In a brief statement tweeted Monday evening, Ald. Will Burns (4) confirmed that he’ll be leaving City Council, without explicitly mentioning his resignation or when it would happen. Listing a series of accomplishments on affordable housing, construction in the South Loop, and raising Chicago’s minimum wage, he closed with a brief line: “I can look back at the last five years and see the change that we have created together, and I believe that our momentum will continue in the future.”

Burns did not return requests for comment Sunday or Monday, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office confirmed his exit and said he would be missed: “I thank him for his time and commitment to public service, and wish him the best of luck."

Patrick Corcoran, Communications Director for City Clerk Susana Mendoza, says while Mendoza had yet to receive resignation documents from Burns, it wouldn’t be unusual for the Clerk’s office not to be CC’d on a resignation email. Corcoran says the Mayor could declare a vacancy at the upcoming City Council meeting on February 10. Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty told the Chicago Tribune that Burns will start his new job with the company on March 1 as a senior advisor and director of Midwest policy. Mayor Emanuel has 60 days to fill Burns’ vacancy from the effective date of the resignation, so a replacement would presumably be in place by May.

In a statement, Emanuel said any resident of the ward would be able to apply for the position, and a commission of 4th Ward community leaders, led by Rules Committee Chair Michelle Harris (8) will help determine the finalists and submit their list to the Mayor, who will ultimately choose Burns’ successor. The Mayor’s office says information required for the application and a link will be announced in “the coming days.”

Illinois Election Law states: "If a vacancy occurs in an elective municipal office with a 4-year term and there remains an unexpired portion of the term of at least 28 months, and the vacancy occurs at least 130 days before the general municipal election next scheduled under the general election law, then the vacancy shall be filled for the remainder of the term at that general municipal election.”

Jim Allen, Communications Director for the Chicago Board of Elections, says there will be a special election on February 28, 2017, the day of the Consolidated Primary Election. “If no candidate received more than 50% of the votes, there would be a special runoff on April 4, 2017,” Allen says, the date of the Consolidated General Election.

That seat-filler will likely serve for just under a year until that special election. As for Burns’ position as chairman of the Council’s education committee, Vice Chair Ald. Michele Smith (43) will act as the presiding officer until a new Chairman is submitted to and approved by Harris’ Rules Committee, says Corcoran. In addition to a resolution on the new chair, the committee could also name new members to empty committee slots Burns would leave behind. Burns sits on the Budget, Finance, Housing, Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, Transportation, and Workforce Development Committees.

Burns could also put a bow on some legislative leftovers over the next month. He’s co-sponsor of Mayor Emanuel’s proposed tax hike on tobacco and increase of the smoking age in Chicago to 21. Revenue from the hike would go towards CPS summer programs. The proposal is likely to be on this month’s Finance Committee agenda.

Reform to the Office of the Inspector General could also wrap this month. He’s one of the members of the working committee tasked with ironing out kinks to an ordinancethat would merge the Office of the Legislative Inspector General with the Office of the Inspector General. The merger ordinance was deferred and published last month byAld. Carrie Austin (34) and Ald. Ed Burke (14).

While Burns was a co-sponsor of that merger ordinance, he also warned the ordinance could leave aldermen susceptible to political attacks. He’s also listed as a co-sponsor on Ald. Jason Ervin’s (28) ordinance compelling the city’s mental health clinics to adequately staff psychiatrists and enter into managed care contracts.

The Committee on Human Relations will take up one new appointment and several reappointments to the City’s Commission on Human Relations, a 19-member body created in 2012 to enforce the city’s human rights and anti-discriminatory housing laws.

The only new appointment before the council committee is that of Julio Rodriguez, a director of program services for the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The other four candidates are reappointments.

The committee will also take up a so-called “clean up” ordinance Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced on behalf of the Chairman of the Commission on Human Relations that broadens protected statuses for job applicants to include gender identity, in addition to codifying other rules that bar the city from taking into consideration a job applicant's criminal or financial history.

New provisions to the municipal code would also add a layer of protection for tenants who file a claim against their landlord. The change to the Fair Housing Regulations would bar a landlord from retaliating against and evicting a tenant who reports them to the city.

Another technical amendment expands the protections offered to active and retired members of the armed services. The current anti-discrimination provisions offered to military personnel are based on “military discharge status.” By striking “discharge” from the code, the protections would be broadened to include any branch of the armed services.

The Chicago Teachers’ Union rejected the Board of Education’s most recent contract proposal, which, according to CPS, included pay raises and met the union’s key demands on charter school expansion and more autonomy for teachers. But according to the teachers’ union, the contract didn’t go far enough, especially as it relates to curtailing the expansion of charter schools and finding a new stable source of revenue to wean the district off of using borrowed money to pay for operations.

At a late afternoon press conference yesterday, forty members of the union’s “Big Bargaining Team” and CTU President Karen Lewis announced their decision to to reject the Board’s contract proposal, because it failed to address the district’s long-term fiscal crisis and falls short of providing services to the city’s “most vulnerable students.”

