, transitional shelter, or in a dormitory owned and operated by an elementary school, high school or institution of higher learning; student housing accommodations wherein a housing agreement or housing contract is entered into between the student and an institution of higher learningor student housing wherein the institution exercises control or supervision of the students; or student housing owned and operated by a tax exempt organization affiliated with an institution of higher learning."

My proposed amendment would reverse this by merging 5-12-020(b) and (c). 5-12-020(b) excludes various institutions when residents are there on a very temporary basis. It includes them when the resident resides there for more than a month and pays a monthly rent (i.e., when it's obvious that the resident is a tenant):

"(b) Dwelling units or housing accommodations in any hotels, motels, inns, tourist houses, rooming houses, ~~and~~ boardinghouses, hospital, convent, monastery, extended care facility, asylum or not-for-profit home for the aged, temporary overnight shelter, transitional shelter, or in a dormitory owned ~~and operated~~ by an elementary school, high school or institution of higher learning, but only until such time as the dwelling unit or housing accommodation has been occupied by a tenant for 32 or more continuous days and tenant pays a monthly rent, exclusive of any period of wrongful occupancy contrary to agreement with an owner. Notwithstanding the above, the prohibition against interruption of tenant occupancy set forth in Section 5-12-160 shall apply to every rented dwelling unit in such buildings within the City of Chicago. No landlord shall bring an action to recover possession of such unit, or avoid renting monthly in order to avoid the application of this chapter. Any willful attempt to avoid application of this chapter by an owner may be punishable by criminal or civil action."

It is clear that 5-12-020(c) is designed to circumvent the RLTO because the category of resident can be considered under a certain guardianship by the institution which owns and operates the housing. The need for certain special controls in these cases may be appropriate, but in my view -- as I explained today to Ald. Fioretti -- landlord-tenant law is the wrong place to be giving them this kind of power. Not only does it assume, often incorrectly, that these residents need quasi-parental control, it removes built-in protections under the RLTO and raises certain equal-protection questions. Among the problems with legislating this here:

It allows these institutions to punish residents and threaten to put them out in the street based on any minor dispute that the institution may dream up. In the case of the I-House resident, a fee dispute gave them the power to punish her by changing the lock on her room and bringing local police in to threaten to remove her belongings at their discretion. This is normally under the jurisdiction of the state and is illegal in any event.
It does not adequately answer the question of why these protections need to be raised in this part of the law; it gives these institutions inappropriate power over usually perfectly competent adult individuals who do not require an institution's quasi-parental supervision. This goes for the hospitals, CHA senior buildings, homeless shelters, and grad student housing facilities that are exempted under these paragraphs today.
It fails to directly address various legitimate concerns of these institutions, such as how to deal with illegal drug use and underage drinking. That is both (a) a criminal matter, addressed under criminal law, and (b) a matter that can be dealt with within the housing agreement (that is, in the lease). For all other matters, institutions such as hospitals and schools already have legal guardianship to a greater or lesser degree over their charges, and their power to control their housing would be superfluous, unnecessary, and often even perilous to the rights of the resident.

New street-cleaning signs

2008-04-07T09:19:00.006-05:00

Recently, the Department of Streets and Sanitation announced it will implement multicolored signs to deal with the problem of inadequate street-cleaning notification. The city's solution, piloted over the last year, involves posting a different color-coded sign for every day of the week.

I suppose the city imagines that making signs in designer colors somehow will increase compliance. Their solution sparks little confidence in me that they even understand the problem, while it gives a pass to the system that causes the problem in the first place: that signs are often not posted enough in advance.

If anything, most of the new colors are even darker and less reflective than the orange and will be less visible, thus actually exacerbating the ticketing problem. The new cameras on board the trucks presage an even more draconian future. Unlike running a red light, inadvertently blocking street-cleaning efforts is not a dangerous crime. Furthermore, the city's notification is so haphazard that it is no wonder people are getting tickets.

A flashing-light concept I had begun to develop in 2006--which gave both three-day advance warning of street cleaning and an indication of when the truck had passed your street--was implemented inadequately in last year's pilot by the city. The light begins flashing only on the morning of street cleaning. They refuse to follow my advice to have the light begin flashing in advance to warn parkers. As a result, the product will do nothing to reduce the number of ticketing victims.

The best solution is really the simplest: some brave alderman must introduce an ordinance to force ward superintendents to actively notify residents at least 72 hours in advance, and to be accountable for it. Currently there is no such law, so a widespread tendency is to put signs up the night before or to rely on static permanent signs. Giving earlier warning will make it a lot easier to avoid the tickets. But since this is counter to the city's revenue goals, it is unlikely that they will consider it. That is a very bad reason.

Julio Diaz

2008-03-28T07:30:00.003-05:00

For the cynics out there, here's a transcript from an interview of Julio Diaz in New York.

Boulevard of broken windows

2008-02-03T05:16:00.000-06:00

A pane of glass at the entrance to my home. Broken Saturday night (Jan. 26) by a reveler on Lincoln Avenue. This is the fourth or fifth broken window in the past year.

What makes this one unusual is the fact that it held a sticker from when we belonged to the Lincoln Park Conservation Association, a long-dead organization that was once a forum for dealing with issues just like this one.

I asked Alderman Vi Daley three years ago to help with the problems of public drunkenness on Lincoln Avenue, including security, noise abatement, and keeping De Paul students from using our walls as a urinal.

Vi didn't help with these things, but she soon rewarded me for my public efforts: she very quietly increased my taxes and rents, and those of all of my other neighbors on Lincoln Avenue (through the Lincoln Avenue SSA). Then, she used that increase to put decorative planters and Christmas ornaments along the street. (She also reduced police presence on the block. See other posts.)

What's worse, when I formally asked Vi's cronies on the SSA commission (hello, neighbor Susan Keegan and the very wealthy Sam Sanchez of John Barleycorn, both commissioners at the time) at least to spend some of the $150,000 a year on repairing windows broken by the drunks, they ignored me and spent it on fancy promotional things. (So much for "Why don't you help us by coming up with ideas instead of complaining all the time?")

Businesses (including the largest bars on the block causing the problems, hi again, Sam) pay less into the tax than we residents do. When I tried to complain about this, to raise public awareness about the problem and to call people to the public hearing, Vi Daley had me ticketed.

The SSA hasn't stopped the violence on the block. In fact, by the stated intent of the SSA (to promote additional commercial traffic in this "blighted" area) it is presumed to have increased the potential for this violence.

Update Sunday, Feb. 3, 4 a.m.: I have a guest staying in my living room, which fronts Lincoln Avenue. I am sure he is awake by now. Abraham is asleep. Two guys are talking loudly and peeing right on my bedroom window. I knock loudly from the inside. "Dude, was that someone knocking from inside? Wow." 4:10 a.m.: More yelling, presumably from other people getting out of The Apartment. 4:20 a.m.: More yelling. 4:35 a.m.: Still yelling here and there. 4:55 a.m.: A woman and man yelling loudly. Lots of chanting now, and car horns blaring. And to think it's 26 degrees outside. Consider what it must be like when the weather is beautiful and we're trying to sleep. 5:45 a.m.: Still not asleep, but someone just trudged up to the wall and started peeing. Thanks, Vi. I hope you're sleeping.

And yet...

2008-01-23T21:13:00.000-06:00

September City Council resolution

Why is the document listed above not worth the stationery it was printed on? Why is it approaching half a year since this document was created, and the meeting hasn't even been held? It is because it is an empty promise. It doesn't say the council will convene a meeting, it doesn't specify a date, or a true function, or any commitment whatsoever.

All it says is that it would be just dandy if someone who was interested would volunteer to bring all of these people together to chat about this issue in front of the Parks & Recreation Committee.

That's why there has been no meeting and the field is halfway completed.

Well, I know I didn't vote for any one of them.

Daley and Eastwood probably didn't know about "Latin Field"

2008-01-13T09:17:00.000-06:00

I have to revise what I wrote earlier: I sat in on the LPAC meeting Wednesday, Jan. 9, and Chuck Eastwood was there. At the meeting, everyone in the group -- with a good deal of sincerity and feeling -- explained how they were duped as well about the soccer field.

They said that Jim Chronis of the Park District came to them in September, 2006 -- three months before the clandestine agreement was signed -- and gave an apparently benign dog-and-pony presentation about five new soccer fields that the district was planning citywide. Asked directly by LPAC whether one of these fields was contemplated for Lincoln Park, Chronis emphasized very clearly that Lincoln Park was not currently on the list. That, Chuck and other LPAC members stated, was the last they heard of soccer fields until after the election. The only public notice ever made was a small ad in the back of the Sun-Times, that only mentioned a Park District meeting (where, we now now, the vote was quietly passed) -- and nothing else. I spoke with Chuck after the meeting and he really was sincere.

But this is not to let Vi Daley and Chuck Eastwood off the hook. They are still responsible. They could have changed things, even after the fact. They could have, and should have, stood up to the clandestine deal, just as Brendan Reilly is doing with the Children's Museum. They had three avenues of authority at their disposal, and a moral obligation. But they are politically fearful of both Mayor Daley's people and powerful Latin School parents. That is the worst possible excuse.

The actions of the "Machine progressives" speak volumes

2008-01-06T18:40:00.000-06:00

Just a quick sanity check (in case it isn't obvious to the world) regarding the growing controversy about the Latin School soccer field deal:

43rd Ward Alderman Vi Daley and her chief of staff, Chuck Eastwood, claim they knew nothing about the agreement between Park District officials and Latin School (signed in December, 2006). The development is in Vi Daley's ward. Chuck Eastwood sits on the Lincoln Park Advisory Council, a group that should have been in the loop. Logically speaking, they should be outraged by this sleight of hand. Yet, although they momentarily expressed a kind of belated surprise, they have expressed no outrage at all.

This is prima facie evidence that they knew all about the deal beforehand. What else would explain their quiet acceptance of the deal?

And now it's blowing up in their faces.

There's nothing democratic about sleazy backroom deals. Yet Chuck wants us to vote for him to be our "democratic" ward committeeman next month. How will you vote?

The beginning of the end?

2007-12-31T03:02:00.000-06:00

I just got a new piano. Actually, it's an old one, a beautiful 1941 Baldwin Acrosonic, replete with scratches and a sloppy action. It was sitting in the trash behind Cosi near Parker School last week, and my friends Hugh and Patrick helped me roll it the two blocks home. Hugh tried some beautiful Beethoven sonatas on it and it's in tune, although the action needs some work.

It's 2 a.m., and again I'm awakened by the De Paul students yelling and peeing outside my window. Several of them do it at once, as if it's a men's room. They can hold their loud conversation right outside the window. Sometimes they pee right onto the window. They'll do it again around 4 a.m., when the Apartment closes. It's like clockwork. So, I'm sitting here at the piano, sketching out a sharps chart based on the "circle of fifths," while trying to get to sleep again. It's like counting sheep for geeks. Sharps can go on forever, you know. You can have a million sharps in a key. Theoretically, at least.

