Wednesday, January 9, 2008
News / Clout City License to approve
Posted by Mick Dumke on 01.09.08 at 08:28 PM
The City Council was busy this week: aldermen began discussing an ordinance [PDF] that would ban baggies under two inches square because they’re used in drug dealing; decided to defer, at least for a few weeks, another proposed ordinance that would restrict pigeon feeding; and introduced a resolution calling for former Cubs (and briefly Sox) player Ron Santo to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Somewhere in there aldermen also found time to sign off on the mayor’s appointments for police superintendent, chief procurement officer, and director of administrative hearings; and to approve more than $21 million to settle several police torture and misconduct cases, including four from the Burge era. Lots of aldermen had lots to say about all of these things, but that didn’t translate into much dissension on the record, since all these items received a grand total of one nay vote—from the Third Ward’s Pat Dowell, who gave a thumbs-down to the confirmation of new police chief Jody Weis because she was underwhelmed by his performance during a Q & A with aldermen on Monday. (Several others, including 20th Ward alderman Willie Cochran, a former cop, had vowed to oppose Weis until receiving a visit from Daley’s council lobbyist, John Dunn, shortly before the vote.)
In fact, council chambers are often full of vigorous discussion and speechifying. It's just rare that any of it changes policy. Arguably the week's best example of this happened in Tuesday’s meeting of the Committee on License and Consumer Protection.
Tops on the committee’s agenda was a Daley administration initiative creating a licensing process for food and drink concessionaires along the Chicago River downtown. While aldermen on the committee were excited about further developing the “Riverwalk” as an entertainment and tourist area, they were confused and even skeptical about certain parts of the city’s plan, including an unusual arrangement that would use the Chicago Park District to award the concession spots—it’s not Park District property, but according to city officials the city’s own procurement office doesn’t have experience in selecting concessionaires.
But it was when the discussion turned to the estimated costs of building out the waterfront area, and the city's plan to use millions in TIF funds to do it, that several aldermen sat up straight in their seats.
“We’ve traditionally gone after federal funding for most of our transportation projects, and unfortunately we haven’t been very successful with that [for the Riverwalk],” said Michelle Woods, an official from the Chicago Department of Transportation. “We were successful in identifying some local TIF funds for the first under-bridge [construction] project.”
“And what does it cost?” asked 29th Ward alderman Ike Carothers, the committee’s vice chairman.
"About three and a half million.”
“For the total project?” Carothers asked.
“No,” said Woods. “For the total Riverwalk project we’re looking at between $50 to $60 million.”
“And how much have you spent do date?”
“We’ve probably spent about $350,000 for the design.”
"For the design,” Carothers said. “So this is going to cost $50 to $60 million. Have you identified the funding?”
“No.”
“How do you know it’s going to happen if there’s no funding identified?”
“Well, we’re working on identifying more funding, and—”
“But you know, we all have projects that are supposed to be funded from CDOT in our wards, and a lot of our projects are not moving forward because CDOT tells us they don’t have funding—in my own ward I have viaduct projects that aren’t going forward,” Carothers snapped. “This seems to be a very ambitious project, $50 to $60 million dollars. We just passed a budget here when we were talking about the city being short of money, and here, $50 million, $60 million coming from we don’t know where, from the sky. What about the projects in our wards?”
Committee chairman Gene Schulter jumped in, telling Carothers in a patient, soothing voice that the committee was there to discuss the licensing process and not the funding. At first Carothers didn’t seem satisfied—the licenses are the “gateway” to the rest of the project, he argued—and he went on to ask pointed questions about minority involvement and handicapped access to the Riverwalk sites. “How in 2008 can we open something new that is not accessible?” he demanded.
The city and Park District officials in the room promised that the Riverwalk would be eventually be fully accessible, even if it isn’t now and won’t be this coming summer. And they told him three of the ten current vendors on the riverfront are minority owned.
For the next few minutes other aldermen asked questions about how the food would be prepared, and representatives from Friends of the Chicago River and a couple of the restaurants setting up booths endorsed the project.
Finally, after about an hour of testimony, Carothers spoke up again. “Mr. Chairman, are we voting on this today?”
Schulter said yes.
“Then I move to pass,” Carothers said.
And so it passed--unanimously.
Later, Carothers said he’d decided Schulter was right—the license committee wasn’t the place to resolve his concerns about the funding and other issues. “We’ll have to look at this a little more closely,” he said. “I’ll definitely be following this.”
The full City Council passed the measure Wednesday without discussion.
Comments (16)
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"'Then I move to pass,' Carothers said." Proof positive, that our City Council has the smoothest, most reliable bowl movements of any governing body in the nation.