“There were a lot of things [in the contract] that were great,” CTU President Lewis said, “however, the things that will affect the classrooms the most, especially around the budget, were concerning to people.”

Several CTU members cited the Board’s “chronic spend and borrow practices,” and, on more than one occasion, mentioned the district’s eleventh-hour decision last week to pull its $850 million bond offering as proof the financial industry agrees with their assertions that, “CPS is broke on purpose.”

“There is no guarantee of funding to do the things… the only concrete piece of funding is out of our pockets. That’s what we do know,” Lewis explained, using the example of the Board’s plan to have teachers contribute a greater share of their annual pension contributions.

“The appointed Board of Education continually prioritizes corporate interests over the interests of our students and as a result, we have a legitimate distrust of the Board of Education,” said Dr. Monique Redeaux Smith, a member of the bargaining committee and 11-year teacher at CPS.

The contract, according to Jim Cavallaro, a special education teacher and member of the bargaining team, was contingent on over 2,200 CTU members retiring at the end of this school year, putting “undue pressure on our veteran members to retire before they intend to.”

While CTU has been without a contract since June 30, 2015, negotiations have been ongoing since November 2014. In December 2015, the Board of Education offered a four-year contract that would eliminate the 7% pension pickup, as well as net pay raises in the third and fourth years of the contract. The proposal also included a reduction in standardized testing and decreased paperwork for teachers.

That same month, CTU held a strike authorization vote where 88% of those allowed to vote gave the CTU leadership the authority to call a strike. Under state labor law, CTU can’t strike until mediation and fact-finding have concluded. Yesterday was the first day of fact-finding, and since that must last for a minimum of 105 days, the earliest CTU could strike is late May. But Lewis wouldn’t say if a strike could occur this or next school year.

When asked how the Board could do a better job of establishing trust, Lewis said the union wants three things: for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to “immediately” declare a surplus of TIF money; have the state legislature pass a TIF surplus bill that would divert the extra property tax revenue to CPS; and impose state rules to make it so the charter schools can’t get around a city-imposed charter school cap.

But the Board said it has done a lot of what the union demanded, including step-and-lane raises for seniority and experience, a commitment to restoring a dedicated 0.26% property tax levy for teachers’ pensions, and a commitment to “push for alterations and revisions” to the legislation that authorizes the Illinois Charter Commission.

In a statement released shortly after CTU’s announcement, CPS Chief Executive Officer Forrest Claypool expressed disappointment in the rejected offer, adding, “CPS remains committed to reaching an agreement with our partners at the CTU that is in the best interest of our students, parents, teachers and city.”

Although she’s in Iowa covering the caucus, Super-Reporter Mary Ann Ahern from NBC5 scooped everyone last night by reporting that Ald. Will Burns (4) plans to retire and take a job at Airbnb. Burns did not respond to requests for confirmation by Aldertrack’s publication deadline.

Ald. Burns is Chair of the Education and Child Development Committee and has been holding a broadly supported resolution from a vote out committee calling for a halt to additional charter schools. Burns, who came to Council after three years as a State Representative and time in Springfield as former-Senate Pres. Emil Jones, Jr.’sconfidant, and was elected alderman with the support of 4th Ward Democratic Committeeman Toni Preckwinkle after she was elected Cook County Board President. Burns has also served as a contractor to lobbying powerhouse, AKPD, recently rebranded as Kivvit.

Despite its name, the Education Committee has virtually no purview over Chicago Public Schools, since education reforms passed in 1995 removed all Council oversight from CPS and gave the mayor total control. Burns is highly unpopular with the Chicago Teachers Union. “Burns is like Ken Dunkin to the CTU,” said one labor organizer speaking anonymously last night.

Because Burns retired before a 28-month cutoff date, the time an alderman must serve to allow the Mayor to appoint a replacement, the 4th Ward will need to conduct a special election to replace him.

“Total shock,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49), who has worked with Burns closely in the past. “If he was not happy, he certainly kept it close to his vest.”

Gold Rush Amusements, one of the largest distributors of video poker gaming machines in Illinois, is still donating money to Chicago aldermen even though Mayor Emanuel remains opposed to its legalization within city limits.

In January, the company wrote a $2,500 check to Ald. Michelle Harris (8). Two months ago the company donated $1,000 to Ald. Joe Moreno (1) and Ald. Raymond Lopez (15). Lopez introduced an ordinance in the Council last year to make video gaming legal in Chicago, but Mayor Emanuel immediately squashed that plan, telling reporters the day it was introduced he would never approve it. The company has already given money to 31st Ward Ald. Milly Santiago ($2,500) and 40th Ward Ald. Pat O’Connor ($300). The 33rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization, run by the ward’s Democratic Committeeman and former alderman Dick Mell, received a $10,000 donation from the company, too.

