Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $11.65 billion spending plan for 2020 may have sailed through the Chicago City Council Tuesday, but its passage highlighted the deep rift between the mayor who promised to end business as usual at City Hall and energized progressive groups that are demanding structural change.

A lawsuit designed to prevent the Department of Children and Family Services from holding  foster children in psychiatric hospitals for days, weeks and even months “beyond medical need” should move forward, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Aldermen voted to revise Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to stop the Chicago Police from impounding cars with marijuana inside to ensure that officers can still seize vehicles buying illegal drugs on the South and West sides.

Dr. Jay Shannon performed a balancing act during his more than five years at the helm of the Cook County Health and Hospitals system, whose nearly 6,600 full-time employees run the county’s two public hospitals and manage its growing Medicaid managed care program.

The CEO was forced to make several rounds of deep budget cuts while keeping the system’s services competitive enough to attract insured patients. Shannon was tasked with scoping out new revenues while relying on a shrinking pool of taxpayer dollars. And he oversaw a more than three-fold expansion of the county’s Medicaid services amid federal efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

But by Friday, when the health system’s independent board voted unanimously not to renew Shannon’s contract, the $2.8 billion health system also faced mounting financial and political pressures. Skyrocketing costs from unpaid debt and the county’s provision of care to uninsured patients, plus a contentious report on the health system’s fiscal stewardship, meant county officials peppered Shannon with tough questions this year.

 

Ald. Ed Burke (14) thumbed his nose Monday at the leaders of the Cook County Democratic Party, defying their calls to step down from his post as 14th Ward Democratic committeeperson by filing to run for a record-extending 14th term.

Lori Lightfoot may have campaigned on ending business as usual to become Chicago’s 56th mayor, but her first budget season is set to end Tuesday in the same way city budgets have ended for decades: with a quick and decisive rubber stamp.

Even without help from state lawmakers, aldermen are set to approve Lightfoot’s plan to close an $838 million budget by finding savings and efficiencies, while raising some taxes and fees to avoid a large property tax increase. 

A database of suspected gang members kept by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office lacked oversight, skirted federal guidelines and was used for “unauthorized purposes” before its 25,000-plus names were taken offline earlier this year, according to the county’s watchdog.

Monday marks the first day of the week-long candidate filing period, in which the petitions passed to get on the March primary ballot must be turned in to elections officials. In addition, aldermen will gather to weigh Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to stop the Chicago Police from impounding cars with marijuana inside and significantly lower fines for those caught blazing in public.

A coalition of housing activists on Friday called on city leaders to change the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance to keep “scofflaw” developers from skirting their commitments to build affordable housing.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to create two new departments in an effort to streamline the city’s operations and save money is “unproven” and may not pay off, according to an analysis of the Lightfoot’s $11.9 billion 2020 budget proposal, according to the City Council Office of Financial Analysis.

The land rush in the red-hot West Loop will roll on with a green light from the Plan Commission for a 243-unit apartment complex including an 11-story tower near Union Park.

Ald. Daniel La Spata (1) said Wednesday he will ask members of the Chicago Plan Commission to delay a vote on a proposal to turn the vacant Von Humboldt Elementary School into an 107-unit apartment complex and five townhomes geared toward teachers.

The developer — Newark, N.J.-based RBH Group — has been trying since 2016 to transform the shuttered Logan Square elementary school, which has been vacant since it was one of 49 schools closed in 2013 as part of the largest mass school closure in the country’s modern history.

This is the second time La Spata has asked the Plan Commission not to consider the proposal. In June, the rookie alderman blocked the Plan Commission from considering the proposal.

“There is still a lot of tension with the community,” La Spata said. “I think we can get it there, but we are not there yet.”

Plans detailed by the developer at community meetings would reserve 24 percent of the apartments for Chicagoans making no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income, with another 35 percent for “middle-income” teachers, according to Block Club Chicago.

La Spata said he was not convinced that plan for affordable housing was enough to win his support.

“There is a lot of concern about whether it would help people being priced out of the community,” La Spata said, adding that some in Logan Square want the developer to sign a community benefits agreement. “I would be disappointed if it moves forward.”

The plan also calls for 53 parking spaces and “classroom, community, commercial and office uses,” according to documents submitted to the Chicago Planning Department.

In response to questions about whether the item will be considered, a spokesperson for the Department of Planning and Development referred The Daily Line to the city’s code, which requires the Plan Commission to hold and conclude a public hearing within 30 days of commencement,” unless the applicant asks for an extension.

Under the city’s unwritten rule of aldermanic prerogative that gives each alderman the ultimate say over what happens in their own ward, La Spata could block the Plan Commission from considering the project indefinitely. However, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot works to roll back aldermen’s veto power, it was unclear whether the proposal would move forward without La Spata’s support.

Related: At 6-month mark, Lightfoot’s effort to scale back aldermanic prerogative a work in progress

In other action, the commission will weigh a plan to redevelop a Fulton Market dairy supply facility into a 16-story, 259 room hotel.

The hotel at 1234 W. Randolph St. would be operated by Standard Hotel, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.

Also in the red-hot Fulton Market District in the 27th Ward, commissioners will weigh whether to endorse a plan to build a 243-unit apartment complex including an 11-story tower with 87 accessory vehicular parking spaces and 180 bicycle parking stalls near Union Park.

Naperville-based developer Marquette plans to renovate an existing five-story building on the site and use it as offices, according to documents submitted to the Chicago Planning Department.

In June, Crain’s reported that beer maker 25 West Brewing had agreed to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the tower.

The commission is also set to consider a proposal to build a seven-story apartment building with 80 units at 2604-2742 N. Sheffield Ave. in the 43rd Ward.

The new building would connect to two existing 11-story residential buildings with 45 parking spaces. Eleven units in the two existing buildings would be set aside for seniors, according to documents submitted to the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.

Other items set to be considered by the Plan Commission include:

• Permission to build a seven-story, 408-space parking garage at 3001-29 N. Sheffield Ave. in the 44th Ward.


• Permission to allow the Ivy Hotel to install a retractable structure to enclose its existing rooftop terrace.


• An agreement to sell Building H at 5801 N. Pulaski Road in the 39th Ward to Elderly Housing Development & Operations Corp.


• Permission to allow Global Citizenship Experience Lab School to add a high school to its campus at 51- 65 E. Randolph St. in the 42nd Ward.


• Permission to allow Nicholas Pupillo to open a dance studio inside an existing one-story building at 3121 N. Rockwell Ave. in the 33rd Ward.


• Permission to build a new building for John Hancock High School at 5437 W. 64th Place in the 13th Ward.

Projects endorsed by the Plan Commission head next to the City Council’s Zoning Committee, and then to the full City Council for approval.

After aldermen sped through a series of votes on Wednesday designed to position the 2020 budget for final approval Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was done negotiating over the $11.65 budget spending plan.

“The budget is the budget is the budget,” Lightfoot told reporters after a City Council meeting that clocked in at a brisk 57 minutes.

Cook County commissioners on Wednesday narrowly approved a final set of rules governing the Just Housing Ordinance, ending a months-long intragovernmental dispute over how tightly the county should restrict landlords from searching potential tenants’ criminal conviction histories.

Twenty community activists, housing providers and real estate professionals will comprise a task force set to propose changes to the city’s evolving and controversial Affordable Requirements Ordinance, city housing officials announced Tuesday.