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OBAMA BE BOLD: BREAK WITH A BACKER ON TORTURE....Senator Obama wants to stand out. How about standing up against torture, not in Gitmo -- but in Chicago? Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers serving under him stand accused of torturing some 200 mostly African-American men in custody in the '70s and '80s. In 2002, after a criminal investigation, four who had been sentenced to death and spent over a total of 70 years behind bars on false confessions extracted through torture were pardoned, Governor Ryan issued a moratorium on executions and a package of reforms was passed. Running for US Senate, Obama was rightly proud of SB15, his piece of that package: "I sent twenty-five pieces of legislation to the Governor's desk, including landmark videotaping legislation of interrogations and confessions, the first in the nation." By then, the electric-shocks to-the-genitals, bags-over-head treatment had stopped, but justice hadn't been served. Burge and the others have never been prosecuted. Recently, a four-year, multi-million dollar investigation confirmed the allegations but declared it too late to act. Now Mayor Richard M. Daley stands accused of running out the clock on the statute of limitations. Daley – who abandoned his tradition of primary-neutrality to back Obama – was Cook County's top prosecutor in '82, when evidence linking Burge to torture was first brought to him. For eight years he collaborated in prosecutions of Burge's victims without taking action. Now he's Mayor, his former assistant, Richard Devine, is Cook County state's attorney, and his brother, Bill Daley, is a senior adviser to Obama. The UN Committee against Torture wants action. Patrick Fitzgerald has announced a federal investigation. This October 17, Bobby Rush (D-Il) wrote to John Conyers requesting a Judiciary Committee hearing. Want to show courage? Obama knows what's right. A Senate investigation anyone?
Mick, THANKS to you & the Reader for covering & reporting on full City Council and committee meetings!
" ... in Tuesday’s meeting of the Committee on License and Consumer Protection. Tops on the committee’s agenda was a Daley administration initiative creating a licensing process for food and drink concessionaires along the Chicago River downtown. ... The full City Council passed the measure Wednesday without discussion." Although Mick linked to the Tues License committee agenda, conspicuously absent was a link to the Wed full City Council agenda. Because it doesn't exist. The Illinois Open Meetings Act entitles us to an agenda for the City Council meeting of 10 AM Wed, Jan 9, 2007, posted outside Council chambers, and on the internet, 48 hours in advance, that is, by 10 AM Mon. So how did an item that did not get out of committee until Tuesday get on the agenda by Monday? Answer: it didn't. Because the Chicago City Council regularly violates state law. And with impunity, Because the County States Attorney's office is charged of enforcing the Open Meetings Act.
During the speechifying on Supercop Weis at Wed's full City Council meeting, Carothers cemented his stranglehold on being the biggest kiss-ass in City Council, gratuitously reprising his "heavy lifting" wise crack, this time in the context of saying approving Weis is NOT heavy lifting, and Daley signaled his delight with the same cackle as at the budget meeting in Nov.
Carothers and Balcer (sponsor of the pro-Santo legislation) vying to inherit Natarus' court jester scepter is the most dramatic conflict in Chicago City Council.
Mick said....> "The full City Council passed the measure Wednesday without discussion." That about sums up the whole story.
The story is summed up by saying that unless the council is shooting firecrackers out of their assess, the Mick's of the world are not happy. They breed and thrive on miscontent. Guess what, the people are happy. The Mayor and most of the Council won in landslides. Yes, some people lost due to union money, but they have been promptly flipped. Business as usual. For the good of the City.
"Introduced a resolution calling for former Cubs (and briefly Sox) player Ron Santo to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame." Now our city council are experts in baseball.
" ... council chambers are often full of vigorous discussion and speechifying ... " Whoa! Let's keep our heads here. "The City Council only SEEMS like a rubber stamp because all the heavy lifting is done in committee" is part of the incumbent mythology, and we don't want to accidentally contribute to it. Council chambers being "full of vigorous discussion" is an impression you might well get from attending the high-profile hearings like top cop and torture settlements. It's a Heisenberg thing: if the press is there, there's speechifying. Most of the time, council chambers are empty. Don't be fooled by the two-day run-up to a full City Council meeting. In general, it's not like they're running from meeting to meeting. http://www.chicityclerk.com/citycouncil/calendar.html And don't let the Sargent-at-Arms carrying 2 full-time patronage jobs for "room schedulers" fool you, it's unusual that there is a meeting going on, more than one meeting going on at the same time is the exception, and three at once is unheard of. http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/politics/2007/12/27/human-resources/ And when they are not empty, most likely you'll find at most a handful of Aldermen in attendance. In flagrant disregard for the law, no roll calls are taken, no quorums are recorded, and all votes voice and unrecorded. http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/ourtown/061215/bernystone/ Further, in flagrant disregard for the Open Meeting laws in Illinois, no audio, video, or text record is taken or kept or posted online of all this "vigorous discussion."
Yeah Ike Carothers, we all know how much you disdain politics in city government, especially since your brother Tony C made police lieutenant meritoriously. How did that happen, who's the Chairman of the Police and Fire committee...oh that's right, you are. Thank God your position had nothing to do with his promotion.Did he take and pass his drug screen yet?
"...in flagrant disregard for the Open Meeting laws in Illinois, no audio, video, or text record is taken or kept or posted online of all this "vigorous discussion." The very reason that our next State's Attorney needs to be someone who'll go after blatant violations of State Law like a pit bull after bloody, raw meat. Peraica sort of resembles a pit bull, let's turn him loose on the hogs.