Since creating a new campaign committee on January 7, Ald. Harris has reeled in quite the campaign cash. Her first two reported campaign transfers to the new Citizens for Michelle Harris campaign fund are large: one $25,000 check was from theConstruction & General Laborers’ District Council of Chicago, another $53,900 check was from the UA Political Education Committee. 27th Ward Democratic Committeeman Walter Burnett transferred $10,000 to Harris’ campaign, as did Ald. Ed Burke (14), with a $1,000 donation to Harris from his personal campaign fund.

City Treasurer Kurt Summers brought in $24,400 in donations, all of which were dated on the January 11th. The biggest check he received, $5,400, the maximum allowable contribution, was from Killerspin, LLC., a table tennis facility near Grant Park owned by Robert Blackwell, Jr., founder of Electronic Knowledge Interchange, a government technology contractor. Like Ald. Harris, Summers got money from theConstruction and General Laborers’ PAC, put they gave him far less than Harris: $5,000. Summers’ also got a $1,000 check from former 43rd Ward alderman andKirkland & Ellis attorney Bill Singer.

Chicago for Rahm Emanuel, the Mayor’s candidate committee, declared $36,581.66 from Stand For Children Illinois, PAC for postage and mail. Emanuel’s overall fundraising fell short of December’s amounts, when he brought in more than $100,000 in contributions. In January, he received three donations: $5,000 from Wellness Healthcare Partners, a home health agency for senior citizens; $1,500 from Bruce P. Weisenthal, an attorney with Schiff Harden, LLP; and $1,500 from Paul Meister, Vice Chairman of GCM Grosvenor, a global investment firm.

South Loop Ald. Pat Dowell (3) and downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42) continue to bring in a lot of campaign cash, well beyond that of their colleagues on the City Council.

For the past few months, Ald. Dowell has been reporting checks from the real estate industry. The trend continued in January: Dowell reported a little over $17,000 in total donations, which includes contributions from the prominent zoning law firm DLA Piper($1,500), South Loop Chicago Development ($1,500), and Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation ($1,500). Ald. Dowell also received a $5,000 donation fromErnest Sawyer Enterprises, a consulting firm run by Ald. Roderick Sawyer’s (6) brother. The company was hired by the city in 2014 to draft an analysis recommending the establishment of the then controversial Washington Square Park Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district.

Meanwhile, Ald. Reilly brought in an additional $35,500 to his personal campaign fund in individual contributions ranging between $1,000 and $2,500. Most of the donations were from the real estate industry, too.

This winter, Chicago will need to dig out of a number of major challenges, including policing reform, city pensions and a storm of shootings in our poorest neighborhoods. But the blizzard that threatens to overtake them all is last week’s failed Chicago Public Schools $875 million bond issue.

The concepts behind it are dry, but CPS’ giant problem with bond markets has the potential to permanently damage the school system, halt a burgeoning white, upper-middle class student body, decimate property values in some of Chicago’s hottest neighborhoods and possibly harm the city’s residential property tax base.

I’m not exaggerating.

CPS’ financial problems have been building for some time. It hasn’t had a balanced budget in four years. Last year, it used 13 months of revenue to pay for 12 months of operations. This year, it passed a budget with a $480 million gap, expecting the state legislature to fill it. But as we all know, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has refused to support a CPS bailout, and the Democratic-controlled state legislature lacks the votes to override Rauner’s veto.

So the schools have been borrowing. There’s two kinds of debt: Short-term, which comes from banks and has high interest rates, likely in the double digits. And long-term, which comes in the form of bonds, debt taken on by investors in an open market.

Last December, CPS Vice President of Finance Ron DeNard reported the schools had already incurred $1.065 billion in short-term debt on an overall annual budget of $5.692 billion. This sort of short-term borrowing for CPS–especially without a serious revenue solution on the horizon publicly–is unprecedented.

So then we get to last Wednesday’s $875 million bond offering. The offering, which was part of a regular borrowing by the school system–they’re carrying over $6 billion in bonds–failed, just a week after investors heard talk from Gov. Bruce Rauner and Springfield Republicans that they want a state takeover of CPS and to allow the district to declare bankruptcy.

Nobody wants to lend money to an organization that might go bankrupt.

Chicago CFO Carole Brown and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool ran to the microphones Thursday to say that pulling a bond issue from the market at the last minute is “common”. And that Gov. Rauner’s declarations had nothing to do with the bond offering. But we reported analysts saying otherwise. So did Bloomberg. And so did the trade newsletter Bond Buyer.

Last week Claypool said that the school system will, “definitely go to market before next week, early next week at the latest,” but since the bonds are already on the market day-to-day (that means they’re actively looking for investors and trying to figure out how much buyers will pay, and how much they’ll buy), that’s a fairly squishy statement. The key question is, when does CPS expect to close the sale, but saying so would tip their hand to the market too much.

After such a public failure, and little support from the Governor, bond investors are spooked, and CPS’ ability to borrow is on the line. Since its property taxes are capped and Springfield won’t bail it out, without the ability to borrow, CPS could be quickly sent into a death spiral.

