Mayor Brandon Johnson’s municipal bond proposal, which would borrow $830 million to pay for upgrades and repairs to aging infrastructure, didn’t get a vote at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. During debate on the measure, Ald. Bill Conway (34th Ward) attempted to send it back to committee for further consideration, but his motion was tabled by a vote of 27–23, indicating that a majority of the Council supports the borrowing plan. However, Alds. Anthony Beale (9th) and Ray Lopez (15th), both frequent opponents of Johnson, used a legislative maneuver known as “defer and publish” to push a final vote on the bond proposal to the City Council’s next meeting. Johnson scheduled it for February 26.
During debate on the measure, Conway criticized the proposal’s debt repayment structure, in which the City would only make interest payments until 2045. In separate op-Eds published ahead of the meeting in the Tribune and Sun-Times, Conway and State Comptroller Suzanna Mendoza excoriated the bond as “reckless” and a “scam,” respectively. (Both have been floated as potential challengers to Johnson in 2027.)
Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), who chairs the Finance Committee, pushed back on those criticisms during the meeting. She argued that concerns about the City’s credit rating were misplaced, noting that the bulk of the City’s debt is due to pension obligations.
“Borrowing for capital projects already factors into the ratings agencies’ expectations as part of their outlook period, and it does not introduce new risk to the City’s credit standard,” Dowell said during the debate. “This bond issuance does result in some debt being taken on, however, it does not rise to the catastrophic level that it has been made out to be.”
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) was more strident in his criticism of the bond’s detractors. “It seems to me that when we start talking about what we can do in the interest of Black folks in this city, the flags go up,” he said.
The bond proposal wasn’t the only progressive legislation to hit a speed bump at Wednesday’s meeting. An ordinance that would lower the citywide speed limit from 30 to 25 mph was voted down 28–21. City Council members representing Black wards on the South and West Sides voiced concerns that enforcement could disproportionately impact their constituents. A 2023 analysis of two decades of data by WBEZ and the Investigative Project on Race and Equity found that Black drivers are pulled over four times as often as white drivers in Chicago.
“The folks I represent are not looking for more tickets,” Ervin said.
Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st), who sponsored the speed-limit ordinance, acknowledged that such concerns aren’t unfounded.
“Until there is greater transparency around where automated enforcement revenue is going, until we are less reliant on the Chicago Police Department to enforce speed, until that funding actually goes towards addressing the unsafe infrastructure at these corners, Chicagoans have valid concerns,” he said in a statement emailed to the Weekly. He added that a working group the Council established in January plans “to address those concerns in meaningful and lasting ways.”
La Spata also tied the goal of reducing traffic fatalities to the mayor’s bond proposal.
“The bond infrastructure package put forth today continues robust investment in Complete Streets and particularly safe infrastructure,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was deferred and published by two of my colleagues and we have to come back next week to vote on that. We will not be a safer city without putting municipal funding into this.”
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Other measures fared better at Wednesday’s meeting. The Council gave the green light to the so-called 1901 Project, a $7 billion spending plan to redevelop an area around the United Center. The project, which will be privately funded by Jerry Reindsdorf and the Wirtz Corporation, the owners of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, respectively, will be implemented over the next ten to fifteen years and includes thousands of residential units, a hotel, retail spaces, a concert venue, and a ten-acre park.
A measure that beefs up enforcement of “curbstoning,” the practice of parking unregistered cars for sale on public streets for days on end, also passed. The ordinance, cosponsored by Alds. Jeylú Gutiérrez (14th), Ronnie Mosley (21st), Ruth Cruz (30th), and Andre Vasquez (40th), allows police to immediately ticket and tow vehicles parked on streets without a current license plate. Previously, owners had a week to move such vehicles before they’d be towed.
“Efforts to ticket these vehicles don’t work, because they have no plates,” Vasquez said in a statement provided to the media ahead of the meeting. “Reporting them as abandoned vehicles has no effect, because they are either sold or moved before seven days have passed, which is what’s required under the current municipal code before the City can tow.”
The Council also approved the appointments of new Police District Council (PDC) members.
Marquinn McDonald was appointed to fill a vacancy on PDC 002, which serves parts of Kenwood, Hyde Park, Washington Park, Englewood, and Woodlawn, and Keola (Keo) Jean-Joseph was appointed to fill a vacancy on PDC 024, which serves Rogers Park, Edgewater, and West Ridge.
Editor’s note: This story previously stated that Assistant Public Defender Gia Piomonte’s appointment to the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability was approved; the appointment was held in the Police & Fire Committee and not voted on by the City Council.
Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.