The kids pee on the walls and windows here because the 13 bars on the block kick the kids out and they can't get back in, not even to pee. The restaurant next door doesn't have a public bathroom. (Even people who buy burritos there can't use the toilet!) I asked Vi Daley (our alderman) and Chuck Eastwood (her candidate for committeeman) for some porta-potties on the block, for barricades or guards at the alley at strategic times, for some new law about businesses and toilet policy, or even to pressure the bars to supply some resolution to the problem. The bars, you see, rake in millions in liquor sales on this block, so I thought maybe they'd be able to afford to do something about the problem they create. Vi vaguely promised to publicly finance some strong lights in the alley, but she never followed through. This was almost three years ago.

You see, Vi and Chuck didn't want to offend their big supporters, the bar owners on Lincoln Avenue. Bo Burleson (Kendall's, Kelsey's, Kincade's), Sam Sanchez (John Barleycorn), and the Halligan owners are all buddies of theirs. What they did instead was to create a new tax (actually called an SSA) on Lincoln Avenue, charging residents primarily with Christmas decorating, snow shoveling, sidewalk power-washing, and trash cleanup for the bars and restaurants on the block. Who prompted Vi and Chuck to create this tax? Burleson and Sanchez. The new tax, raking in an additional $150,000 annually, was passed right under the nose of an unsuspecting public. Now, when Vi and Chuck want a location for a fundraiser, these bars will provide it. See the pattern?

A few blocks away, Vi and Chuck are dealing with another problem, the Latin School soccer field issue in Lincoln Park. A few years ago, the public said "absolutely no way" to this field. No handouts of our most precious public parkland to a private entity. It couldn't get much more clear than that. Then, just before this past aldermanic election, Vi and Chuck let them sign the contract right under the nose of an unsuspecting public. Now, when Vi and Chuck want a fundraiser, they'll invite rich Latin parents. See the pattern?

There is no limit to the number of sharps you can add to an issue. Theoretically, at least. In 2002, the public raised hell about the Latin field and officials were forced to back off. This year, Vi and Chuck added another sharp to the Latin field issue by quietly letting it pass, under our noses. They can sweat a little, do a public relations dance, then shrug it off as a little victory. But in doing this, Vi and Chuck have added just a little more tension to their existing public opinion. (Join the Committee to Keep Lincoln Park Public for angry activity on this issue.)

With the two slick SSAs Vi and Chuck passed in the 43rd Ward recently, they have added another couple of sharps to their elaborate composition. When they continue to ignore residents' needs on this block regarding security and safety, while catering to the business interests, Vi and Chuck have added another sharp to the composition. Same tune, different key.

The tension builds.

Theoretically, at least.

Related entries:
Piss and vinegar I
Piss and vinegar II
Piss and vinegar III

Latin School I
Latin School II

SSA I
Reader SSA article

"Latin field moves forward"

2007-11-12T12:33:00.000-06:00

The pivotal problem here is revealed in Vi's comment that I read on p. 1 of the Skyline of Nov. 9 ("Latin field moves forward"), regarding the "controlled meeting" of Nov. 6:

"This was a productive meeting and was more reflective of the communication and community process that should have been made at the front end of this project, not after it was approved by the Park District," said Alderman Daley. "I believe this is something we can work on to make sure the improvements to this area are amenities to Lincoln Park and the whole Lincoln Park community, not a private field."

This is so typical of the two-step "done deal" approach to development in this area: (1) get something approved behind closed doors; (2) if the "public process" shit hits the fan, do a little post-hoc damage control by holding a couple of community meetings, but be sure to address only small change, not the premise itself. It makes me so very frustrated that this is so institutionalized in this city. I've seen it done over the years with taxes, developments, technology initiatives, and other plans in precisely the same way in numerous wards.

The problem is always that the PREMISE is not addressed: the question upon the table should and must be, "SHOULD LATIN SCHOOL BE PERMITTED TO BUILD A SOCCER FIELD ON PUBLIC LAND?"

This premise was never presented to the public. Therefore, no discussions of drinking fountains and time concessions should be entertained. In fact, it is dangerous to do so. All it does is it makes it look as though we're buying in, capitulating to the premise.

I don't care if they've broken ground already. I don't care if contracts were already signed. Without going back to the premise, you have something very, very wrong.

Latin School, Vi Daley should be better citizens

2007-08-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

As an alumnus of Latin School, I am ashamed at the craven and undemocratic way it is acting regarding its taking of public land in Lincoln Park for a soccer field.

When I was on the school's soccer team, we had no more right to Lincoln Park than anyone else. We were grateful that it was our backyard sports arena. And still, the ruts made in the muddy soccer field were primarily our own. We had an effective monopoly on it and were happy to share it.

I find it increasingly difficult to believe that Ald. Vi Daley didn't know about plans like this one. The odds of her inadvertently losing control over yet another public matter, through what she repeatedly has attempted to characterize as a confusing web of bureaucracy, defies probability.

When the already massive Parrillo project on Burling was "accidentally" granted a zoning boost by the city's zoning administrator in Spring 2006 under the noses of the Lincoln Central Association, next-door neighbors, and even Vi Daley, she tried to act shocked, though zoning experts and staff say such a change would be categorically impossible without the alderman's approval.

When De Paul's historic Hayes-Healy building was "accidentally" demolished to make way for the Fullerton El platform in March 2006, because the landmarks division "mistakenly" approved the permit, Vi Daley tried to act shocked. And when inappropriate station designs were implemented without the promised public input, Vi Daley blamed it on an unfortunate "miscommunication" between three agencies.

And now, my alma mater -- land-rich but landlocked -- decides it wants to monopolize precious public land. Once disappointed by a public outcry, just before a difficult election Latin quietly signs a contract with the park, and just after the election Vi Daley is "blindsided" by the plans. We learned statistics at that school, too. All of this is too improbable to believe.

You don't see Ald. Reilly in the 42nd Ward having such problems. He has the Chicago Children's Museum situation well under control. They will not occupy Grant Park. You don't see Ald. Fioretti in the 2nd Ward with such problems. He has put the brakes on two high-rise developments by influential wheeler-dealers. Scott Waguespack in the 32nd Ward has just put the brakes on a major development in Bucktown. Nothing happens in Chicago by accident.

No, these surprises only happen in the 43rd Ward. And they happen with surprising regularity.

The higher commitment of the world's Latin schools has been toward conveying to their students a timeless sense of noble citizenship. We read from books with high-road titles and concepts borrowed from the great Cicerone periodism, "civis Romanus sum" -- I am a Roman citizen -- which emphasize the public duties of that title. Our sports teams are even called the Romans. On the other hand, Rome did have her share of cringing politicians. Vi Daley is just such a pleasant person, it's hard to believe she might deceive the community, isn't it?

With all due respect and best wishes, Latin School should not have any more privilege to one blade of grass on our public land than any other individual or group in the city. There should be no more giving away of our scarce resources. The Latin community should be good citizens and acknowledge this.

The North-South debate: More street-cleaning math

2007-03-31T16:31:00.000-05:00

Setting up this year's street-cleaning schedules for the 43rd Ward Street-Cleaning Alert System, I noticed that the 43rd Ward's Gold Coast neighborhood south of North Avenue (known as "the Boot") gets street cleaning every week rather than once a month. That means that they get four times the street-cleaning service that the rest of the ward (and most of the city) receives. What gives? Why the special treatment?

After all, street cleaning costs a good deal of money. The extra service the Boot gets costs the ward thousands of extra dollars per month. It's simply not feasible to sweep every street in the city every week. It would cost, you might imagine, four times what it costs currently.

To give you a better idea of how unfair this is, street cleaning begins April 1, and we really need it. Yet while the Gold Coast streets are going to be cleaned four times in April, there are many parts of our ward that are not going to be cleaned until May, if at all.

The following streets will be cleaned for the first time this year on May 8:

Armitage (Halsted to Clark) North Side
Belden (Halsted to Lincoln Park West) South Side
Dickens (Clark to Howe) South Side
Grant Place (Sedgwick to Geneva Terrace) North Side
Howe (Dickens to Armitage) East Side
Webster (Halsted to Lincoln Park West) North Side

By May 8, the following streets will already have been cleaned six times:

Astor (Division to North Avenue) West Side
Banks (State to Lake Shore Dr) North Side
Schiller (State to Lake Shore Dr) North Side
Scott (State to Lake Shore Dr) North Side
State (Division to North Avenue) West Side

There are a number of streets not even on the schedule, namely on routes 28 through 32 (the new numbering system). I don't even know what those are!

I first noticed this last year. The Gold Coast routes are pretty old, and I believe they were the earliest zoned street-cleaning routes. Still, what makes the Gold Coast more special for street cleaning than the rest of the ward? I believe the explanation is that it's because it's within the official "city center" and the council long ago decided that the area, presumably being more densely populated and more occupied by business, residents, and tourists than the rest of the city, merited more frequent street cleaning. But the residential and business density of Southeast Lakeview, for example, is quite comparable to that of the Boot, if not even greater in terms of business. Yet they get to live with the confusing new once-a-month street-cleaning signs.

In a city crying pauper, why does this luxury remain for the Gold Coast? Cutting down to once-a-month cleaning in the downtown area would save us millions per year and it would also be more equitable. I've got a call in to Chuck Eastwood about this.

The most important law

2007-03-30T03:56:00.000-05:00

Doug Sohn, proprietor of Hot Doug's and a lifetime resident of our area, was just hit with the city's first foie gras fine of $250. The Tribune story was deliberately crafted to please Mayor Daley, clearly designed to downplay the law, eliminate any sign of contrition from the mayor, officials, or business. Instead, it plays up how much Doug is profiting from the publicity behind the event and also how little enforcement there is likely to be. You can always count on Tribune editors to play subtle political games.

There are a lot of dimensions to the council decision. In December, I pointed out to a skeptical Tribune that the foie gras ban was arguably the most important law passed in our generation, because it taught Mayor Daley several things about the City Council that he doesn't seem to understand: that it should be a forum for the public debate of matters large and small; that a properly functioning body politic can and will arrive at morally correct conclusions; and most importantly, that it should be a place where our representatives can and must disagree with the executive whenever necessary.

The mayor's lack of respect for the self-determination of the council and of Chicago's communities is manifested in his longtime maintenance of political power to control seats in that council. We are not going to see a large dent in his control from this election cycle.

But the more we think about the foie gras ban, the more we think about the personalities and politics involved, and the less we think about the ducks themselves.

We are brought up, and we bring our children up, seeing ducks as cute and comical creatures, with the goofy quacking, the waddling, the curved and smirking beak, the big funny feet. Even the word "duck" can conjure up nothing serious in the mind's eye. The folk-cultural semantic is reinforced in picture books and in Warner Brothers cartoons. The mayor and his media very deliberately played upon these cultural impressions. They relied on them, connecting the comical to the council's activity and ultimately calling the law the "silliest law" the council has ever passed.