Here’s why: While the vast majority of Chicago’s public school students are lower income and minority, some of the city’s trendiest, largely white neighborhoods are deeply linked to CPS. Ravenswood, North Center, Lincoln Square, Roscoe Village, West Lakeview, West Town and Wicker Park have some of the city’s best neighborhood elementary schools, and their high schools are improving, too. Many of those schools have improved because of the personal investment area parents have made, including through many “friends of” fundraising organizations. Gradually, the schools in these areas have become high performing, excellent education options for families.

As a parent for one of those schools, I can attest to the changes. But for four years I also reported for a neighborhood publication covering many of those neighborhoods, and I heard endless stories about school crowding because of their popularity. Realtors were selling homes purely because of the neighborhood school and a burgeoning pride in public education. Ald. Ameya Pawar (47) has made neighborhood school improvement his centerpiece, and recently his neighboring colleagues, Ald. Pat O’Connor (40) and Ald. Tom Tunney (44), have joined him to push for more resources to the area neighborhood high schools, Lakeview and Amundsen.

The local interest in public schools is not altruistic. It’s because housing costs east of Western Ave. and south of Foster Ave. are incredibly expensive. Single family homes are rarely found for less than $600,000, and $1 million-plus is becoming the norm. After paying the mortgage, few families–even ones able to afford a million dollar house–are able to afford the $15,000 per year more per child many private schools cost.

As a result, many of these North Side white parents are living in Chicago, rather than the suburbs, because of their schools.

If the quality of CPS schools begins to decline noticeably, and already many of even the “best” schools have 25-28 kids in a classroom with little special education support, then there’s a danger well-to-do parents will pick up and move to the suburbs. Because they can.

What then happens to these “hot” neighborhoods? Some will stay and find a private school, but many will move out. We should expect to see moving vans filling the streets, but an inexorable decline seems likely. Despite the housing downturn, Chicago’s North Side neighborhoods south of Foster and east of Western have bounced back the fastest and highest in terms of property values.

If CPS can’t get back into the bond markets and fix its finances, much of that is in jeopardy.

In this week's episode, we talk Gov. Bruce Rauner's State of the State address, CPS' scrapped $850 million bond offering, a contentious Board of Ed meeting, and Sen. President John Cullerton's state school funding fix. Plus, we dive into aldermanic fundraising and expense accounts. Music: "Honey Money" by Spectacular Fantastic

The City Council’s Committee on Transportation & Public Way advanced Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointment of Paul Connolly to the City’s Board of Local Improvements, a five-member board in charge of overseeing private development on city streets and sidewalks. Ald. Marty Quinn (13), one of the least vocal members of City Hall, gave Connolly and his union work a ringing endorsement.

Members Present: Chairman Anthony Beale (9), Vice Chair Pat Dowell (3), Will Burns (4), Michelle Harris (8), Sue Sadlowski Garza (10), Marty Quinn (13), Jason Ervin (28), Chris Taliaferro (29), Gilbert Villegas (36), Michele Smith (43), Anthony Napolitano (41)

Before a private developer can build anything along the public way, the board must approve the plans and financing. The appointment went through Chairman Beale’s Committee because the board serves under the capacity of the Department of Transportation. Two other appointments to the Board of Local Improvements,Christopher M. Michalek and Edward T. McKinnie, Sr., were approved earlier this month by the full Council.

At his preliminary confirmation hearing with the council committee yesterday, Connolly mentioned his 34 years experience with the Laborers Local Number 4. During his tenure representing 1,400 local unionized construction laborers, Connolly served as an organizer, instructor, and eventually as a recording secretary treasurer and business manager, a title he’s held since 2008, he said. Serving on the board, “fits within the category of construction, which is what I do,” Connolly explained, “I think I will do a good job.”

The position used to be paid, but in 2011, Mayor Emanuel eliminated the stipend as a way to cut costs. That year, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Board of Local Improvements met once, but members walked away with a $19,000- $23,000-per-year stipend.

About half of the aldermen on the committee, many of whom who represent union-heavy wards, praised the Mayor for Connolly’s appointment. A handful, including Pat Dowell (3), Marty Quinn (13) and Michelle Harris (8), said they knew Connolly in some personal or official capacity. Dowell recognized him from a few South Loop construction projects. Harris mentioned his work with the Department of Streets and Sanitation. Quinn remarked that he has known the Connolly family for more than 30 years, dating back to what he called the “Mozart days” at Mozart Elementary School. Quinn, who represents Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s ward and is usually silent during committee meetings, took an opportunity to defend the importance of unions.

“Thank you for what you have done the past 30 years, working on behalf of the working people, many of whom who live in my community right now in the 13th Ward. Right now, their rights are under siege in this state and I think it’s really, really important that you continue your advocacy on the working people,” Quinn remarked.

The rest of the 40 minute meeting was spent approving hundreds of routine items, such as sidewalk cafe permits, planters, honorary street designations, awnings and more. The meeting ran longer than usual because George Blakemore, a Council fixture, signed up to testify on every item he could fill out a pink witness slip for. Chairman Beale suggested that he’d be better served sitting up front by the witness mic for the whole meeting, to save energy walking back and forth from his seat.

