March 27
“Hey hey, ho ho, pretextual stops have to go!” chanted attendees after a meeting of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). During the meeting, several public commenters, some of whom identified themselves as members of Free2Move, spoke against pretextual Chicago Police Department (CPD) traffic stops. Critics contend such stops are conducted as a pretext for police to search for unrelated items. Two Commission members also commented on the stops. Aaron Gottlieb said that if traffic stops are not included in the department’s Consent Decree, the Commission should continue playing a role in creating a policy. Sandra Wortham said that the Commission will ask for public feedback as it develops a traffic-stop policy. The Commission approved a proposal to allow closed meetings and an amendment to its bylaws to limit public comment during meetings to agenda items or other planned discussion topics. The amendment is designed to limit or prevent disruptive audience behavior.
April 14 & 16
The Green Social Housing Ordinance, which is aimed at addressing Chicago’s affordable housing crisis amid uncertain federal funding, did not come up for a vote either at the April 14 meeting of the Chicago City Council Joint Committee: Finance; Housing and Real Estate or two days later at the committee’s April 16 meeting. Council members said they needed more time to get the details right. If enacted, the ordinance would establish an independent non-profit entity responsible for ensuring the creation of energy-efficient, mixed-income developments that include permanently affordable housing. Council members shared concerns about the structure and oversight of the nonprofit, which is why the committees met together twice. The housing committee and the city’s Law Department amended the ordinance to address these concerns. One change, for example, mandates that the independent non-profit must cooperate with the Chicago Office of the Inspector General in any investigations, audits, or reviews. “That solves one set of problems,” said Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Remaining are questions about the application and enforcement of the city’s ethics rules, she said. Still, alderperson Nicole Lee (11th) successfully moved to keep the ordinance in committee, saying the Council “just got this substitute . . . and I’m not comfortable voting on this currently.” Funding is already set aside in connection with the 2024 Housing and Economic Development Bond, which established a $135 million revolving loan fund for green social housing.
April 17
“We’ve never seen anything this cataclysmic or this big before in terms of a crisis in mass transit,” said Kirk Dillard, chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority Board of Directors, speaking on an impending budget shortfall and subsequent massive service cuts. At its meeting, the board learned that a projected $771 million shortfall for the 2026 fiscal year could lead to a forty percent reduction in public transportation services in the Chicago area. Whether that happens hinges on securing state funding by May 31, which marks the end of the spring session of the state’s General Assembly. The effect of the funding hole on Chicago workers could be stark: one in five, or twenty percent, could lose access to buses and trains, RTA officials say. Cuts will hit Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra, and Pace lines, drastically limiting services within Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, RTA officials have said. Some or all service for at least four of the eight CTA train lines could be suspended, and access to more than fifty stations could be curtailed or eliminated. It could also mean eliminating up to seventy-four of 127 bus routes, leaving some 500,000 CTA riders without convenient bus service, officials said. Nearly three thousand transit workers would be laid off. Service cuts could result in the loss of $2.6 billion in wages for CTA users annually because they couldn’t get to their jobs easily—or could lose their jobs, officials said. With these cuts, the CTA would go from one of the largest transit systems in the country to having fewer bus routes than Madison, Wisconsin, a city with a fraction of Chicago’s population, RTA officials said. To pressure the legislature to take action, the RTA launched the “Save Transit Now” campaign in an effort to inform the public and encourage Chicagoans to contact their state representatives.
April 24
At its meeting, the Chicago Public Schools Chicago Board of Education voted 19-0 (with one abstention) to approve a teachers contract through June 2028. The contract is worth $1.5 billion over four years. The move came after nearly a year of negotiations, and the terms are retroactive to July 2024. Teachers are to receive four-to-five percent cost-of-living wage increases in each of the four years as well as reduced class sizes and additional funding for extracurricular programs. Hundreds of additional staff positions are planned. “This contract fairly rewards our excellent work of our educators, makes investments that are financially responsible for the district, and keeps the best interest of our students at the forefront,” outgoing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said. The board also approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 budget to fund the contract’s first year by allocating $139 million in additional Tax Increment Financing (TIF) surplus funding. “Some combination of increased revenue and reduced expenses will need to be reached to balance this budget,” Martinez said. Due to the district’s projected $529 million budget gap, CPS has launched a campaign to advocate for the state to increase evidence-based formula funding as well as funding for nutrition, special education, transportation services across Illinois, and support for early childhood education. “We have a contract that did not require a strike,” said Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates. “That is a significant development.”
This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org