Author: jbosco

  • How Can the Park District be Broke?

    Park visitors may soon see advertisements on Chicago Park District property such as lifeguard stands, garbage cans and tennis courts, as officials look for ways to plug a $22 million hole in next year’s budget.

    (Full story here.)

    The Chicago Park District owns Solider Field; that big ugly thing many Second Ward residents can see from their windows.  It’s the place that the Bears — the Chicago franchise of the National Football League — pay a pretty penny to play there.  (They better, because every time there’s a game traffic and parking become a nightmare.)

    The Park District also controls Grant Park where… let’s see: all the summer festivals happen, the Chicago Marathon starts & stops, Lalapolooza occurs, and countless other functions are held.

    It also earns revenue from every boater in the city as it controls nearly every single inch of public shoreline from Pratt on the north to 95th on the south.

    Can someone say audit?

  • You Owe $11,647, & That’s Just for Pensions

    Part 1 of 2 on just how completely broken the City’s pension system has become.

    Chicago’s public pension funds are teetering on the brink of insolvency in large part because city officials and union leaders repeatedly exploited the system, draining away billions of dollars in the last decade to serve short-term political needs….

    As a result, the funds soon may not be able to keep promises that are codified in the state constitution, threatening the retirements of tens of thousands of rank-and-file union members and leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars owed to teachers, police officers, firefighters and others.

    Even if all retirement benefits were cut off today, every man, woman and child in Chicago would owe more than $7,000 to cover obligations already incurred — an amount that doesn’t include state pension debt of about $60 billion.

    (Full story here.)

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 12,910,409 people living in the State of Illinois.  Take the state’s pension debt of $60 billion and divide and you get $4,647.41 in state pension debt per person.  Add that to the $7,000 for us city folk and you get $11,647.

    But that’s not all the debt.  Oh no, far from.  According to these people here, the state debt per citizen is $12,136 (as of this writing.)  So us city folk owe at least $19,000 a-piece in debt between the city and state.  That doesn’t include any Cook County or Federal debt either.

    Think about that — nearly $20,000 every person in this city already owes.

    If you’re not already very angry, you will be shortly when you’re asked to start paying the bill.

  • City Pension Funds Poorly Managed

    Part 2 of 2 on just how completely broken the City’s pension system has become.

    Trustees of Chicago’s failing public pension funds have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into highly speculative investments that not only have failed to realize outsize returns but also saddled them with underperforming, long-term assets that can’t be sold off, a Tribune investigation has found.

    The investments, which involved buying equity stakes in businesses ranging from fast-food franchises in Mississippi to a Los Angeles grocery chain, were supposed to plug huge holes in pension fund coffers by yielding gains of up to 20 percent a year.

    But a Tribune analysis of nearly 130 private equity and real estate investments made by four pension funds since 2000 found that nearly half have lost value so far. Of the $1.3 billion invested to date, the pension funds have seen just $60 million in added value on their balance sheets.

    Had the funds used an equal amount to buy and hold a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond offered in 2000, they would have received $893 million in interest payments to date — and their principal investments would be secure.

    (Full story here.)

    Sweetheart back-room deals for friends of the Mayor and friends of Aldermen.  But the city worker and the taxpayer are getting taken for a ride.

    My question is where is Lisa Madigan on this?  Where is Mr. Fitzgerald on this?  Where is the union leadership who is pushing out the ranks to keep voting for these numb-skulls who did this to their membership?  Is no one going to take any responsibility for this?

    These deals must end, period.  All pension investments must be made fully public by people with experience in money management.

    As a simple start, I believe we need help from Springfield to pass pension reform legislation so that every public pension fund must be fully transparent with every investment.   That would solve half of the problems immediately.

  • They Don’t Want You to Know

    I bet you have no idea how many shootings there have been in Chicago this year.

    Me either.

    And it’s not because I haven’t tried to find out. About two months ago, I started reporting on crime and public safety. In light of the on-again, off-again handgun ban and Supt. Jody Weis’ insistence that there are too many guns out there, I was certain the Chicago Police Department would track shootings.

    And by shootings, I meant just that. Any time a loaded gun was fired. I thought that was clear enough.

    The Chicago Police Department records crimes in a very specific way. Aggravated batteries with firearms are incidents in which someone is shot. But according to Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti, a department news affairs officer, this only includes the number of incidents, not victims. If five people are shot in a club, it’s recorded as a single incident even though a minimum of five shots were fired.

    And when three people were shot Wednesday morning in front of a Taco Bell next to Wrigley Field, police said the case report classified it as a single incident of aggravated battery with a firearm.

    (Full story here.)

    Mr. Weis and the Mayor tell us over and over that “crime is down.”  But something inside of us tells us otherwise.  What’s amazing here is that it take some college students to find out how badly the Chicago Police Department keeps its books.

    It takes awhile for this to sink-in because it doesn’t make sense, but in CPD world unless there’s a report there was no crime.  I recently wrote about how at a recent CAPS meeting we were told that there were 17 calls to 911 that resulted in zero (0) reports being filed.  Conclusion of CPD brass?  No crimes occurred.

    Why keeps stats this way?  Because they don’t want you to know what’s really going on.

    This needs to change.  We need to start measuring crime in practical ways.  I will be writing more about my plan to reduce crime in the near future.

  • People flee high-taxes

    Americans are fleeing high tax, union-dominated states and settling in states with lower taxes, right-to-work laws and lower government spending.

    (Full story here.)