Just two weeks ago, I finally took my first trip to Hot Doug's to say hello and try his encased meats. I love the theme of the restaurant and it speaks to Doug's sense of humor. Doug Sohn and I go back 30 years. The Latin School environment was tough on me and my siblings, because we were there on scholarships. Doug was one of my only friends there, and I think it's because he saw the world more compassionately than most blueblood teenagers. Today, he's portrayed in the media as viewing the foie gras ban with a jaundiced, devil-may-care attitude.

I'm not a vegetarian and I'm not an animal-rights activist. But I hope Doug Sohn would agree that you don't need to be one to acknowledge that the foie gras production process is terribly cruel. In fact, it is torture. I hope he would acknowledge that many of his friends and customers feel the same way. (Please consider viewing the YouTube video of the cruelty, produced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and narrated by Roger Moore.)

I'm sure I love meat every bit as much as Doug does, and yet I believe we have a solemn duty to treat all animals as humanely as possible. In our consumeristic world, I believe we should renew our consideration for those things that give us sustenance and pleasure. Because of this, I consider it a sin to throw away unfinished food, and I think it's a double sin to divorce ourselves from our responsibility to the animals surrounding us. We shouldn't teach this to our children, we should be conveying and modeling a reverence for the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, those things that were put on the Earth to serve us. I think Doug might agree.

I wonder if we might one day convince our mayor to think the same way about the animals we love to eat.

Beware the mechanical Dawn Clark Netsch

2007-02-20T12:48:00.000-06:00

Dawn Clark Netsch is full of beans.

I just got a dystopian robocall from her saying that Vi Daley "listens to the community, because she knows your voice counts." That is such utter nonsense.

The reason I and everyone else is running is that Vi Daley doesn't listen to the community. What Dawn is saying is essentially a bald-faced lie. I had the greatest honor and respect for Dawn Clark Netsch until 10 minutes ago.

I was there when Dawn Clark Netsch got her start in politics. I was with her at her first campaign office on Eugenie. I licked stamps for her, carried signs for her. She was an idealist then. Dawn is not really here anymore, not really thinking about what the ward or the city really needs. She just called to bail out an old pal, Vi Daley.

I was there when Marty Oberman got his start in politics. Marty is no longer really here, either. He just wants a puppet in office, and he's had to stretch her grotesquely and unbelievably to make her appear to be a true people person, sensitive to any other issues besides development, because she is nothing more than a tool for Marty's development agenda.

I ran into Dawn last summer in Streeterville and asked if she would consider supporting me. I didn't really expect her to say yes right away, but I didn't expect her to shill for Vi Daley.

Who else is shilling for Vi Daley? Beryl Clemens, for the senior citizens. Alan Mellis and the rest of the cabal, for homeowners. Who's shilling for Michele Smith? Marty Oberman. They're all fakes. These people they are crafting are as robotic as the recordings you are listening to.

Lincoln Park bridge tender lives on West Side

2007-01-21T10:36:00.000-06:00

Preservation Chicago was just on WBEZ. The organization's president, Jonathan Fine, lists our Lake Shore Drive pedestrian bridge as on their 7 most endangered list for 2007. It's interesting that most of us in Lincoln Park have to depend on my old friend Jonathan -- who lives way over in Ukrainian Village -- to inform us about what's happening right in our backyards. Preservation Chicago's mention is the first most of us in Lincoln Park have heard about this. We need an alderman who will communicate these things to us.

Suffice to say, Jonathan, that as alderman of the 43rd Ward, I will tolerate only restoration of this historic bridge. I'm sure neighbors agree. We could use better pedestrian access to the lakefront. That is hampered not by this beautiful bridge, but rather by the fact that Lake Shore Drive has been turned into an superhighway. I'll give the Campaign for a Free and Clear Lakefront ample airtime on that subject when I take the podium.

Shit.

2007-01-08T17:49:00.000-06:00

(Also known as, "While Vi slumbers, Part III")

Well, that's a nice pool of diarrhea on my stairs. I wonder what drunken reveler from the Lincoln Avenue bars decided to use the entrance to my home as a toilet. All I know is that I'll have to clean it up. This happens four or five times a year. The rest of the year it's urine all over the walls and into the windows.

I sat down with Vi Daley to talk about the problems in 2005. I was very friendly.

I simply asked her for some support, that's all. One little meetng. I asked her for some help in getting additional trash cans on the street (she said it would cost too much), getting the alley blocked off on weekend nights (she said it would be a fire hazard), getting better lighting in the alley (she mumbled something about doing it and never did), trying to keep the kids from using it as a toilet (she said there was nothing she could do about it), getting a couple more cops onto the detail (pled poverty), and fixing the traffic problem (more mumbling).

Since that time, three of my apartment windows have been smashed, all by drunks on Friday and Saturday nights. My friend across the street has had his plate-glass window smashed, by another drunk. And every weekend night it's urine, garbage, feces, yelling, screaming, vomit.

I didn't come to Vi Daley to vote the block dry. I didn't come to her to whine about all of the trash on the street, or about the weekly urination festivals. I didn't come to lambaste her and then walk away and expect her to do all the work. I came as a concerned and proactive resident willing to do something for the block. I simply asked, very nicely, for her help. And she simply stared at me in disbelief.

How has she acted to correct the problems? She hasn't lifted a finger.

But she did choose to levy an additional tax on residents and let the chamber of commerce decide what to do with the $150,000 every year. No real meeting of the minds was ever held regarding this tax. In fact, the residents seemed to be saying "no" to the tax. And when I came to the commissioners to ask for a few hundred dollars to help replace my neighbor's plate-glass window, they turned their backs on us and decided to discuss $800 flowerpots instead, the same flowerpots that we told them long ago that we didn't want.

(Part I)
(Part II)
(Tax hypocrisy)

It's David v. Goliath in many wards

2007-01-07T20:36:00.000-06:00

Unless we really raise some hell, you won't see much press about this, but over a hundred hard-working candidates are right now being threatened with removal from the ballot by legions of election attorneys in the employ of the most powerful incumbents and wealthiest candidates in the city.

I have been doing what I can to help many of these candidates. But this is simply unjust. David Tirado in the 36th Ward is up against fifth-term candidate William Banks, probably the second most powerful alderman in the city. He has over $800,000 in his campaign account and is objecting to every candidate. Banks amassed over 10,000 signatures, more than the total voter turnout in the last aldermanic election. We have called it monopolization of the voter pool and have taken legal action to attempt to thwart it, but our challenges are being kicked out by the hearing examiners. The original actions were written by Asst. State's Attorney Daryl Jones, who is running against Emma Mitts in the 37th. I wrote two responses, one for dozens of candidate who received objections and a follow-up one for all responses.

It's not enough for these aldermen to sit pretty term after term without a challenge. When they are challenged, they budget tens of thousands of dollars to combat all comers. The least-funded candidates suffer the most, getting distracted from actually campaigning because they could spend week after week in frantic appeals to stay on the ballot, leading all the way up to the election and sometimes afterward.

We had rumors in the 43rd Ward that we all were going to be challenged by Marty Oberman or someone else. This sent candidates with less funding into a panic and caused us to chase after many more signatures than we really needed. I also anticipated objections from the better funded candidates and filed objections against all three of them, arguing the Tirado-Jones suit. So far, hearing examiner John Ashenden has denied my request to remove Tim Egan from the ballot nor even acknowledge our argument that a maximum signature limit exists in Chicago aldermanic elections. There's one for ward committeeman, and the law for alderman is ambiguous on the point.

(See the List of 191 candidates with petition objections)
(See my Petition to Truncate Signatures)
(See the Joint Response to Daley, Smith, Egan Motions to Strike)
(See the Media Advisory)

43rd Ward Candidate Forums

2007-01-07T20:25:00.000-06:00

By request, upcoming forums and other events for 43rd Ward aldermanic candidates (yes, me too):

Thursday, Jan. 11, 6-8 p.m. IVI-IPO "Meet and Greet the Candidates" at Excalibur, $50.

Thursday, Jan. 11, 8 p.m. Wrightwood Neighbors Assn., Sheffield Neighbors Assn., RANCH Triangle Assn., League of Women Voters candidate forum for 43rd Ward candidates, at DePaul Cortelyou Commons. (32nd Ward candidates precede us at 7 p.m.)

Monday, Jan. 22, 6 p.m., IVI-IPO endorsement session, at Lincoln Park Library.

Saturday, Jan. 27, 10 a.m. Citizen Action endorsement session, at the Chicago Hilton, 720 S. Michigan.

Thursday, Feb. 1, Mid-North Assn., Park West Community Assn., Diversey Harbor-Lakeview Assn. candidate forum, probably at the Notebaert Nature Museum.

Thursday, Feb. 15, 7-8:30 p.m. Lakeview Action Coalition, United Power for Action and Justice, Jane Addams Senior Center, Metro Seniors in Action candidate forum, at Church of Our Savior.

Friday, Feb. 16, 3:30 p.m., Abraham annual dental checkup. Hey, how did that get in here?!

There are also articles expected from Inside and Old Town Triangle Association. That's all I know of so far. I also will be posting my position papers and also questionnaires solicited by various organizations.

Titled: "I'd rather not join the rat race" or "I smell an aldermanic campaign"

2006-12-21T20:57:00.000-06:00

All of a sudden, 43rd Ward candidates are scurrying around, trying to snag some media cheese. Carol Marin shared her own Lincoln Park rat experience December 6, and then all hell broke loose:

Clout or no clout, rats a real problem

Michele Smith got some cheese a week later, in Inside, and she's so thrilled to have an actual issue that she says she's totally "changed the priorities in her campaign" because of it! As if rats just began popping up here two weeks ago. Where have you all been? My block on Lincoln Avenue is one of the densest restaurant and bar venues in the city. Rats are a fact of life here. Last winter, I trapped almost two dozen of them.

Lincoln Avenue is packed with young people on the weekend who throw around their pizzas and trash. When I met with Vi Daley in August 2005, asking her to put several more trash cans on Lincoln Avenue, she shrugged her shoulders and ignored me. When a concerned citizen approaches an elected official with a good idea and gets ignored, it's a good reason to run against her.

Rats are sort of cute, like squirrels. The adults may look disgusting to you, but they are fat now because they are pigged out for the winter. The recent warm spell has had them out foraging again. Look at the squirrels, they're fat now too, but nobody's screaming about that. It's an interesting prejudice.

Rats are not the problem, people are the problem. Increasing baiting will not solve things as much as good alley maintenance and reliable trash pickup. We don't have enough bins in many of the alleys and on the streets, and that leads to overflowing. Overflowing trash cans is the absolute main source of food for rats. We need to boost enforcement of this in certain parts of the ward. That's easy, and it's part of an alderman's job.

The Oz Park playground is also an ideal home for rats. They are safe in their cozy nests underneath the wood structures. Abraham and I head over there after dark and count dozens of them scooting around, picking up food that kids have dropped. That's going to be fixed next year.