Another mayoral appointment to the City’s Board of Local Improvements awaits Council consideration today. The Council Committee on Transportation and Public Way will consider Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed appointment of Paul Connolly to the board in charge of approving any public way improvements by private developers.

Last month, the City Council approved a pair of appointments to the five member board:Christopher M. Michalek, a partner at McGuire Woods LLP, and Edward T. McKinnie, Sr., President of the Board of Directors for Black Contractors United. Connolly, a business manager for the Chicago Laborers’ Pension and Welfare Funds, will fill the remaining vacant seat. All board members serve without term limits or compensation.

In his second State of the State as governor, Bruce Rauner doubled down on his Turnaround Agenda, again reaffirming his commitment to his pro-business, competitive strategy for the state while offering vague education reforms that didn’t include any specific solutions to help Chicago Public Schools and its projected one billion dollar deficit for 2020.

“Change is hard. Reform is difficult, but we can’t just raise taxes again,” Gov. Rauner said during his roughly 30 minute speech as he again called for local control as a way to freeze local property taxes and strip collective bargaining rights for unions. “Let’s give local control now, so homeowners can afford their houses and our communities can compete for jobs with neighboring states that have far lower property tax burdens,” he urged.

On the union issue, he was particularly peeved with AFSCME, the state’s largest public sector union, dedicating a page of his speech calling their demands “out of touch with reality,” and its members overpaid and their overtime-pay purposefully “manipulated.”

Offering a “first step toward bipartisan compromise,” Gov. Rauner affirmed his support for Senate President John Cullerton’s pension plan that would save the state $1 billion by giving state employees a choice over cost-of-living increases to their retirement benefits. He said his lawyers will work with Cullerton’s staff to, “finalize the language as soon as possible.”

He concluded the speech with a ten-point plan for education reform, which he described as “bold and transformative,” and includes long-term goals to increase school choice and funding for low-income and rural students, cut administrative costs at state-run universities and city colleges, and “flexibility” for local school districts when it comes to collective bargaining and issuing contracts. Senate President Cullerton and other Democrats in the state legislature have been calling for reforms to the state’s school funding formula for years.

In a statement released hours after the governor’s speech, the Chicago Teacher’s Union called the governor’s education proposals the “clearest evidence of his continued support for the status quo.” The union took particular issue with the governor’s call to give local school districts more flexibility, claiming that local control is what led Mayor Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education “to go broke on purpose.”

The Chicago Public Schools “pulled” a planned issuance of $875 million in bonds yesterday, throwing into question the school system’s ability to issue further long-term debt and jeopardizing its ability to get through a major cash crunch in the coming weeks.

Yesterday morning, the school system planned to offer the debt at an exorbitantly high rate of 7.7%, but then pulled the deal before finalizing pricing, typically the last step before a sale. In a call with financial reporters yesterday afternoon, City of ChicagoCFO Carole Brown said, “CPS did not pull its deal, the deal has not failed…[We] had numerous discussions with investors and they are making evaluations of the credit on structure, terms and price. They asked for more time.”

PDF of bond offering document.

However, Brown’s claim did not go over well on the call with financial press, at one point resulting in a shouting match on the call between Brown, CPS Vice President of Finance Ron DeNard and reporters over whether or not it should be termed a “pulled” deal or a “failed” deal.

“We’re still on course to issue CPS’ bonds,” said Brown yesterday. “The fact that the CPS bond deal has not sold today has not altered the funding plan.”

CPS is now planning to go “day-to-day” on the sale, which means that it will keep the terms open until underwriters can assemble a large enough group of buyers to complete a sale. In yesterday’s call, CFO Brown said that the size, structure and yield of the bond offering could still change.

“For bond buyers to be shirking a deal, the issue of the state takeover was likely the last straw. People don’t like to buy bonds that have uncertainty,” said Kristi Culpepper, Executive Director of the Kentucky School Facilities Construction Commission, which manages school bond offerings statewide in Kentucky.

Gov. Bruce Rauner’s announcement last week of plans to attempt a CPS takeover and enable Chapter 9 bankruptcy in Illinois likely impacted this week’s CPS bond offering, said Culpepper. Even if it wasn’t politically likely.

“A lot of muni market participants aren’t digging into the details of the credit,” said Culpepper. “Now you have people looking at it, and evaluating the risk. When you have a giant headline with the governor saying ‘We’re going to take it over,’ people think about it differently.”

CPS’ bond rating is four notches below investment grade, according to ratings agencies Standard & Poors and Fitch.

The 7.7% rate originally offered for the bonds is unusually high for munis, 5.24% higher than the standard rate investment grade bonds get. Because yesterday’s offering was not successful, CPS has two options: Raise the offering to a higher rate to attract more investors, or reduce the amount offered to the number of investors willing to buy. A higher rate means more costly borrowing, a lower amount offered means a more likely cash crunch later in the year.