    Chicago is burdened with not only high taxes but outrageous debt (more stories to follow on that issue shortly.)  We have to understand that we are not going to be able to tax our way out of this problem.  People will leave, and it will not be the poorest among us.   It will be those who have the means; the upper-middle class will be the first to go.  Lose that tax base and this city is sunk.
  • Rahm’s Residency Issue

    Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel was twice purged from the city voter rolls in the last 13 months but was reinstated by election officials, who allowed him to vote absentee in the February primary even though he did not live at his North Side address.

    (Full story here.)

    This is not a comment, up or down,  on Rahm.  He has said so little to date that he is hard to really evaluate as a candidate.  However this is interesting news as to how the political machine works in Chicago.

  • Chico’s Education Plan

    Just got back from Gery Chico’s presentation of his plan to revive CPS.  The 15 page plan handout can be found here if you’re interested.

    For those just looking for the bullet points:

    • As the former head of the Chicago Public Schools Gery knows something about education.  Further, as the leader when the schools were really bad, he knows something about education reform
    • Need to spend more money, in conjunction with the Chicago Park District, to increase the Mom’s & Tot’s and other programs.  The goal being to have every child “Ready by Five.”
    • CPS has grown bloated over the years.  Middle management in some admin offices has doubled in size.  The whole organization needs to “Dismantle and Restructure” in order to be more lean & nimble.
    • Each school with open a Parents Academy so they can more fully participate in the educational process of their children.
    • A new research-based evaluation system will track teacher performance and make sure that we only have the best teachers available.  Recruiting efforts will be doubled to attached the best teachers wherever they may be.
    • A two-hour longer school day and 24 more school days will increase the level of learning.  Charter schools and school vouchers will also be options.
    • Every high school student will be issued a laptop immediately.  By the end of 4 years, every grammar school student will have on as well.  In order to make sure that student have internet access the city-wide Wi-Fi program must be pushed forward as quickly as possible.
    • More police to make schools safe and alternative schools to deal with the disruptive or violent students.
    • An increased focus on the arts, sports, and languages.
    • Massive infrastructure improvements in both new and existing buildings.

    Well then, this certainly seems like a good start.  But there are concerns:

    • There is no plan to MEASURE SUCCESS OR FAILURE.
      — This is key.  The problem of CPS is that for years the numbers have been padded and frankly just made-up.  What I want to see is the GOAL.  The GOAL should be CPS students scoring at the national average on standardized tests in 4 years.  That’s how you measure success.
    • Union buy-in can be prohibitively expensive.
    • The police are already 2,500 people down, finding more to guard the schools takes them off the street to guard the non-students.
    • I’m not even sure that “municipal Wi-Fi” is legal.  This was a project that got started in many cities but is currently held-up in various lawsuits brought by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner.  So city-wide Wi-Fi is not going to happen anytime soon.  But we can make free hotspots out of schools, libraries, and other city buildings.

    The bottom-line is that Chico presented a plan.  It’s light on details and has a few rough spots to smooth over but overall a decent plan.

    It’s clear that Chico knows something about education.  He may just be the guy able to pull sometime like this off.  Definitely something to watch.

  • December 04, 2008

    Just a bit of history:

    Posted at 10:55 a.m.

    Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) said the lease will help the city during a tough budget time. (Daley plans to spend much of the one-time windfall to shore up the city budget during the next few years.)

    “I think it is a good ordinance that is going to help us in the next five years, when we are going to have a most difficult time,” Fioretti told his colleagues. “It is going to lessen the blow and be good for our people and good for the City of Chicago.”

    He also said rates at more than 70 percent of meters have not been hiked in 20 years.

    Fioretti, a rookie alderman, said the council “should have looked at (raising parking charges) a long time ago.”

    (Full story here.)

    How’s that parking meter thing working out for us?

  • IL High Schools Failing the College Bound

    Eight of 10 public high school juniors in Illinois weren’t considered ready for college classes in all subjects based on ACT testing last spring — and many students missed the mark even at posh suburban Chicago schools that graduate some of the state’s brightest kids.

    At Lake Forest, Deerfield, Northbrook and Hinsdale high schools, more than 40 percent of students didn’t meet all four “college readiness benchmarks” — ACT scores indicating they could do at least average in key freshman classes.

    In Lincolnshire and Naperville, more than half of juniors scored too low to reach the targets in English, reading, science and math, though several hundred met three of four benchmarks, usually missing in science.

    (Full story here.)

    This is just proof of the epic failure of the State’s educational system.  Even the best schools are not fully preparing our students for the future.  Students at the poorest schools don’t have any chance.

    Surely not every student needs to go to college.  There is nothing wrong with walking right over the union hall and signing up to become an electrician, plumber, crane operator, etc.  But the mission of high school should be to give all student the chance.  It is the opportunity being denied to generations of Illinois students.

    It’s time to say that we’ve had enough.

  • From you the voter

    I was reading this story here at the Sun-Times about how Chicago compares to other cities (we rock by the way.)  And in the comments I found this observation by someone posting as nomoretears:

    Chicago is fine, and Chicago needs to worry about being Chicago. We just need new local and state leadership across the board. It would be nice to keep our swankiness but much of old Chicago’s unique charm is slowly slipping away.

    The best way to market Chicago is through it’s residents. If the residents love living here, then others will want to spend time here. However, most Chicagoans have been miserable over the past decade because we’ve been getting raped and mistreated by the Daley Administration. If we can get better leadership, leadership that isn’t constantly digging into our pockets, it would certainly improve quality of life here in Chicago. And the Parking meter fiasco must be removed or Chicago will no longer have ANY business.

    Mark my word on that one!

    Thank you nomoretears.   I think you summed that up nicely.