This is a good thing. Although leptospirosis has not been identified in the Chicago area, that playground would be the ideal place for kids to pick it up. Leptospirosis -- which shows fever symptoms and is occasionally serious -- is transmitted through rat urine and can infect through cuts and mucous membranes. If you've seen our cute little toddlers playing in the wood chips in the playground, and then putting their hands to their faces, you can see where the problem lies.

Our Norway rat was originally from Asia, later crossing into Europe and hitching rides to New England on ships in colonial times. They are commensal with humans, meaning that the species evolved specifically in coexistence with us in our villages and cities.

Heather Hastings, formerly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (she grew up on Larrabee, in Walpole Point), told me last year that according to CDC's rat specialist there are no known diseases in Chicago transmitted through rats. Diseases that rats have been known to carry include plague (last seen in L.A. in 1927) and hantavirus (seen recently in New Mexico). Rats don't easily travel from city to city, so outbreaks of leptospirosis a few years ago in Baltimore wouldn't easily spread to Chicago.

Look. Living in a densely populated neighborhood is a profound experience. I loved growing up in Lincoln Park and Abraham loves it too. There is so much more to experience here. But there are also increased risks that we take. We can't live in constant fear of the dangers. We can only mitigate them as best we can.

Again, the single best way to deal with the rat problem is not to boost baiting. It is to manage the waste situation more carefully. Let's communicate with dog owners and building managers and raise some awareness. We also should have enforcement stickers for Ward Superintendent Mike Restivo to have his staff put on every trash bin, pointedly warning people that they can be ticketed for overflowing bins. If a bin is full, use a neighbor's bin, don't drop the bag on the ground. Such a step will reduce the rat population significantly.

Phallus envy: Finkl Steel acquired

2006-12-10T00:05:00.000-06:00

Well! After a 127-year legacy in the area, Finkl Steel, located in the 43rd Ward, is closing its doors and is now poised to unload its valuable property to the highest bidder.

Children's Memorial Hospital is doing the same as we speak. Lincoln Park Hospital was just sold once again. New City YMCA just announced this year that it's moving. And of course there's the Columbus deal in Diversey Harbor.

There are 350 workers employed at Finkl's plant. Most or all will be out of a job when they move. Jobs were an important reason for keeping Finkl local and why it received enormous subsidies, tax advantages, aldermanic indulgences, zoning boosts, and other incentives in the past 25 years from 43rd Ward and city powers. Many influential personages are interwoven into the Finkl story, including several North Side politicians and the governor.

The Finkl gerrymander is a one-block-high, half-mile-wide notch of the 43rd Ward that juts like a phallus to the west, deep into the 32nd Ward. This has been much to the annoyance and confusion of folks who happen to live between Armitage and Dickens west of Sheffield. This kind of political tomfoolery greatly affects how reliably people receive services.

I understand this is connected with Marty Oberman's tenure as alderman (1975-1987), Oberman having become Finkl's very richly compensated attorney and lobbyist after leaving office. (It's known as "entering politics after leaving politics.") I would welcome him to respond to this point, since details are somewhat vague and it now becomes as "salient" as the Finkl phallus.

After all, Oberman appears to have almost as many hats as Imelda Marcos has shoes. He is now quietly working behind the scenes in his capacity as campaign manager for attorney and 43rd Ward aldermanic candidate Michele Smith, and I am increasingly concerned whether his role as Smith's eminence grise could create various conflicts of interest should she take office. (By the way, Smith is attempting a similar politics-to-politics move, though she is reverse-commuting: she was a longtime lobbyist and general counsel for International Harvester just before entering the aldermanic race.)

One of my intentions was to put the Finkl property back into the 32nd Ward - where it logically belongs - in the 2010 redistricting, so that constituents in the connected area may be served more efficiently. However, now that the property will go up for sale, I cannot redistrict it unless and until I have firm understandings in place, regarding planning for the land, with whichever candidate wins the 32nd Ward aldermanic seat. Just for starters, the several streets (such as Southport) that were domained over the years as political favors to Finkl and Labkon now need to revert back to public use. This has been very frustrating to residents and businesses in the area.

We also need to ensure that this area remains manufacturing, per the recommendations of the LEED Council. We need to find at least 350 new jobs to fill the void. Given the relatively large footprint-per-employee for something like a steel mill, I think the space could provide jobs for thousands more, with some lighter-industry applications.

The 43rd Ward has been home to numerous speculative land deals lately. Children's, Finkl, Columbus Hospital, and New City YMCA are just a few of the entities that have opted to pull up stakes very recently, at least partly motivated by the windfalls they will reap. These institutions can leave Lincoln Park in the lurch when they move to greener pastures. While we must consider the needs of the seller, profitability takes a second seat to preserving the health of our community. Vigilance is paramount: As I promised before, I intend to form an interim Ward Assembly the day I take office that will help guide me in this process. I also will not hesitate to institute ad hoc land-use controls that will guarantee us a strong position at the negotiating tables.

Anyone who knows me should be well aware that it is impossible to buy me, and although some have tried, nobody has ever controlled me politically.

Related stories:

"Finkl acquired, to move North Side base," Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 7, 2006
"Chicago plan aims to curb factory loss," New York Times, Dec. 10, 1987

Chicago's slanted Skyline

2006-11-22T22:56:00.000-06:00

Was anyone surprised to see the obvious bias in the Skyline's roundup of 43rd Ward aldermanic candidates (Nov. 23)? Tim Egan, husband of Marlena Miglin, got first position among the four challengers and made up the bulk of the article. But what would you expect from a newspaper whose society coverage begins on the front and occupies seven of their 16 pages of so-called news?

And - oh, my - there's the happy Miglin mishpoche again, in Ann Gerber's gossip column on Page 9! She's out stumping Marilyn's fundraiser for Tim Egan! That pretty squarely shoots down Dechter's and Burmahl's lame-assed excuses for failing to inform the public about my street cleaning warning system. Even though my product is a public service, they say they place candidates' press releases in a special category of promotional material, as if it is something any less relevant to the public eye than an announcement of some service by the alderman, or by Children's, or by Old Town Triangle. I suppose Felicia Dechter might have published it if I were Marilyn Miglin's son? Will she publish an announcement of Vi Daley's ripoff of the product?

The two longtime public advocates, Rachel Goodstein and myself, were placed at the end of the story as the "me too" candidates. It's noteworthy that Rachel and I not only have lived in the ward longer than any of the others, we've also put more volunteer hours in for our community and received the least attention from Skyline.

And why, after twice sending in my photograph, would Skyline "inadvertently" fail to print it among those of the other candidates? Could it be that they didn't want competition for their favorite son in the race, Tim Egan? Tim's okay looking, but so am I. The Nixon-Kennedy debates taught the media all it's ever needed to know about image control. Skyline has refused to make good: "We regret the error, but we're not going to publish your photo," said the editors.

My family has never appeared on the society pages. Most of Skyline's readers have never had that privilege. I am a third-generation journalist; my father was longtime editor of the chronically broke Near North News. With a pedigree like that, I don't have a quick leg up as a candidate, but as Skyline editor Beth Burmahl said, I "must know how the business works." I appreciate the refresher.

Read what you will into the paper’s election coverage. If given the proper forum, we "second class" candidates will earn the admiration of Gold Coast and Lincoln Park voters without the dubious help of Skyline's sycophantic writers and editors.

Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday...

2006-11-10T09:15:00.000-06:00

For years, I've been one of the city's most outspoken critics of political hiring and firing. Yesterday, Donald Tomczak, the mayor's former patronage lieutenant, was finally sentenced for Hired Truck. He's a product of "old Chicago," his lawyer says. And I agree with that, and I can't blame him for how he grew up. Plenty of the kids I remember from blue-collar Lincoln Park are part of the patronage game today. It's really the mayor who is responsible for the unavoidable effects of patronage.

The guys at the 43rd Ward Streets and Sanitation office are also products of "old Chicago." And I'm sure they're afraid I will fire them if I am elected. After all, I'm also a product of that old Chicago.

But I just called them to sympathize after I discovered that in our Diversey Harbor neighborhood, Wednesday often comes before Tuesday. "We know that," Anthony Nagli groaned.

Here is an example: this month, according to the permanent signs, the south side of Wrightwood will be cleaned on the third Tuesday and the north side the third Wednesday. So drivers and the sweeper know it's always going to be two days in a row, right? Wrong. This month, that Wednesday comes a week before the corresponding Tuesday. Confused? Look at a calendar. This anomaly occurs several times a year.

For this and related reasons, the sign system is very confusing to everyone involved. It is the result of a lack of clear thinking about the complex systems and processes involved in running the city's services. The permanent signs need serious rethinking. (Read my plans for that.)

Any major problems with street cleaning are ultimately our alderman's fault.

And in case it's not clear: I am opposed to political hiring and firing. No ward employee loses his or her job just because I take office. Except the alderman.

Forget old Chicago. Let's see what we can do in a "new Chicago." As the feds are so fond of saying, "Stay tuned."

Imitation: The finest form of flattery

2006-11-05T09:37:00.000-06:00

What a creative alderman we have in the 43rd Ward.

In July, after citywide media showed me talking about Vi Daley's huge ticketing error in the Diversey Harbor area of Lakeview, she turned around and publicly claimed credit for fixing it. She didn't even thank me for discovering and correcting it. I had already spent three days dealing with Bill Kenan at the Department of Revenue, who promised me the problem would be fixed, long before Vi Daley got the phone call from Fox 32 informing her about the problem.

Now, to help deal with ticketing issues, Vi Daley has put very expensive cameras on the cleaning trucks, to boost punishment for a hopelessly unfair system. Since she's so lazy she doesn't put signs up more than a few hours before ticketing, I had a better plan: tell people about street cleaning a couple of days earlier, and maybe they'll move their cars more often. It won't cost the city a penny more.

To help people, I just released a new service, the 43rd Ward Street Cleaning Early Warning System. People who park on the street can enter an e-mail address and a list of blocks they park on, and my software notifies them three days in advance of when their blocks are about to be cleaned. Pretty good idea, right?

But, lo and behold! Look what just appeared in Vi Daley's e-newsletter, about two hours after we'd finished blitzing cars throughout the ward with our notice:

Alderman Vi Daley will unveil her new web-site in the coming days. One major change was suggested by a resident who regularly uses the calendar. [That must be me! You're welcome, Vi.] You will be able to enter your address and receive email notices about up-coming street-cleaning on your block. We hope to extend it to include notices about re-paving, movie shoots and possibly, snow removal.

I coded alongside volunteers to develop my package. Vi will probably use her deep slush fund, composed of our own Democratic Party money and developer kickbacks, to finance a cheap imitation. Or is she going to use taxpayer money? That would be pretty wasteful, since there's already a product out there: mine. But you know she likes using your taxes in this way.

I'll also take my 72-hour advance notice ordinance to City Council the day I take office. In my ordinance, the city will be forced to put up signage at least 72 hours in advance and keep tight records. If they don't put up signs enough in advance, they can't legally issue tickets. Simple, huh? Why didn't Vi Daley come up with it? Now let's watch as she introduces this ordinance moments before the February election, then claims credit for it. Or maybe she'll get Mayor Daley, or some other alderman, to do it for her so it's not so obvious.

