News in brief: Chicago, suburban Cook chart out ‘roadmap’ to restaurant expansions; aldermen approve aviation security labor agreement  

Aldermen are scheduled Thursday to consider a series of new rules and requirements that would expand Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s control of the Chicago Board of Health, an advisory body that dates back to the city’s founding.

Introduced by Lightfoot last month, the ordinance (O2021-458) set for a vote by the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations during its 10:30 a.m. meeting would vacate all eight seats on the board and allow the mayor to re-nominate them or replace them. The reconstituted board would have nine members each serving three-year terms, staggered so that three members’ terms expire each year.

Aldermen are expected Wednesday to demand answers from leaders of the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation on reported gaps in the program used to pick up recycling from large buildings.

The subject matter hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. by the City Council Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight and the Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy comes out of a resolution (R2020-1071) introduced by Ald. Michele Smith (43) in December.

Property owners filed more than 223,000 appeals to their tax assessments to the Cook County Board of Review since last year, a historically heavy volume of requests that nevertheless fell far short of the record number of appeals submitted to the board during the 2019 tax year.

A city employee violated the city’s ethics ordinance by entering into a private subcontract with the Public Building Commission on a project being furnished by city funds, the Chicago Board of Ethics ruled on Monday.

Board members voted to stick the employee, whose name they did not publicize, $500 — the minimum allowed under city rules for the violation incurred.

After aldermen on Monday continued a push to get library employees vaccinated sooner than scheduled, Chicago Department of Public Health Comm. Allison Arwady left open the possibility it could happen in some areas of the city.

Arwady updated aldermen on the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and answered their questions for three hours during a regular  meeting held by the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human to discuss the pandemic Monday.

Tens of thousands of Chicago Public Schools educators mourned the death of former Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis on Monday as they faced a critical choice over whether to accept a plan to gradually return to in-person learning beginning this week.

When the day was over, the union’s house of delegates voted overwhelmingly to endorse a reopening agreement with the school district, kicking the final decision to a full vote by the union’s approximately 25,000 members. About 85 percent of delegates voted in favor at a Monday night meeting, according to a union official.

Cook County health officials had vaccinated 300 jail detainees by Friday with hundreds more in line for shots, as county officials look to crush the coronavirus inside a facility widely blamed for helping spread the virus across the county.

With the first round of doses getting to detainees last Monday, more than 5 percent of the jail’s population had received Moderna shots by Friday, according to a spokesperson for the Cook County Health system, which is overseeing the immunization effort at the jail.

News in brief: CPS, union reach ‘tentative’ reopening agreement; Austin to challenge ethics ruling; Arwady to face grilling from aldermen

News in brief: CPS, union reach ‘tentative’ reopening agreement; Austin to challenge ethics ruling; Arwady to face grilling from aldermen 

Michael Simmons was sworn in as Illinois’ newest state senator Saturday night after local Democratic Party officials appointed him to fill the seat left vacant by the resignation of state Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago). 

Simmons’ appointment dealt a blow to state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), who was considered a frontrunner to fill the position. Simmons, deputy director of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance and a former senior official in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, received nearly three times the number of weighted votes Cassidy pulled in.

City Council committees held more than 20 so-called subject matter hearings in 2020, more than the number of no-vote public discussions held during all of the four previous years combined. 

Aldermen and experts surmise the COVID-19 pandemic has played a role, in a multitude of ways, in the uptick in the number of meetings that largely have not culminated in any binding legislative action. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and some aldermen have celebrated the extra meetings for the extra transparency they lend to governance, but others have taken the trend as a sign that the council is too hesitant to take decisive action.

News in brief: Englewood aldermen blast feds over mail delays; Aldermen, Chicago Public Library employees want library workers moved up in vaccination plan

Thousands of laid-off Chicago hotel workers are redoubling their push for an ordinance they say would ensure that companies do right by employees who lost their livelihoods last year after decades of loyal service.

But hotel owners are pushing back hard on the proposed “Hotel Worker Right to Return to Work” ordinance (O2020-5777), saying its requirements would create a “logistical nightmare” that slows down hiring, potentially hurting the same workers the union is trying to protect.

News in brief: Englewood aldermen blast feds, @USPS over mail delays; Aldermen, @chipublib employees want library workers moved up in vaccination plan