As Aldertrack reported last week, CPS is heading into a dire cash position, projecting to end the school year in June with about $33 million in the bank. At the start of 2013, the Board had $1.07 billion in the bank. This month’s bond issue will help CPS get through a tight cash position and allow the school system to avoid more borrowing at high short-term rates. In December, CPS announced it had already incurred $1.065 billion in short-term debt.

If the current offering is not completed soon, CPS may fall back on even more costly bank debt, said DeNard. “We will make our cash flow needs. We do have short term financing available,” he said yesterday to reporters.

Meanwhile, if CPS is unable to complete the $875 million bond offering, or it has to reduce the size of the offering, there are few funding options available because the district has already met its property tax cap and Gov. Rauner has refused to approve a bailout without passage of his Turnaround Agenda. Chicago CFO Carole Brown alsosaid earlier this month, “The city has no plans to directly, financially assist CPS.”

There are ten contentious Democratic ward committeeman races in Chicago and five vacancies on the Republican side now that the objections process has ended, and several longtime Democratic committeeman will have a challenger.

On the city’s northwest side, Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30) will face Noe Favela, an assistant vice president and project manager for Bank of America for the 30th Ward Democratic Committeeman seat. Longtime 33rd Ward Democratic Committeeman and former alderman Dick Mell will be up against attorney Aaron Goldstein. Despite defending Mell’s son-in-law, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, in both his federal corruption trials, Goldstein has on multiple occasions equated the Mells to a political dynasty controlling the ward.

There are vacancies for 39th and 41st Ward Democratic seats. The former will be a matchup between Patrick Molloy and Robert Murphy. Molloy, the Director of Government and Public Affairs for the Chicago Public Library, a life-long 39th Ward resident, and former Chairman of Friends of Margaret Laurino, was appointed to the seat in August 2015 to finish out the term of Laurino husband, Randy Barnette. Murphy is an architect who lives in Forest Glen and is a co-founder of the anti O’Hare noise group FaIR Coalition.

A three-way race in the 41st Ward between Tim Heneghan, Goran Davidovac andAndrew Devito will determine who will take over the vacancy left by former 41st WardAld. Mary O’Connor, who chose not to run for re-election after losing her seat on the City Council to Anthony Napolitano. Napolitano is backing DeVito, a former Streets and Sanitation and Department of Aviation worker and retired business agent for the International Laborer's Union of North America (LiUNA). O’Connor has thrown her support behind Heneghan, a veteran firefighter and member of a local school council.Davidovac is a local school council member for Taft High School. The local community group The 41st Ward Citizens has endorsed both Heneghan and Davidovac. Citing both candidates’ records of “extensive community volunteer work and leadership,” on their Facebook page, the group said it could not “come to a consensus on just one candidate.”

Another three way race on the city’s southwest side is the open 16th Ward Democratic Committeeman seat formerly held by the late Ald. JoAnn Thompson and more recently filled by a special appointment of Ald. Toni Foulkes (16). Foulkes will face off against Stephanie Coleman and Nathan Wilson. Coleman (the daughter of former 16th Ward Ald. Shirley Coleman) and Foulkes duked it out in the recent aldermanic election. Theirs was one of the closer runoff elections, with Foulkes beating Coleman by 143 votes. Wilson was the ward superintendent under Thompson, but we cannot confirm his current job title.

Another potentially heated race on the city’s Southwest side is in the 12th Ward. The incumbent Democratic Ward Committeeman, State Sen. Tony Munoz, is being challenged by local alderman George Cardenas. While Cardenas has been on the council since 2003, this is the first time he’s running for Democratic committeeman.

There’s also some confusion over who controls the political action committee for the organization, the 12th Ward Regular Democratic Organization. The State Board of Elections lists Cardenas as the chairman of the campaign, which, under state law, gives him the authority to transfer funds from the organization to his personal campaign fund, but the stated purpose of the committee is to “elect Antonio Munoz to public office.” When Aldertrack reached out to the campaign’s treasurer, Patricia Rodriguez,she confirmed the campaign is fundraising for Munoz, not Cardenas. She said Cardenas should no longer be listed as the organization’s chairman. Regardless, the group barely fundraised for the 4th Quarter of 2015, reeling in $1,920 in total receipts between October 1st and December 31st.

Another Southwest side alderman, Mike Zalewski (23), who represents Midway Airport, has a challenger: Charles Hughes, who tried to run for alderman in 2015 but never made it on the ballot. Hughes is an employee of Nicor Gas, according to his Sun-Times candidate questionnaire. He has yet to create a fundraising committee. Meanwhile, between his personal campaign fund and the ward’s PAC, the 23rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization, Zalewski has about $56,600 in the bank.

Further south, in the 10th Ward, Ald. Sue Sadlowski-Garza is up against Fred Carrizales, a Specialist in Aging with the Department of Family and Support Services who also has ties to the defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization. Garza’s newly created PAC, 10th Ward Democratic Organization, has $100 in cash on hand, while her personal fund has about $21,500. Carrizales has yet to create a committee.