Vi Daley can't come up with one creative idea, so she has to steal from others. Some people lead, others follow. What kind of alderman do you want, a leader or a follower?

(Read my position statement on this issue, which includes other ideas that Vi Daley will probably steal)

Our suffering schools

2006-10-31T06:18:00.000-06:00

I had an engagement yesterday at Sumner-Kipp school deep inside the West Side. The school was locked like a fortress and it took me several minutes to get in.

Heavy doors, painted a spartan brown to cover graffiti, were shut up against a desolate playground. Empty lots dotted the streets between dilapidated homes and long-shuttered factories. Our post-industrial environment.

When I finally got in, I looked around the dimly lit basement for the person I was supposed to meet. Black children were filling the halls. They didn't seem unhappy to be there, but I did not sense much joy and light as I do when I walk the halls of Newberry, Lincoln, Lab, Latin. The Sumner teachers looked tired and sullen.

One white teacher was particularly nasty. She was desperately trying to push her kids into a single-file line. She bellowed to them, "Didn't I tell you what I would do to you if you didn't get in line?!" Her face bore the cruelty of oppression and furrowed lines of exhaustion - Thoreau's "confirmed resignation," it seemed to me. Then she turned to me. I asked where I could find Ms. W--'s room.

"She's upstairs," she answered in a voice that sounded at once annoyed, desperate, helpless. "That's a different school. We were moved from there and we don't go up there." (Kipp-Ascend is a charter school that occupies the upstairs rooms.) She turned back to corraling her children.

In the meantime, we have some of the most beautiful schools in the city here in Lincoln Park. Certainly, we pay higher taxes here, and the unspoken statement is that we deserve much better public schools because of it. But of course that is suburban thinking, so we don't say it.

Sumner does not lure top teachers and administrators, and its test scores are hovering around the 50th percentile. Sumner is not even one of the worst schools. And I've seen some triumphs in the many schools I've visited and worked in over the years. But I am not afraid to say to Lincoln Parkers that there are great disparities here and we of all people should be taking notice, taking action. This is a citywide responsibility.

Sumner report card
Lincoln report card

View all school report cards and other data here

Board of Elections database vulnerability

2006-10-23T15:59:00.000-05:00

The Board of Elections will not be thanking me for forcing them to correct their error, nor will they be apologizing to Chicagoans for this oversight. In fact, Langdon Neal, chairman of the Board of Election Commissioners, instead has publicly accused me of breaking the law. He did this at the Board of Election meeting Tuesday, knowing I wasn't in the room to defend myself. He did add that they wouldn't be pressing charges, thank goodness. Let no good deed go unpunished, and be sure to cover your behind with a well-paid publicist and a part-time appointed commissioner who happens to be a high-powered zoning lawyer.

The worst part about this is that the Tribune whitewashed the event to bail out the Board of Elections. Metro editor Hanke Gratteau burned with jealousy at seeing the Sun-Times was getting an exclusive story. I asked her writer to be patient and instead Gratteau decided she would punish us, coming out with a grossly imbalanced story that made the Board of Elections look practically heroic. Even in the next day's followup story her anger was clear. What had been a national scandal the day before, she managed to reduce to a footnote at the bottom of a local story. Ahh, the power of the press.

Her story quoted Tom Leach: "We don't have any evidence that there was any [identity] theft." Our side was not invited to rebut that. In fact, to this day Leach has no idea whether there was any theft of identities. He can't know, because their logs couldn't possibly go back more than a few weeks, while the hole has been in existence for at least six years. But the Tribune's Hanke Gratteau decided that the statement was important enough, authoritative enough, and conclusive enough, to run as a pullquote.

The story told readers that Leach said, "On Friday, [Peter] finally called and we asked him to come in" (emphasis mine). I told the Tribune that I demonstrated the problem in August to Al Chase, that I sat down at his desk and showed it to him, and that Rachel Goodstein was in the room and saw me do it. But the Tribune refused to publish that, instead claiming that I "declined to further discuss the matter." They were so jealous of the Sun-Times that they decided lying was a good service for their readers.

I come from three generations of professional journalists. Many of my writer friends find today's crop of career editors at the large dailies an embarrassment to the profession. Though they proudly wear the mantle of journalistic integrity, it is made out of tissue. They are craven and jealous and I can say that for this story Hanke Gratteau did not follow the code of ethics prescribed by the Society of Professional Journalists. They will probably find another excuse to endorse someone else for alderman, but be sure Hanke Gratteau's jealous rivalry with the Sun-Times may be a strong contributor. She simply doesn't like me and never has.

Read my statement on the Board of Elections database vulnerability.
Read the Sun-Times story.
Read the Tribune story.
Go to Illinois Ballot Integrity Project Web site.

Hypocrisies of the new Lincoln Avenue tax hike

2006-10-19T10:04:00.000-05:00

The Lincoln Avenue tax commission (SSA) wants to spend ill-gained residential tax dollars on the very same aesthetic amenities that even experts are saying don't bring commercial economic improvement (see MCIC study). They want those expensive hanging flower baskets on the street light poles. Eace priced at about $500 annually to maintain, they'll need about 100 of them ($50,000). "We're getting a discount on them," they told me. These were the the first items that people raised a big stink about at the beginning of this process, and now it's a priority for this commission. "Your concerns are all water under the bridge," they tell me. Lincoln Avenue, it's your money they're being so cavalier about.

I've been trying to persuade them that a more immediate and justifiable need is to fix the half-dozen smashed store windows on the 2200 block of Lincoln Avenue. Aslam Virani, of the Lincoln Mini-Mart at 2228 N. Lincoln, simply does not have the money to fix his window and replace the neon. Rioting drunken crowds on that block are one reason this tax was proposed. While I strongly disagree that residents should be paying a majority of this chamber of commerce tax, they now have a bank account that has $130,000 of your money. They can't allocate a measly few hundred dollars to help Mr. Virani with a real problem, yet they're sitting around seriously mulling a $50,000 annual disbursement for flowerpots that many of us have already told them we don't want. It's going to cost each and every homeowner, renter, and small business on Lincoln Avenue between $100 and $200 a year.

"If you think the neighbors want Mr. Virani's window fixed, why not ask each of them to chip in a few bucks apiece?" That's what they told me, in the same patronizing tone they used when I last appeared before them. But then, why doesn't the commission take up a collection for the planters? Why don't they ring every doorbell in the neighborhood and ask each resident and small business for $150 to pay for this year's planters? Why don't they do that? Because surreptitiously hiking our taxes was much easier.

Last night, I attended the Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA commissioner meeting. That commission voted to reimburse the chamber of commerce only half of the $57,000 it spent in researching their SSA. Commissioners say they are somewhat baffled by the high price tag and never authorized the work; they've called for an investigation into the remaining amount. They are also concerned that the data was inaccurate.

Last month, the same reimbursement proposition was unanimously rubber-stamped for approval by our Lincoln Avenue commission. The very same consultant had done very similar work for the Wicker SSA as for ours, and the commission knew it. As a result, the chamber, the aldermen, and the Department of Planning and Development pushed through a pricey new property and rental tax that to this day few on the street are even aware they're paying. Of those few on the street who have heard of the tax, the only people I've met who are not skeptical are either the ones who instigated it or the ones who were bought out as commissioners and now support it wholeheartedly. It's a cabal of about 10 people out of a couple of thousand stakeholders.

At today's meeting, I was vocal about these problems. They responded by delving into my personal life and calling into question my authority to speak on behalf of residents on Lincoln Avenue - even on my own family's behalf. On the defensive, they began asking whether I really reside here, whether I am registered to vote here, the status of the ALARM organization which was formed as a direct response to this mess.

Cornered by appeals to reason, they attempted to sow doubt and resort to personal invective, violating their own rules of conduct. But nobody in that room could claim they had nearly the experience with the residents that I have, particularly on this Lincoln Avenue tax. Nobody in that room was ever on the ground, talking to residents, asking the tough questions. Not one of them has walked the street and surveyed buildings one by one, as I have. Not the commissioners, not the program manager, not the alderman, nobody. And even I don't know nearly enough.

They have plenty of power but lack the true understanding of the issue that can confer real moral authority on their actions. This is very different from the debates in Wicker Park.

What these five people are doing makes me very angry. Drunk with their new power, itching to spend a big pile of our money, they invite costly vendors to parade in front of them, seducing them with their wares. The same thing has been happening on Clark Street and throughout the city. I aim to amend these taxes so that commerce pays most or all of it. I aim to change state law so that these taxes are harder to sneak past a poorly informed public. And we need more sunshine on this entire process.

What's wrong with this picture?

2006-10-19T09:45:00.000-05:00

September 28, amid great fanfare, the lights went on at the new Victory Gardens space at the Biograph Theater. Just months before, another neighborhood institution - the Three Penny Cinema - closed its doors after 34 years because they could not afford to continue to do business in the city.

The Three Penny's Jim Burrows fell deeply in arrears on the city's 7 percent entertainment tax. Major distributors have "exclusive" deals with big corporate houses, like the Century, and will not send first-run movies to independents until they have run their course. "They tell me that Three Penny cannibalizes business from the Century and Webster Place," he told me. That's nonsense and it is anti-competitive. It also kills the very businesses that Ald. Daley appears to be trying to support with the Local First Chicago initiative and the "formula retail" ordinance.

Any small bookstore can buy any book in print for sale. A small grocery can buy brand-name products wholesale. No distribution chain is as anti-local business as the movie industry.

Biograph has a gala while Three Penny vanishes. As happy theater lovers sampled hors d'oeuvres and sipped champagne in the Biograph's new lobby, I wondered why the city and the alderman didn't go to bat for the simple, no-frills moviehouse across the street.

I want to support small, independent local businesses like Three Penny. Two years ago, I developed a plan for supermarkets and it has since broadened into a Retail Access Master Plan. This would give small local businesses like Three Penny a leg up. Businesses without local control would have to pay a higher tax. This is more productive, and less controversial, than any "formula retail" ordinance. It also helps to answer some of the problems that the "big box" ordinance endeavored to address.

The Tribune finally catches on, Part II

2006-10-16T20:57:00.000-05:00

As a close observer of the municipal elections and a longtime public critic of the misuse of city resources for campaign purposes, I can say confidently that it is highly unlikely that Ray Frias, former 12th Ward alderman, could be "appalled and shocked" about the political use of city services. ("If a tree falls in the city, is it just election time?", Oct. 15, 2006).

After all, Frias once sent his own aide and precinct captain, Susana Mendoza, to coordinate nearly identical efforts for the Hispanic Democratic Organization in the previous election. This was when he himself was involved with HDO. For this, Mendoza was rewarded with a seat in the state legislature.

More likely, Frias was stunned that HDO leaders would turn on him in the way that they did, using taxpayer money to support a relative unknown against him. That left many of us a little confused.

