Chicago leaders confirmed the city will loosen its COVID-19 mask and vaccination requirements on Monday. A 42-unit apartment proposal in West Lakeview was the largest development proposal to earn approval from an uncharacteristically light zoning committee meeting on Tuesday. And the City Council is set to vote on a measure approved by a key committee on Tuesday that would allow electronic voting during council meetings.

A September 2021 City Council meeting [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago] 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s controversial plan to let city attorneys sue gang leaders for their assets is in line for a final vote by the City Council during its meeting on Wednesday, setting the stage for a final public debate over whether the ordinance will help the city wrangle crime or only make matters worse.  

The council is also set to approve about $4.4 million in police misconduct settlements, finalize a long-delayed appointment to head a key police investigatory office and move to tighten aldermen’s control over special event permits in their own wards. 

A rendering of the five-story, 42-unit apartment building planned at 3443 N. Ashland Ave. [44th Ward]

A proposal for a new 42-unit apartment building in West Lakeview is the largest development item up for approval during a relatively low-key meeting of the City Council Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards at 10 a.m. Tuesday. 

Ald. Matt Martin (47) and Chicago Police Department Deputy Chief Ernest Cato speak during a committee meeting Thursday. 

A controversial proposal by Mayor Lori Lightfoot that would empower city attorneys to sue gang leaders for their assets cleared a key committee hurdle on Thursday, lining it up for final approval for the City Council next week. The measure advanced despite a crush of challenges from aldermen who said expanding asset forfeitures could be costly at best and harmful at worst with scant hard evidence that the policy could make a dent in crime. 

The next phase of the Roosevelt Square affordable complex is up for tax-increment financing assistance after having been granted zoning approval by the City Council last year. [Chicago Department of Planning and Development] 

Aldermen are scheduled during a packed Committee on Finance meeting Thursday to line up tens of millions of dollars in direct and bonded funding for nearly 500 combined units of new affordable homes across the city, including a more than 300-unit new phase of a Chicago Housing Authority complex planned alongside a rehab of the National Public Housing Museum in the University Village area.  

The finance committee is also set during its 10 a.m. meeting to approve $4.4 million in settlements to end four separate police misconduct lawsuits against the city, including a $1.7 million payment to end a lawsuit by a woman who was dragged by her hair by police at the Brickyard Mall in summer 2020. And the committee is scheduled to green-light nearly $10 million in tax-increment financing for various Chicago Park District projects around the city. 

Ald. Jason Ervin discusses a plan to buy a shuttered Aldi site in West Garfield Park during a meeting of the City Council housing committee on Tuesday. 

A City Council committee green-lit a plan on Tuesday for the city to swoop in on a closed West Garfield Park grocery store site to alleviate a food desert, but not before aldermen grilled city planning officials over what the deal will mean for Chicago’s land intervention policy moving forward. 

The 6.25-acre lot at 18th and Peoria streets is one of the largest undeveloped sites in the Pilsen neighborhood. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

City leaders are poised to take a key step forward Tuesday on a plan to turn over a long-vacant lot at the gateway to the Pilsen neighborhood so it can be developed into hundreds of new affordable homes.  

Apartments near the 606 Bloomingdale Trail have been subject to density minimums and demolition fees since early last year. [Eric Allix Rogers]

Backed by neighborhood activists and a handful of junior aldermen, Chicago housing officials took on a controversial experiment early last year to slow displacement in two of the city’s most rapidly gentrifying areas. 

The City Council approved the plan in January 2021 to flip city zoning rules on their head by setting a minimum allowable density in Pilsen and the area surrounding the 606 Bloomingdale Trail, and they followed up two months later by tacking a “surcharge” onto home demolitions in the same neighborhoods. Their goal was to interrupt a runaway pattern of “deconversions” and demolitions that saw two-flat and three-flat apartment buildings replaced with lavish new single-family houses, a trend that was eating away at the neighborhoods’ precious remaining stock of affordable homes. 

Aldermen are set to vote Monday on a resolution affirming Chicago’s symbolic support for Ukraine. And Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas is kicking off the county’s biennial Scavenger Sale with a warning for buyers. 