On the city’s north side, aldermen Joe Moreno (1) and Pat O’Connor (40), Mayor Emanuel’s unofficial floor leader, each face a challenger. Maria Teresa Gonzales will try to unseat Moreno in the 1st Ward and Dianne Daleiden, a public school teacher and CTU member, who ran and lost for alderman in the 40th Ward, will face O’Connor again in March. O’Connor beat Daleiden with 58% of the vote.

As for five Republican vacancies in the 10th, 21st, 22nd, 30th, and 39th Wards, the Chairman of the Cook County Republican Party, Aaron Del Mar, will fill those seats after the March Primary.

As we discussed in last week’s podcast, it’s been a hectic couple of weeks for Chicago Public Schools. The Board’s agenda includes approval of debt payment, a renewal of Aramark’s food contract with CPS, transfers ranging from $4 to $19 million to fund some capital improvement projects, and what promises to be an interesting public participation portion. Here’s a rundown of the issues confronting CPS heading into today’s Board of Ed meeting at 10:30 a.m.

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  Last Wednesday: Republican Bailout Illinois Republican leaders Sen.Christine Radogno, Rep. Jim Durkin and Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed a State Board of Ed takeover of the Chicago Board of Ed, and possible municipal bankruptcy legislation. As we reported, Radogno tied the change to the governor’s Turnaround Agenda. Democratic leaders in the legislature shot the proposal down almost immediately. Senate President John Cullerton (D) called the proposal “mean-spirited.”

  
  


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  Last Thursday: Democratic Retort Illinois Democratic state legislators, along with some aldermen, held a press conference saying they’d push legislation re-allocating Chicago’s TIF surplus to CPS. Chief bill sponsor and Illinois House Democratic Leader Barbara Flynn Currie asserted that the city has anywhere between $150 and $350 million in uncommitted funds that could be declared surplus. She said in this emergency situation, instead of those funds being dispersed to local taxing bodies like Parks and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, all of those TIF funds would be given to CPS. Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) introduced a similar city resolution calling for full TIF surplus accounting at the January 13th full City Council meeting. He plans to testify at the Board of Ed meeting today on the issue.

  
  


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  Last Friday: Pink Slips CPS announced a round of layoffs at its central office heading into this past weekend. 227 employees received layoff notices, CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said. 57 were on teams being downsized, and can reapply for 35 positions. The Sun-Times reports special education programs were hit especially hard: a total of 69 were let go, and another 18 positions were eliminated.

  
  


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  Monday: Cullerton Fair Funding Pitch Illinois Senate President John Cullerton proposed a statewide revamp of school funding at a short speech in front of the City Club. "Our state has the most inequitable system of school finance in the country. We give less to the students who need more and cover barely a third of the total cost of public education when most states cover half,” he told the crowd. “If the National Football League operated like our school funding system, the Super Bowl champ would be guaranteed the top draft pick." He said, echoing Rauner's frequent reference to Illinois’ status quo, that the state's funding system is the perfect one to break. Here’s the full speech text, video, and other info from IL Senate Democrats.

  
  


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  Yesterday: Claypool Org Chart Redo CPS announced an organizational overhaul, including, according to Catalyst, a separation between CPS CEOForrest Claypool and Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson; new offices being headed up by old Claypool colleagues from the Chicago Transit Authority; a whole slew of new names and the elimination of some offices.

  
  


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  Today: Bond pricing, debt payment approval, and Gov. Rauner’s State of the State Address The Board’s first agenda item is a resolution to allocate 2016 tax collections to debt service funds. The second is to move about $95,000 in debt service interest to the Education Fund. At about the same time, the bond market is expecting pricing of CPS’ latest offering. As we reported last week, the Board will use the timing of this month’s bond offering to get through a major cash crunch. Yvette Shields, a reporter with The Bond Buyer, yesterday characterized pricing talk as all-caps “BRUTAL” for CPS. Pre-marketing interest rates were offered at 7.7%, she tweeted, “more than 5% what top rated folks pay and 4% than lowly BBB govs.” Talk of possible bankruptcy legislation from Gov. Bruce Rauner impacted spreads, Shields said. Gov. Rauner is scheduled to make his State of the State address at noon today, fresh on the heels of a possible pension deal Cullerton mentioned at his City Club talk.

  
  


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  Tomorrow: Emanuel Q&A Mayor Emanuel will be on “Chicago Tonight” withParis Schutz to take questions from viewers tonight. A brief glance at the comments section, where WTTW will be pulling some questions, shows a lot of CPS focus.

  
  

A Chicago Housing Authority reform ordinance is getting a subject matter hearing, but no vote, in the Housing and Real Estate Committee February 17th. The ‘Keeping the Promise’ Ordinance, which calls for tighter Council oversight of the Chicago Housing Authority, has been sitting in the doldrums for months, but was the subject of a BGA profile over the weekend. Staff for Ald. Joe Moore (49) sent out a notice on the hearing midday Monday.

Moore, the chair of City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate, and once a sponsor of the ordinance, has been under pressure from the Chicago Housing Initiativeto hold a hearing since the summer, when the ordinance was re-introduced. The group accused Moore in September of delaying the hearing and backtracking on his support, which he denied at the time. He told BGA he no longer supports the ordinance because it would have “unintended consequences.”