The stakes for the mayor's perpetual control of the City Council are quite high. Our taxes have been held hostage in this way every four years, in contested turf throughout Chicago, so that the mayor may maintain that control. In 2000, I discovered nearly 1,000 completed city service requests in an abandoned campaign office, many personally marked by Susana Mendoza.

Among those papers, one particular order - written by a Department of Transportation superintendent - showed that trees were not the only things to be removed in anticipation of Election Day. In two of the five runoff wards in 1999 in which Daley's HDO had an interest, perfectly good sidewalks were scheduled for demolition, specifically in front of polling places, right on the eve of the election. This was quite probably to deter voters in those precincts. A close analysis showed that the work was probably ordered by Daley's own campaign staff.

Lest the point be lost on more gentle readers, it is your money, coming from your property taxes. There is plenty on hand to do what needs to be done. If you ever hear neighbors complain about things not getting done, it is because some alderman is sandbagging those funds - your funds - for political gain.

The people leading these activities have been Mayor Daley's closest political lieutenants. Any suggestions that he is not aware of it and condoning it are simply not credible.

Upscale wards don't witness this kind of activity, because their political systems have evolved from ones supported by patronage precinct structures to ones governed by community organizations. Else they might understand that things are not normal in Chicago. Yet they too should take note, because this activity is encouraged from the highest offices in the city. Elsewhere, they call it corruption.

Cooperative Temperance Society

2006-10-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have already seen this:

http://www.eco-absence.org/chi/cooperative/

I saw it on Jennifer Roche's blog. It's another poignant chapter in our history. The disappointment we voice when we document or witness this kind of activity is a little bit sentimental nonsense, a little bit obstructionist innuendo - but most of it is the cry of real, visceral Chicago, its institutions, ideas, art, vanishing before our eyes.

My feeling is that the very need for Brown Line expansion - and most of Mayor Daley's other development programs - stem from his efforts to do development "the easy way," by cramming it into already stressed white middle-class areas of this sprawling city. For years I've watched community leaders throughout the area tear one another apart because they don't realize the agent of these misguided changes are not individual developers but the vision of the mayor's own planning department.

In the mean time, after 17 years we still have several dozen square miles, vast swaths on the West Side near underutilized and even boarded-up transit stations, that have no valuable architecture and no valuable institutions anywhere near them. And I've been lied to repeatedly, told that it is pure market response, when every day we see how the DPD pushes its agenda.

TRAC at Humboldt Park, TIFs, SSAs, etc.

2006-09-25T17:39:00.000-05:00

Clout critic Patrick McDonough caught me with an old friend, Bickerdike and TRAC organizer Claudia Montoya, at the Tax Reform Action Coalition rally in Humboldt Park Sep. 11. Representatives from Lincoln Park included people from Park West Community Association, Lincoln Central Association, Wrightwood Neighbors, and Sheffield Neighbors.

Anyone interested in the tax picture in Illinois should visit the TRAC Web site. TRAC Director Barb Head acknowledges the 7% tax cap bill (currently in Springfield) is a "band aid," but that we need to pass it. I have been very excited about the notion of acquisition-based assessments, where a property is reassessed only when it is sold. I've tried this out on many Lincoln Park residents and business owners and they seem to like it.

My general position is this: Chicago and Illinois are long due for a restructuring of the way taxes are levied and spent. Alongside the property tax abuse - whose sad consequences include the disparity in school quality statewide - TIFs (Tax Increment Financing districts) and SSAs (Special Service Areas) are two tax diversion formulas which are being abused by the mayor's Department of Planning and Development.

Archive of tax articles by the Reader's Ben Joravsky
Archive of TIF articles by the Reader's Ben Joravsky
SSA Working Group (Yahoo group)

Of course, none of this tax reform will have any effect until we really change the way the city does business.

Letter to the Editor, Inside

2006-09-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

To the Editor, Inside:

It was refreshing to see an article on Local First Chicago's efforts to encourage more locally operated business in the city. Further on in the paper, we see the efforts in lakefront wards to preserve their unique character by introducing a "formula retail" ordinance. These two items are set against the backdrop of the "big box" ordinance veto, all in the same issue of your paper.

I hope it is clear to some that these three articles are related melodies from a single theme. The political activity is a response to a single phenomenon of external capital stresses. When nationalized and globalized corporations derive their capital force from investment outside the local economy, they enjoy economies that local capital cannot easily compete with. The uniform branding and marketing, price pointing, labor control, and centralized management combine to contribute to their notorious levels of success, undermining locally owned commerce.

This comes at a price to the city. As Diane Epstein correctly pointed out, local businesses keep much more of every dollar spent within the community - 25 cents more. That 25 cents flows out of the city with chain business. As much of the capital from chains comes from outside of the area, much of the profit must necessarily flow out as well.

Not only that, but the external power provides for larger (or else smaller and more diffuse, similar effect) and better promoted stores, with lower overheads, which overpower small business and draw clientele away. This is why Chicago is suffering.

These effects should be obvious but we are only now beginning to recognize them. When the city center's last affordable local supermarket was threatened with closure, I began devising a plan which has since evolved into the Retail Access Master Plan (RAMP) that addresses all of these concerns under one umbrella. On the table are significant sales tax incentives for locally owned business and a corresponding surtax for global business - that is, a sliding scale for taxes based on an index of how locally owned and operated one's store is.

In addition, certain areas have lost important amenities due to related pressures. Because of the increased retail rents in gentrified areas like Lincoln Park, we see no affordable supermarkets, no laundromats, and so on. RAMP addresses this by causing the city to acquire real estate in certain areas where investment is too low or too high, and to entrust the land to a community partner who will act as landlord to a business that will provide the service to the community. The rent will be well below market rate.

There are other components to RAMP. This is ultimately a citywide plan, not just a selective one that picks on only a few entities or a certain area. RAMP is far more comprehensive, and addresses the problems more directly, than the controversial "formula store" and "big box" ordinances, which are at best band-aids. Business and commerce interests who have looked at this plan agree that it is more intriguing than the others.

I invite Ald. Daley to join me in developing this plan. You can download a copy of the most recent draft at:

http://zelchenko.com/2006/09/RAMP_Summary_09-12-06.pdf

Peter Zelchenko
Candidate for Alderman
43rd Ward
zelchenko.com

Petitioning begins Tuesday, Sep. 19

2006-09-16T17:53:00.000-05:00

We will begin our nominating petition drive this coming Tuesday, September 19. If you live in the ward, please sign our petition and also consider assisting in your precinct. We already have a number of volunteers to help us, but we have several precincts without support. E-mail us at ward43@gmail.com to find out how you can help in your precinct or in one nearby. Even if you don't live in the ward, you can help.

Also, have a look at this: Eliminating the Competition

I heard through the grapevine that one of the other candidates may already be planning such a legal challenge to our petitions, just to harass us. That would be unfair in any event. But what's more, my parents happen to go back more than 50 years with the campaign manager of that candidate. With friends like that, who needs enemies? If it happens, I won't be financially equipped to withstand the challenge. We'll just have to turn the campaign around on them.

While Vi slumbers (Part II)...

2006-09-03T01:09:00.000-05:00

It's now 1 a.m. Sunday morning. I am at my desk. I hear a trickling sound five feet from me. The urine is coming through the window of my office next to my desk. A Lincoln Avenue party animal is peeing against my window.

Early Friday, another drunkard was urinating on the bedroom window next to it, and then turned around and smashed it to pieces. I woke up and threw some pants and shoes on and sprinted outside.

A parking valet had identified him, and with Al Porrata (our "Lone Ranger" detail officer; see the post below) we chased him and his friends as they sauntered loudly down Larrabee to their car. I spent the next half hour sweeping up urine-soaked glass.

Don't even talk to me about the alley near the homeless shelter.

Just three weeks ago, a picture window across the street at the convenience store was smashed. I escorted the kid, his arm slashed to the bone, to Lincoln Park Hospital at the corner. I then helped Aslam Virani, the store owner, to contact a board-up service. I told him I'd get the fancy SSA commission to pay for it, by hook or by crook.

When, last year, I sat down with Vi Daley to ask her to help me solve the traffic, noise pollution, public urination, and other problems on Lincoln Avenue, she shrugged her shoulders and passed a new SSA tax on Lincoln Avenue. I fought to oppose that tax. When I tried to inform neighbors by posting an alert about the hearing, she had my signs torn down and wrote me a ticket. We have since forced a tiny amount of sunshine on the process, but the tax was still passed under our noses and Vi slated a generally pro-commerce commission to deal with the tax, just like she did on Clark Street.

I had asked for a weekend barricade on the alley. She shrugged her shoulders, claiming it would be a hazard for emergency vehicles. I asked her for extra trash cans on the street. She asked how I expected her to fund that. I told her I imagined extra security was out of the question. Exasperated, I asked her and Chuck Eastwood if they would at least put strong lights in the alley to discourage the dozens of people who use it as a toilet every weekend. They said they'd do that. That was a year ago and nothing has happened.

Vi had Lincoln Avenue narrowed for her precious streetscape in December 2000. A month later, Police Officers Bob Elliott and Al Porrata, the street's entertainment detail cops, with the help of community leader Cynthia Bathurst, tried to get Vi Daley to fix the traffic snarl, presenting her with a beautifully crafted seven-page plan that they did on their own time. She eventually got a fraction of it passed, but she did not follow through on implementation. As of this date, only a small portion of the plan has been implemented. This street's traffic and crowd control needs are similar to those of O'Hare Airport.

When I recently went to the new Lincoln Avenue SSA commission's first meeting to gently voice the SSA Working Group's beliefs about the SSA (read them), I was treated very coolly by the entire group, as if I were an outsider. When I tried to plead Mr. Virani's case for an emergency disbursement of about $600 to replace his window, they looked at me as though I were insane. One of them asked, "Let me get this straight. You want us to pay for this man's store window, because...because he's a nice man?"

Lincoln Avenue, they're going to spend your money the way they want to, the chamber of commerce will get all the credit, and you won't even hear about it. I've seen it happen over and over in Chicago.

(There's a guy who's been screaming outside my son's bedroom window for the past 10 minutes. Fortunately, my boy is out of town tonight.)

I wish Vi could just come here late on a Saturday night. We already pay enough taxes that these problems should be contained. Instead, she raised our taxes and we're still out of luck.

Update: Thursday, Dec. 15, 2006, 12:55 a.m. I hear a trickling sound coming from the office. Liquid is splattering into the house. I go back and pound on the window. A man laughs to his friend, then walks away.

Urgent to Arne Duncan: Support the homeless children

2006-08-30T20:18:00.000-05:00

Lincoln Park residents, please write to schools CEO Arne Duncan and urge him to settle the costly lawsuit brought by homeless families who need and deserve better support from CPS. Read the emergency letter sent by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and please follow through.

Through Renaissance 2010, CPS has been cutting service quality levels to those most in need while boosting amenities for the privileged. This creates change in a remarkably short time, giving us much better schools in neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, but shortchanging the toughest areas of the city. I favor a better balance.