Lanetta Haynes Turner (top right), chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, walks commissioners through new spending initiatives on Thursday.

New proposals to create a non-police “alternative” response system for mental health emergencies, protect vulnerable areas from the ravages of climate change and accelerate the replacement of lead service lines were among new priorities laid out by Cook County officials on Thursday as they map out spending for the county’s $1 billion share of American Rescue Plan Act funds. 

A $29 million Cook County vaccination program is among new proposed spending initiatives set to be unveiled on Thursday. [Facebook/Cook County Health]

Cook County budget officials are set Thursday to unveil more than $35 million in new long-term spending initiatives backed by federal stimulus dollars. They will also pave the way for the county to recruit its first new inspector general in 14 years and will finalize the approval of nearly $11 million in settlement payments to end various lawsuits against the county.  

The items are among dozens of orders of business the county’s Board of Commissioners is scheduled to dispatch during its regular monthly meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday. 

Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Comm. Erin Harkey (left) Chicago Department of Housing Comm. Marisa Novara (left) speak during a committee meeting on Wednesday. 

New funding from the American Rescue Plan Act will allow Chicago to multiply the impact of a broad suite of existing housing programs, from support for new affordable developments to repair grants for homeowners to anti-homelessness initiatives, housing officials said Wednesday. And city-backed cultural grants will flow much more heavily than they have in previous years.  

But with months to go before many of the programs are underway, aldermen pushed for more information about how the new spending will be overseen. 

Aldermen listen to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2022 budget address in September 2021. [The Daily Line/Don Vincent] 

A new City Council subcommittee launched to keep tabs on Chicago’s spending of federally backed stimulus money is set to hold its first meeting Wednesday, kicking off a process one key alderman said he hopes sets a new standard for oversight on the city’s spending of taxpayer dollars.  

Cook County Assessor joined a gaggle of Democratic state lawmakers on Monday for a virtual event touting the launch of the new Affordable Housing Property Tax Relief Program.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi gathered state lawmakers on Monday to cut the ribbon on applications for a new “tiered” assessment system designed to incentivize the construction of affordable housing. 

Officials are posing the new program as a win-win for developers and housing advocates. But only time will tell whether the new system meaningfully grows the state’s stock of affordable homes, according to voices on both sides of the issue.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas during a 2019 news conference. Pappas has repeatedly demanded information from the Cook County Land Bank on how many properties it hopes to acquire from the county’s upcoming Scavenger Sale. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas stepped up her back-and-forth with the county Land Bank Authority with a special delivery on Friday to every elected county commissioner and to Eleanor Gorski, the land bank’s executive director. 

Large buildings in Chicago reported progress in lowering carbon emissions, but fewer buildings are sharing their data. And Chicago and Cook County leaders offered a mix of reactions to the early release of former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke from prison on Thursday. 

More than 31,000 properties are set to go up for auction in this month’s Cook County Scavenger Sale. Nearly 12,000 of them were also offered at the last three Scavenger Sales and found no buyers. [Eric Allix Rogers on Flickr]

The biennial Cook Count Scavenger Sale, when investors are invited to bid on thousands of delinquent properties, will look different this year. For the first time, potential bidders will be able to sift through a public interactive database of properties in the county’s charge when the sale gets underway on Feb. 14.  

But county Treasurer Maria Pappas hopes the next Scavenger Sale looks far more different. 

Chicago Chief Data Officer Nick Lucius (right) followed up on recommendations from Interim Inspector General William Marback (left) to clean up and centralize the city’s information technology systems. [Twitter/Inspector General’s office]

Chicago leaders embarked last month on an “aggressive 12-month plan” to modernize and centralize the city’s repository of data on everything from ambulance response times to overgrown weeds, according to the city’s data chief. 

Chicago’s new daily COVID-19 case rates are “getting close” to low enough for the city to drop its vaccination mandate for businesses, according to Chicago’s top doctor. A new City Council subcommittee on spending oversight is preparing its first meeting. And Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25) is joining a three-pronged effort to introduce City Council resolutions in Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle proclaiming all three cities’ support for nationwide Starbucks unionization efforts.