Leah Levinger, Executive Director of the Chicago Housing Initiative says the organization has plans to demonstrate outside Ald. Pat Dowell (3) and Ald. Gregory Mitchell's (7) offices today for their "failure to sign on to the Keeping the Promise Ordinance despite repeated approaches over the last 12-24 months."

In a Facebook post, Ald. Joe Moreno (1), the ordinance’s chief sponsor, said he’s “proud to lead this effort and I will keep working hard to increase access to affordable housing opportunities in my ward and throughout Chicago.”

Moreno blasted Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) at last week’s Plan Commission hearingfor not pressing developers to include on-site affordable housing at a new residential building. The development group opted to pay an in-lieu fee to the city. Ald. Waguespack was not at the meeting.

The ordinance calls for quarterly reports from the CHA on several items, including accumulated unspent revenue, progress reports on replacement public housing units, and updates on the Housing Choice Voucher Funding utilization rate. The ordinance also includes a provision for one-for-one replacement of affordable housing units that are demolished or converted to another use, and suspension of the use of city funds until CHA effectively uses its Housing Choice Voucher revenue and increases its commitment to mobility counseling for those voucher holders.

Six city-run mental health clinics face declining revenue and unfilled vacancies, and have been using contractors to fill psychiatry positions for more than a year, according to Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) documents and a recent Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report. A new ordinance from Ald. Jason Ervin (28) immediately calls for new contracts so clinics can take on more patients, take "whatever steps are necessary" to fill vacancies, and expand neighborhood outreach.The ordinance has 29 cosponsors.

Jo Patton, Director of Special Projects at AFSCME Council 31, consulted with Ald. Ervin on the ordinance and says vacant psychiatry positions at city clinics have long been a concern, but worries without some aggressive recruiting from CDPH, clinics might be forced into a “vicious circle.”

“If you don’t have enough psych hours, you can’t take in new patients, then the client base shrinks and the rationale for keeping those centers going also is diminished,” she told Aldertrack.

Ervin’s ordinance says the number of care hours at city clinics has been cut in half over the past two years. That drop can partly be attributed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’smove, and City Council’s unanimous approval, to shutter six of the city’s 12 mental health clinics in April of 2012.

Five of the six remaining clinics are scattered throughout the South and West Sides, one is on the Northwest Side.

Just one full-time psychiatrist serves at those six clinics, Public Health Commissioner Dr. Julie Morita told aldermen this past fall at the department’s budget hearing. Other psychiatry positions, she said, are being filled by contractors. Those contractors are budgeted for 2,185 hours in 2016. Those temps have been there longer than a year, according to a recent OIG report, which violates the city’s Contractor Policy. Patton says AFSCME started becoming concerned when the clinics were down to four full-time psychiatrists.

CDPH says they’ve made progress on finding another full-time psychiatrist, and filling other vacancies. The department also points to spending on targeted mental health programs for victims of sexual assault and family members of homicide victims.

Matt Smith, from CDPH’s Media Affairs, says there are 58 full-time positions across CDPH’s clinics. As of this summer, 27 of those positions are therapists, between 3 and 6 therapists at each site. Some therapists see as many as 40 patients a month.

Morita has blamed a national shortage in psychiatrists for the lag time in finding permanent psychiatry staff. During budget hearings, Ald. Leslie Hairston (5), who is co-sponsoring Ervin’s ordinance, countered that the city couldn’t attract candidates because of low starting salaries. In an effort to make those positions more attractive, Morita said that Chicago had recently won federal designation as a Health Shortage Service Area. The designation allows applicants with outstanding medical school loans to be repaid by the federal government in exchange for working in underserved areas.

But Ervin’s ordinance also says that while CDPH is understaffed, it is also turning away revenue by failing to join managed care networks and not seeking reimbursement for Medicaid recipients.

CDPH says their clinics do mostly focus on uninsured patients, and have faced declining revenue. “We continue to provide services to clients regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay,” CDPH’s Smith says. In 2015, CDPH was allocated $9.5 million for mental health services, most of which went to direct services at those clinics.

By contrast, the Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS) has started to bounce back from precarious financial footing in part by setting up its own managed care system, CountyCare, a Medicaid program through the Affordable Care Act. CCHHS currently gets a 100% per member per month (PMPM) federal match payment for each member enrolled in CountyCare. Revenues from the program have helped the County cut down its tax allocation to CCHHS by tens of millions this fiscal year.

Smith tells Aldertrack the Department has “retained a consultant to facilitate new contracts with insurance companies, including managed care entities.”

Patton says the contract with that consultant includes a two year window, which she says is too long to get into straightforward agreements with local insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, and Illini Health. With the recent focus on policing and mental health in the wake of Quintonio Legrier’s death at the hands of Chicago police, Patton thinks the political will might be enough “for the mayor to put a little bit of money into mental health instead of [policing].”