I was struck by the contrast here when a Newberry friend just mentioned that, for the first time, school buses are picking kids up in front of the house instead of at a nearby schoolgrounds. That's good for Newberry kids (many of whom are underprivileged), but here we see that the homeless and others at underperforming schools are actually having similar services cut. How is that equitable?

I imagine Arne Duncan has a terribly unwieldy ship to steer. But to undercut services for those most in need would seem to be the last thing he should do. Lincoln Park should be the first to alert him to this error.

While the alderman slumbers on her cozy Old Town sidestreet...

2006-08-26T03:10:00.000-05:00

At 3 a.m., cars backed up for a block

Screaming throngs, vomit, and trash everywhere

The "Lone Ranger," Officer Al Porrata, who once provided a plan

I couldn't sleep. The screaming crowd outside woke me up, as it does every weekend.

Enough is enough, Lincoln Avenue. You don't have enough trash cans, police, traffic control, toilets, or cleanup crews to support the raucous crowd that descends on you every weekend. And you don't have an alderman who cares enough.

Wicker Park, which has nine bars, has a batallion of 10 special detail cars all week. Division Street, which has eight bars, gets 12 cars. We have 13 bars and get one special detail car, and it's been that way for years.

Last year I asked Vi Daley for a few trash cans on Lincoln Avenue to deal with the piles of pizza plates and food strewn all over every weekend. She said there was nothing she could do about it. I spoke to her ward superintendent, Michael Restivo, who laughed at me and said, "More trash cans just bring more garbage." Without their help, I finally managed to get one trash can on the block, which isn't nearly enough.

Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, the street turns into a war zone, as a thousand young people hang out on the street, clog traffic, get smashed at the 13 bars on the block, and vomit, urinate, defecate, and throw food, beer glasses, and food packaging all over the surrounding street and alleyway.

Superintendent Restivo sends a morning cleaning detail on weekdays, but not on weekends when they are most needed. It's a complete waste of money: He could have someone come out the two days a week they are most needed - Saturday and Sunday - and pay overtime, and it would cost even less than what he is spending now.

Vi Daley said the answer to the problems on the block was a special property tax, where residents pay about 5 percent above their already skyrocketing bill for things like more cops and more trash cans, and the money goes to the Chamber of Commerce, where they can tack on things like commercial banners, promotional brochures, flower baskets, and payroll for their staff.

When I tried to post emergency information for the affected community about the public hearing for this suspicious tax (innocuously known as a Special Service Area), Mr. Restivo instantly ticketed me and tore down all of my signs. It seems they didn't want anyone to know about it. The tax passed right under the neighborhood's nose. Later, when I told Mrs. Daley the community deserved more debate on the tax, she said, "We're not going to debate this, Peter."

Officer Al Porrata and his partner, Bob Elliot, with the help of community leader Cynthia Bathurst, drew up a comprehensive traffic plan in 2001, presented it to Vi Daley, and it was passed. It was never implemented. A more complete plan will discuss traffic flow, parking, litter, toilet facilities, and crowd control measures.

Of course revelers deserve to party in Lincoln Park. We wouldn't have it any other way. But residents of the street shouldn't have to pay an additional tax to fix a problem they didn't create.

Late to the party

2006-07-31T11:23:00.000-05:00

Rich Miller, for Capitol Fax, writes about Sunday's Tribune article on how Mayor Daley holds city services hostage until the weeks before contested elections:

http://thecapitolfaxblog.com/2006/07/31/late-to-the-party

Miller writes that the Tribune is very late in coming up with this information, and goes into detail about my book, which was the first publication to go into depth about the subject. His lack of appreciation for my writing skills aside, it is about time the Tribune took notice of this.

"Big box" ordinance passes 35-14

2006-07-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

The city's "big box" ordinance passed Wednesday with a veto-proof 35-14 vote. This was a watershed event for the City Council, since it demonstrates for the first time in 17 years how the council should operate under the so-called "weak mayor" system. Debate was robust and all views were permitted to be clearly and fully expressed. The mayor made no threats and was civil.

The vote breakdown was also interesting. The mayor's most reliable followers, including Mrs. Daley, voted against the ordinance after being pressured by the mayor and by aldermen in wards who were promised to receive the first Wal-Mart stores. Following were the "no" votes (personal thanks to Ramsin Canon of Gapers Block; this has not been published elsewhere that I know of):

Haithcock (2nd), Tillman (3rd), Hairston (5th), Beavers (7th), Balcer (11th), Troutman (20th), Brookins (21st), Carothers (29th), Austin (34th), Mitts (37th), Natarus (42nd), Daley (43rd), Tunney (44th), Stone (50th).

Liberal Helen Shiller (46th) of Uptown left the room for an abstention, since she has a Target going up. I believe this was not a bad move for her under the circumstances. Alds. Balcer, Natarus, Daley, Tunney, and Stone are the mayoral loyalists. I can only speculate on the true inner motivations of these aldermen. Some of them have large numbers of Republicans in their wards and may have bent to conservative pressure. Some were asked to vote no by other aldermen in poorer wards who have been promised Wal-Mart stores. Some loyalists, I am sure, imagine that their fealty to the mayor will accrue them benefits.

Whatever their motivations, I believe there is a very good reason for the other 35 aldermen to have voted "yes" for this ordinance. I admit it is a blunt and imperfect instrument, yet I think it is fair, mostly because it serves to keep billions in revenue, that would otherwise be spread across the globe in management and profit, within in the local economy.

Most importantly, this ordinance buys Chicago a little bit of time: perhaps for a couple of years it holds the world's largest corporations at bay until we have the opportunity to properly develop mid-size supermarkets and other essential services. I am in early-stage discussions with some aldermen on something I drew up last year in response to the closure of many small independent supermarkets. The plan is provisionally called the Essential Services Initiative and it involves land allocation and tax benefits for mid-sized, locally owned basic-needs businesses to enter areas all over the city. Please contact me for details on this.

More street-cleaning ticket victims

2006-07-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

Residents on Cleveland Avenue were inconvenienced today despite their best efforts at avoiding a ticket for street cleaning. The alderman's Web site listed today's street cleaning route but did not include the east side of Cleveland Avenue between North and Armitage in the list of streets to be cleaned. Yet the 43rd Ward superintendent's office had it on their list. They cleaned the street and the Department of Revenue ticketed.

This is not the first instance of the mismatched schedules between the alderman and her ward office. A constituent called the two offices to confirm these new inconsistencies. The disclaimer from the alderman's office is "the schedule is subject to change." But when I called Streets and Sanitation, they said that the schedule has been in effect for three years.

Cleaning was scheduled only on the following streets: Cleveland from Blackhawk-Clybourn, Hudson from Armitage-North, Mohawk from Blackhawk-Clybourn, Sedgwick from Armitage-Blackhawk.

I've discovered dozens of small problems in the street-cleaning ticketing system that are affecting hundreds of Lincoln Park residents every week, and possibly hundreds of thousands in the city yearly. I have plans to improve this system so these problems almost never occur, and residents have good recourse when they do.

To those affected, you should contest the tickets and call on Alderman Daley (773-327-9111) to pressure her to write a letter to accompany your request or have the Department of Revenue reverse all of these tickets. (Her office already told one constituent that they would not do that). Include the following documents in your contest:

(Letter of contestation)
(Web site screen shot)

At the same time, despite the schedule calling for it, no street cleaning was done this week in the area between Fullerton and Lakeview, east of Clark Street, due to serious errors that our campaign discovered and which was broadcast on WGN and will appear in upcoming editions of Inside and Skyline.

Street-cleaning ticketing problems

2006-06-28T16:33:00.000-05:00

(View photos)
(Read July 5, 2006 press release)

As if the orange paper signs weren't causing enough headaches, our campaign volunteers have discovered a major street-cleaning ticketing problem in the Lakeview area where new permanent signs have been placed - all streets from Fullerton to Diversey, east of Clark, are affected, including Hampden (Deming-Diversey), Arlington (Clark-Lakeview), Lakeview (Diversey-Fullerton), Deming (Clark-Lakeview), Pine Grove (Wrightwood-Diversey), Lehmann (Diversey-Wrightwood), and Drummond (Clark-Lehmann). We have seen the problem this Tuesday and Wednesday, June 27 and 28, on several of the streets in the area. Hundreds of cars have been improperly ticketed just this week, and if it has been occurring for months, then we are talking thousands of cars.

The problem is that the new permanent street cleaning signs have been posted, but the alderman hasn't updated the schedule that she sends to the Department of Revenue and the police. People are correctly assuming they can park on these streets but are being ticketed by people who aren't paying attention to the new signs.

We are opposed to the new permanent signs. In many ways, they're even worse than the old ones, which are bad enough, as many neighbors can confirm. We have a better solution that we'll be revealing in the coming months.

You shouldn't have to put up with this. Please be patient as we work to resolve this issue. I've put in a call to the Department of Revenue to see if we can resolve this for everyone ticketed. In the meantime, everyone should contest their tickets by mail to get it on the record, just in case. (Use explanation #6: "The illegal condition described in the compliance violation did not exist at the time this notice was issued.")

Anyone who has been ticketed should e-mail us immediately at tickets@zelchenko.com with their information so that we may keep you posted on our progress. Include your name and address, auto license number, date and location where the ticket was issued, and citation number from the ticket.

Police brutality in Chicago

2006-06-16T08:25:00.000-05:00

A woman who had been struggling with drugs, while held on a traffic warrant, died Monday in police custody after repeatedly asking for medical assistance and being told by police that she would not be treated. (Frank Main, "Woman who died in lockup asked for help: witness," Chicago Sun-Times, June 14, 2006.) I knew another woman, May Molina, who died in police custody in 2004 under similar circumstances.

This January, after police got rough with a gathering of mourners who overflowed onto Western Avenue, 36-year-old union engineer Brenda O'Connor was treated to handcuff torture by a Chicago Police sergeant - in front of her stepdaughter. I later followed up and took her down to Police Headquarters so that we could file a report to the Office of Professional Standards. Having seen this before, I have no illusion that there will be any action in response to Brenda's complaint, though it has been corroborated by several witnesses.

In fact, I personally was a victim of police brutality - when I tried to stop a police officer from framing a Middle Eastern man for an accident which he himself had caused.

Just this week, the Reader featured on its front page and Web site "The Police Torture Scandal: A Who's Who." For years the Reader has been following CPD's torture program and this article summarizes the activity and points back to the numerous articles they've published on the subject since 1990.

It's inconceivable to me how such things can happen so regularly in a place called "civilized."

On June 6 at St. Clement School, Lincoln Park Neighbors United for Peace held a forum on the torture at Guantanamo. We saw video footage of the suffering caused by our own troops, and authorized by our own top leaders. But you don't have to travel far to see cases of police dispensing "street justice" and callous disregard. It's right here in our city, every single day.

