High recidivism rates in Chicago and Cook County will be the topic of discussion of today’s 11:00 a.m. Public Safety Committee hearing.

The Council’s Budget Committee meets briefly this morning at 10:00 a.m. to approve a $186,000 federal grant for the Department of Transportation. The grant from the National Safety Council as part of its national Road to Zero initiative–a goal to eradicate traffic fatalities across the country. 

Aviation Committee Chairman Michael Zalewski told reporters Monday, “The consensus is, there’s no consensus,” about the future of security officers at Chicago’s airports. Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans once again faced off with aldermen as more than two dozen Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) officers looked on, sometimes shaking their heads or correcting her under their breath. While the meeting’s purpose was to clarify when City of Chicago employees can remove someone from an airplane, Monday’s discussion waded into a labor battle over whether CDA officers should be designated as police officers or security officers.

Comm. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-7) has proposed a small donor match system for countywide elections. The system, which wouldn’t launch until after the 2018 cycle, would cost roughly $4 million every three years, Garcia estimates. Holding up a copy of the Sun-Times with a story about billionaire Ken Griffin’s $20 million donation to Gov. Bruce Rauner, Garcia heralded the system as a way to "get big money out of politics" and restore confidence in government. The proposal was new to commissioners, and to County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s staff.

Aviation Department officials are likely in for another verbal rebuke from aldermen today, as the Committee on Aviation considers an ordinance that would prohibit any City of Chicago employee “from assisting airline personnel in the removal of any passenger from a plane at O’Hare International and Chicago Midway airports.”

15 cases related to unreported or unregistered lobbying tagged by the city’s Board of Ethics are up for discussion at its monthly meeting this afternoon. Last month, the Board identified probable cause in 13 cases stemming from the release of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s personal emails, and said potential fines for violations were “very significant.” Those emails, released after FOIA-related lawsuits from the Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune, revealed more than two dozen likely cases of improper lobbying.

The Council’s Zoning Committee meets twice today, once in the morning for regularly scheduled business, and again in the afternoon to once again consider a plan in Jefferson Park that’s divided the neighborhood. Highlights of the regular agenda include: confirmation of a new Zoning Board of Appeals member, an alderman seeking to downzone a mile long commercial strip to residential, and a CHA-partnered development in Rogers Park.

In separate briefings to aldermen and reporters Friday, Chicago CFO Carole Brown presented a plan for Chicago Public Schools to borrow more money from banks to keep classroom doors open through the end of the school year and to make a $716 million teachers’ pension payment by June 30. The borrowing plan, presented without any CPS leadership participation, allows the city to avoid raising taxes, sweeping TIFS, or asking aldermen to vote on either.

The school system plans to borrow $389 million against expected state grant payments that have been delayed by the state’s two-year budget impasse. Banks will only fund 85% of the $467 million grants due to CPS through Grant Anticipation Notes (GANs), at an interest rate expected to be between eight and nine percent, Brown said in briefings to aldermen. The rate won’t be known until the borrowing is complete. The school district previously had $600 million in Tax Anticipation Notes (TANs) it could borrow against, but those are paid off and won’t be used, Brown said in her reporter briefing.

Aldermanic Briefing Materials

Before the new round of short-term borrowing is completed, CPS will have used a $950 million line of credit and have issued $6.8 billion in long-term debt. State statute caps CPS borrowing at 13.8% of the Equalized Assessed Value, the total property tax value of a district, at any one time. In 2016, that number was $9.8 billion. Counting the current debt and the new borrowing, CPS will have $8.1 billion in total debt, coming close to the district’s limit.

While CPS started the school year with a drastically low $86.2 million in cash, Brown says CPS will finish its fiscal year on June 30 with about $30 million on hand. Though,  Emily Bittner, a CPS spokesperson said in an email to reporters, “CPS continues to work through its finances and does not have a final updated cash balance projection.” Experts suggest a good practice cash balance would be closer to $250 million for an organization its size, with a $5.4 billion annual budget.

How We Got Here

The school system began the 2016-17 school year with a $1.14 billion deficit, but plugged the budget hole with a series of cuts, cash taken from Tax Increment Financing (TIF) surplus and a series of grants from the state approved by the General Assembly in October. But that plan was laid to waste when Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed a $215 million state grant, charging that promised pension reform was not delivered.

