My Blog

Author: Jimmy

  • Media on TIF does not understand TIF

    Media tries, fails to explain why TIF is so confusing: [E]ven Mr. Orr and top aides [are] unsure exactly how much money is in Chicago’s TIF coffers. … There are now 158 TIF districts in Chicago, and they generated $519 million last year, Mr. Orr said. In all, there may be a shade over $1…

  • Rahm on Education: Not Daley’s Fault

    Rahm Emanuel made a campaign promise last week that if elected mayor, he would install a new math and English language curriculum in Chicago’s public schools by the end of his first term. … Mr. Emanuel made clear that he meant no disrespect to Mayor Richard M. Daley, who assumed control of the city’s public…

  • June 11, 2008

    Alderman Fioretti send two very dangerous messages with one vote: campaign and other donations to the city get results for the donors, and what the citizens want doesn’t matter, the city should always get its way. Bob Fioretti believes that if your names sounds like Crown or Pritzker and you donate lots of money to…

  • Emanuel’s Foolish TIF for Police Plan

    Over the weekend Rahm Emanuel became the latest local politician to propose tapping funds from the city’s tax increment financing districts to help pay for city services. Emanuel said that if he is elected mayor he would use $25 million in TIF money to pay for 250 new officers that could be dispatched around the…

  • CPD Considers Reallocation of Officers

    Police districts on Chicago’s North Side would lose beat officers to South Side and West Side districts if the city were to reallocate cops based on the volume of 911 calls and backups for police service, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found. (Full story here.) The Second Ward is on both ends of this; Weis…

  • I’m just asking…

    I have sat on this idea for several days now and not having seen anything in the news inline with my thinking.  After considering the pro’s and con’s, I’m asking a relatively simple question. Last week John Kass at the Tribune wrote an interesting piece on how Rahm had been removed from the voter rolls…

  • This is What I’m Talking About

    This gent here has a new take on education.  The video is not short attention span theater, however it is an interesting… no compelling, look at what is wrong with our educational system. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkPvSCq5ZXk&w=640&h=385]

  • CPS Gets Help From Discovery Channel

    With tales of cannibalistic giant squids and endangered leatherback turtles that travel thousands of miles to lay eggs on the beaches where they were born, Philippe Cousteau, grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, tried to capture the imaginations of children at a North Side school Friday. … “It’s not about textbooks anymore,” said Cousteau, TV’s…

  • One Great School, Not Part of CPS

    [Providence St. Mel] The lauded West Side high school — profiled in “The Providence Effect,” a documentary that hit the big screen last year — has long been considered a national model for urban education, sending 100 percent of its low- to very low-income students to college for 30 years. Its uniformed students each morning…

  • Daley, Chico Squable on Education

    In a back-n-forth through the press: “This is not a personal attack on Mayor Daley,” Chico said. Daley has done a “tremendous job in this city,” Chico said, but added he would continue to “call it the way I see it.” (Full story here.) What?!  A “tremendous job?”  The city has sold off revenue sources…