The son of the deceased woman said of her, "She taught me to treat everyone the same way - from the president to a bum - with respect. It doesn't look like they treated my mother with much respect." People in custody should be treated with no presumption of guilt. That is not the job of the Chicago Police Department, and it is nobody's job to do physical harm to a person or ignore their legitimate requests while in their care.

It's time for a culture change. They're putting video cameras on the streets in our troubled neighborhoods. I believe we need video cameras in the jails, and outside monitors and jail inspectors. And probably a lesson for some of our police officers on courtesy, ethics and limits to authority.

The weakest link

2006-06-15T06:50:00.000-05:00

I'm often told accidents don't happen by accident in Chicago. When I hear such things coming from normally reasonable people, I tune out. I reply with some stock response about conspiracies or a favorite quote from Tocqueville: "In America, there are factions, but no conspiracies."

In planning matters, we are repeatedly hearing Ald. Vi Daley passing the buck on "accidents" that keep happening under her watch. Just yesterday, I was told by a zoning expert that the alderman must have lied to Lincoln Central Association regarding the passage of a minor zoning adjustment for the development at 1932 N. Burling, the biggest McMansion yet to come to Lincoln Park. At a meeting on the matter, as reported in LCA's newsletter:

"Neighbors strongly objected to the height increase. Ald. Daley interrupted, informing the crowd that the city’s zoning administrator had already granted the request, because immediate neighbors had not objected. One neighbor whose property adjoins the site had not been notified, however. Ald. Daley suggested he file a complaint." (Lincoln Central Association, Spring 2006, p. 4)

Oops! "Already granted the request"? My expert told me that Zoning Administrator Tom Smith would never make a move without an alderman's approval. He strongly believes what really happened was that Ald. Daley probably passed the buck and allowed Smith to be the bad guy for a change which she herself had tacitly approved. And my source has probably attended more zoning hearings than some of the Zoning Committee's own members, so he knows what he's talking about!

We already heard last year that the historic Hayes-Healy building next to the Fullerton El was "accidentally" demolished by the CTA when "landmarks division [sic] officials mistakenly approved a demolition permit for the project." (Ben Joravsky, "Above the Law: Why is the Armitage el stop exempt from historic preservation?" Reader, March 3, 2006, p. 8) Oops again! And as if that weren't already enough, Mrs. Daley also claimed that a "miscommunication" between three agencies caused the CTA to go ahead with changes to historic station lightpole and handrail treatments that the community didn't get a chance to disapprove of. (ibid., p. 9)

And I've heard other stories. How many accidents are going to happen in this ward?

The worst part about these community process tragedies? Had Mrs. Daley properly used her power and leadership authority, most of these things probably would not have happened. And if so many "accidents" are really happening without her approval, she should not be sitting on her hands, she should be inciting a riot. Instead, she hides behind a shield of helplessness.

When people I know start indulging in conspiracy theories, my eyes tend to glaze over. But tacit approvals, passing the buck, the "done deal" plea, feigning helplessness? These are things that don't require full-blown conspiracies. All you require is a weak link.

Building monuments to Maya Hirsch

2006-05-30T20:13:00.000-05:00

Lincoln Park will soon stop buzzing about the death of beautiful 4-year-old Maya Hirsch, killed by a hit-and-run driver May 20. Abraham and I cross that intersection all the time.

I've been to too many funerals and memorials for pedestrians and cyclists in this city. We see accidents like these every few weeks and nothing's ever done to transform the culture of the automobile. Officials aren't callous, but they do react only briefly and inadequately to matters like this instead of taking things out of the box and to a higher level. It's not enough to install a stoplight at one intersection, nor to momentarily discuss traffic calming concepts, nor to call for increased enforcement. The problem is too severe to believe that vehicle deaths in Chicago would be reduced significantly, even if the city were to implement all that's been proposed in the past week.

Today, officials pay lip-service to alternative modes of travel but still prefer to cater to internal combustion. They closed down Queen's Crossing at Grant Park to pedestrians last summer (you now must take a half-mile detour to cross from the lake to Buckingham Fountain, so traffic can speed along). They told bicyclists along Sheridan that they'd be ticketed if they rode on the sidewalks and police are seriously cracking down on things cyclists do that are illegal but not dangerous. They're installing more "pushbutton" crosswalks all over the city (when does a car ever have to push a button to get through an intersection?). The last thing you ever see are permanent crackdowns on car lanes, speed limits, parking entitlement, and a downtown flooded with cars.

I'd like to see some radical thinking on these problems. I remember having some long conversations years ago about this, with Tom Samuels, just after he arrived in Chicago. Samuels, formerly of Toronto, now an aide to Ald. Smith (48th), brought Chicago into the 20th century in traffic planning. In his Canadian life he was a transportation radical. He brought the "bulb-out" streetcorner and other modern traffic planning concepts to Chicago when he was working for CDOT. Tom immediately responded to Maya's death by showing a design for an improvement to that corner. There are other bright thinkers who have great ideas about how to really fix things in this city. But it won't do just to fix one intersection at a time or to make yet another ordinance that can't be enforced. We have to make radical changes to how Chicagoans think about transportation. Let's start by putting Tom Samuels' bulb-outs at every intersection near areas of high pedestrian traffic, and speed bumps galore. How to fund it? Let's start by telling Cong. Rahm Emanuel that the trolleys are nice, but what really makes federal funding work for us are more lasting and transformative monuments to challenge the culture of the car.

Ad-hoc neighborhood organizations

2006-05-18T17:21:00.000-05:00

During 2001 and 2002, the Lincoln Park Improvement Task Force came and went, without much ceremony, over the development of the Columbus Hospital site by American INVSCO. Jim Bidwill of 2626 Lakeview had to build a community group from scratch for his concerns to be heard, and it served as a check and balance against the powerful Park West Neighborhood Association and the Diversey Harbor Lakeview Association. In a related move, another anti-downzoning fighter, developer Al Hanna, singlehandedly fought PWNA's move to downzone the area northwest of Clark and Fullerton.

(History: Columbus Hospital exits Lincoln Park after 97 years Daley pushes downzoning for hospital site, developer moves ahead Lincoln Park association PWNA under fire in downzoning lawsuit Lincoln Park downzoning comes under attack Invsco presentation strikes out Agreement on condos for Columbus Hospital site Lincoln Park Improvement Task Force looks ahead)

You can see the similarities in the Lincoln Avenue SSA debate, where the five community groups skirting the tax area paid little attention, allowing the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce to have its way with the property tax increase. The only choice was to rise up angry and form another "ad hoc" organization, the Alliance of Lincoln Avenue Residents and Merchants (ALARM). You can also see similarities in the recent Sheffield landmarking issue.

All that effort by LPITF - "all pulled together by the will of one man" - and now it's vanished. Jim Bidwill said, "Our goal is to become the largest organization representing businesses and residents in Lincoln Park." Inside wrote, "The Task Force represents residents and local merchants, and Bidwell emphasizes that the group is not a mouthpiece for larger players or a fleeting ad hoc voice." But in fact it was fleeting.

My aim in this entry is to point up the anguish our "nonideological" city officials create among neighbors when they let policy be driven by community groups alone. Angry, frustrated outsiders are forced to rise up and give legitimacy to their unheard concerns. In my opinion, one dissenting voice, unincorporated as it may be, should be enough to raise concern about any proposal. That is what the deliberative process is about: any rational objection must be debated. A wise alderman would anticipate the concerns, notify, bring in the stakeholders, moderate, and find compromise.

Lincoln Avenue SSA commissioners

2006-05-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

Last week, Alderman Daley gave me the names of her slate of commissioners for SSA #35: Sam Sanchez, Cary Stamp, Joseph Quartana, Susan Keegan, and Neer Patel. It appears Mrs. Daley has eroded the effect our input was supposed to have. ALARM's proposed slate may look very similar — the only difference being that we preferred independent Lincoln Park native Joe Vartanian (MaxBar, Crobar) over Sam Sanchez (John Barleycorn) and wanted Don Reidelberger over Joseph Quartana — but the subtle changes Mrs. Daley has made would shift control squarely into the hands of the chamber's adherents: three of the five nominees are chamber members; furthermore, Sam Sanchez was the chamber's biggest booster for the tax and Joe Quartana is also gung ho on it. There is no non-chamber business owner and there is no residential renter, and these together comprise the largest constituency on the strip. This is a profound shame. Keep in mind that our original agenda was to have this SSA commission use its power to spend its first year reviewing the premise of the tax and its source, and spending only a minimum on necessities. I have questioned the lack of community process from the very beginning (see, e.g., Ben Joravsky, "Are You Taxing Yourself?", Chicago Reader, Nov. 4, 2005, p. 8, "Stop Lincoln Ave. SSA," Inside, Nov. 2-8, 2005, p. 9-10, and "Lincoln Avenue SSA gets tentative approval," Inside, Nov. 23-29, 2005) and I am afraid this is more of the same blind boosterism.

Chinese at Alcott School

2006-05-11T10:18:00.000-05:00

Today, WBEZ featured Alcott School's Chinese program (see their May 11 schedule; also a widely cited New York Times article). Principal David Domovic told me the good news: CPS has funded one terrific (certified) Chinese teacher, Ms. Hong Wei Yu, but they really need a second one. He says budget constraints and federal law make it very difficult to meet the demand for a good idea like this one. No Child Left Behind forces CPS to use only state-certified teachers, while there are many great Chinese teaching candidates who aren't.

Now, I love Chinese. When I worked in China, I had to use it every day. I use it only infrequently here. I recognize the benefits of language learning and would love to get my son into LaSalle Language Academy this fall. Yet, while Chinese will be increasingly important in American business and culture, Spanish already is important and is likely to remain far more useful than Chinese, particularly for Chicago. If given a choice, I'd rather my son learn Spanish first, Chinese later. Yet, according to the NYT article, Lincoln Park parents may disagree with me: "At Alcott, 160 students from kindergarten to fifth grade are studying Spanish, compared with 242 taking Chinese, although not without occasional frustration." Was Chinese chosen over Spanish by the parents, or the children?

Blog

2006-05-11T09:37:00.000-05:00

Well, I've finally gone and started a blog. I've worked on the Internet and its predecessors continuously for 30 years, and I never thought I'd see the day that I would want to use something like this. Having been inundated with technology since childhood, I'm a little bit conservative: I still feel print journalism is more useful and relevant than the Web and that we should focus on local media. While I see the benefits, I have tended to look down on blogs. But here I am. I want to talk about issues in the 43rd Ward.

Relevant trivia: Naturally, I know that the BBS was born in Chicago. (I personally got Mayor Daley to issue a proclamation for the 25th anniversary of the BBS.) Dozens of other innovations that are used every day online were developed here and at nearby universities. But I only recently learned that blogging was invented by my old friend Jorn Barger, an ancient fixture in Chicago computer circles and an expert in artificial intelligence theory. He had what he called a web log for his notes on AI, and someone shortened the name to 'blog. Jorn really gets around, so I wasn't too surprised that I didn't know. But I was surprised when I mentioned this to his ex-roommate last night and he didn't know!