Read: The CPS Funding Saga: How Much Money Is Due And When?

Read: After End of Fiscal Year, Bigger Problems Await CPS

In response, CPS enacted a series mid-year cuts, but it was not enough to close the gap. In April, CPS announced that the state was late paying $467 million in “categorical” block grant funds, money to paid to local school districts to cover programs like special education, transportation and early childhood education costs.

While CPS might still have had enough cash on hand to get through to the end of the school year, the $716 million teachers’ pension payment, due by June 30, overshadowed everything else.

Where’s Claypool?

There was no senior CPS leadership present for neither the reporter nor aldermanic briefings Friday, flaring aldermanic tempers after weeks of demanding to see CPS leadership. Instead, city CFO Brown led the briefings, often referring reporters and aldermen to “talk to CPS about the specifics” when she did not have answers.

“Aldermen are pissed!” said one staffer who attended a briefing.

“It got very angry,” in the meeting, said Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) after he attended a briefing with Brown. “Aldermen going on about ‘Where is Claypool?’ There were lower level staff, [but] not a one spoke. They said [CPS CEO Forrest] Claypool was working hard and couldn’t be there.”

“To me it shows that the mayor is in charge, and we’ve known that from day one. We’re glad that the mayor is making it clearer than ever, and that he owns it,” said Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) after attending a briefing.

Others were less concerned. “I can’t think of any reasonable [funding] alternative,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49). “They tell me it took so long to come up with a plan, because they wanted to make sure they could sell the bonds. Apparently they can. It’s unfortunate because it just drives CPS further into debt.”

 



Opponents of Cook County’s penny per ounce tax on sweetened beverages packed Manny’s Deli in the South Loop Thursday morning, calling for a repeal of the tax just six weeks before it goes into effect. Retailers, grocery store owners, sales staff, and union representatives forecast job losses, a drop in overall sales, and more population drain as a result. County officials–who’ve balanced the next three budgets on expected revenues–say their fears are overblown.

Comm. Richard Boykin (D-1) has called for a hearing of the county’s Human Relations Committee this morning “to shine a light on” a rise in hate crimes against “Jews, Muslims, People of Color, and members of the LGTBQ community in 2016 and 2017.”

The Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved a major land use planning guide for the North Branch Industrial Corridor Thursday afternoon, the first of several legislative steps needed to transition the former manufacturing hub into the future. It’s also the first of many design plans expected to be released as the Department of Planning and Development continues its review of all 26 Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMDs) across the city.

 

Aldermen unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday from Mayor Rahm Emanuel in support of Senate Bill 885, a measure to improve protections to home buyers involved in contract for deed sales. Home buyers in those sales don’t have equity in the home until they’ve paid the cost in full, and can be thrown out without a foreclosure process if they miss a payment. A Chicago Reader investigation identified three out-of state companies that sell homes using these kinds of agreements in Chicago: Harbour Portfolio Advisors, Vision Property Management, and Battery Point Financial. Those sales, the Reader said, are concentrated in communities of color, and often lack sufficient information for buyers.

 

Aldermen on the city’s Committee on Economic, Technology and Capital Development unanimously passed 12-year tax breaks Wednesday for a new CTA railcar assembly warehouse, a  custom metal fabrication firm, a landmarked former catalog warehouse, and a new industrial site that could attract e-commerce giants like Amazon.

The Council’s Pedestrian Committee approved a pair of ordinances Wednesday aimed at cracking down on parking and valet operators that have been shirking city taxes or operating illegally.

Parking Tax Clarity

Downtown parking garage operators claim mobile apps that allow drivers to find discounted parking spots have been evading city taxes, giving them an unfair advantage. Saying his office has been fielding many of those complaints, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42) sought to level the playing field with a change to the municipal code that clarifies companies like SpotHero and Parkwhiz must comply with the city’s parking tax.  

The City Council’s Finance Committee spent much of Wednesday’s meeting on subject matter hearings, referring items to other committees, and telling Dakota Access Pipeline protesters to leave the chambers.