News 
- Created on 24 May 2013
Gun Violence Costs Chicago $2.5 Billion A Year
Following Chicago's staggering 2012 total of more than 500 homicides, the human toll of gun violence in the Windy City is well-known.
Now, a new Bloomberg analysis released Wednesday has put a price tag on the cost of killings:
$2.5 billion a year.
The multi-billion-dollar figure breaks down to an average of $2,500 per Chicago household, per year, University of Chicago Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig tells Bloomberg.
Some of the costs were intangible, such as impacts to quality of life like keeping children from playing outdoors in a violent neighborhood; others have firm figures attached.
A sampling of Bloomberg's analysis includes:
$900 — 1,200: Cost of a typical ambulance ride to the ER
$800: "Incremental costs" for an autopsy by the medical examiner
$52,000: Average cost for acute trauma care of of gunshot victims, 70 percent of whom are uninsured
$35,000: Average cost of care at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago where 1/20th of the patients are gunshot victims
Not only does violence destroy local business, but Ludwig tells American Public Media's Marketplace that every homicide in Chicago reduces the city's population by 70 people.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
- Created on 23 May 2013
Breaking: Judge Sets Hearing On Chicago School Closings
Update: May 23: 1:25 p.m CST:
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a day after the Chicago Board of Education's controversial vote to shut down 50 schools, a federal judge has scheduled a four-day hearing in July to decide whether to halt the closures.
Earlier:
Update: May 22: 3:30 p.m CST:
The Chicago Public School Board votes to close 50 schools, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In the nation’s largest round of closings in a single swoop, 50 of Chicago’s public elementary schools are going away for good.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Earlier:
CBS Chicago is reporting that hours before a final vote by the Chicago Board of Education, Chicago Public Schools officials have agreed to back off plans to close four of the 54 elementary schools targeted for closing at the end of the school year, Board Vice President Jesse Ruiz confirmed Wednesday morning.
Another school closing will be delayed for a year, and a school not on the closing list will be spared from a major staff overhaul known as a “turnaround.”
Ruiz said CPS Chief Executive Officer Barbara Byrd-Bennett has decided to withdraw her recommendations to close Marcus Garvey Elementary School, Mahalia Jackson Elementary School, George Manierre Elementary School, and Leif Ericson Elementary Scholastic Academy.
“Barbara is going to recommend that these four not proceed, and will give us her final recommendation this morning,” Ruiz said. “I supported her decision, and she’s been very meticulous about every single school, and we’ve been working up until the last minute – until last evening, when I was having talks with different management at CPS – about what’s the right thing to do for our kids.”
Ruiz also confirmed the planned closing of Miriam Canter Middle School will be delayed at least a year.
Ruiz said there were “various reasons” behind the decisions to halt or delay the closings of those schools.
“Some of them, they have increasing enrollment trends, some have special programs for special needs children, and others are trending in the right direction in terms of their academics,” Ruiz said. “So there’s various reasons why she was consistently looking at each of the schools, each of the criterion, and making very difficult decisions for each of the communities impacted.”
Ruiz also confirmed Clara Barton Elementary School would not face a “turnaround” at the end of the school year.
A turnaround would have meant the entire staff at Barton would have been replaced, while students would have stayed at the school. Originally, Bennett had planned to have Barton turned over to the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which has overseen the turnarounds of several other public schools.
Ruiz said, as of Wednesday morning, the four school closings that Bennett plans to rescind and the one she plans to delay are the only changes to the list of 53 elementary schools targeted for closing.
“Those are the ones that I’m aware of, as of last night. It’s constantly changing,” Ruiz said.
Read more at CBS Chicago.
(Photo: Screen shot NBCChicago.)
- Created on 23 May 2013
New Ill. House Gun Bill Has More Restrictions
A compromise allowing the carrying of concealed weapons backed by House Speaker Michael Madigan and agreed to by the General Assembly's leading gun-rights advocate materialized Wednesday, adding to the list of gun-free locales but making it easier for qualified gun owners to get permits.
Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, emerged from a closed-door meeting of his caucus late in the afternoon, saying the reworked version of southern Illinois Rep. Brandon Phelps' measure would get its first test with a committee vote Thursday.
A House floor tally would follow a day later, just 16 days before the deadline for establishing a concealed carry law set by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when it decreed the state's last-in-the-nation ban unconstitutional.
Phelps said the plan is a framework for a "shall issue" law, meaning the Illinois State Police would be required to issue a permit to anyone with a Firearm Owners Identification card who has the requisite training and clears a criminal background check.
"All we're doing here is making sure the good guys have guns," said Phelps, D-Harrisburg. "Right now, the only ones that have the guns are the bad guys."
Read more at NBCChicago.
(Photo: NBCChicago)
- Created on 23 May 2013
Report: Daley's Staff Sensed Parking-Meter Woes
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s staff was aware of major problems with the city’s parking-meter privatization deal in 2010 — a year and a half before the costly issues publicly surfaced, according to hundreds of pages of documents released Wednesday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.
The documents detail behind-the-scenes sparring between City Hall — under Daley and Emanuel — and Chicago Parking Meters LLC before Emanuel struck a deal last month with the meter company.
If approved next month by the City Council, that deal will see the city pay Chicago Parking Meters $63.8 million to settle disputes over how much the city has to pay it for when the city took meters out of service and for when drivers with disability-parking placards and license plates parked free at meters. The settlement also would create free parking in most neighborhoods on Sundays but establish longer meter hours.
As early as May 2010, in the second year of the 75-year meter-privatization contract, Daley aides questioned Chicago Parking Meters’ disability-parking reimbursement claims, the newly released records show. Over the next three years, the company demanded nearly $56 million for the free disability parking — an amount fueled in part by able-bodied drivers using relatives’ placards, or fake or stolen ones, to avoid paying escalating meter costs.
The hit on taxpayers didn’t become known until December 2011, seven months after Daley left office, when the Chicago Sun-Times reported the extent of the disability-parking abuse and that taxpayers would have to pay for it.
But Daley aides saw a storm brewing long before then, sending several letters to Chicago Parking Meters asserting that people who fraudulently use placards shouldn’t be part of the company’s reimbursement claims.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times.
(Photo: NBCChicago)
- Created on 23 May 2013
Census Bureau: Chicago Is Growing, But Slowly
The population of Chicago has climbed but it climbed slower than any major city in the United States.
The U.S. Census Bureau's national estimates released Thursday found that Chicago's population rose about 10,000 between July 2011 and July 2012 to just over 2.7 million.
The city's growth was enough for Chicago to remain the nation's third largest city. But the two cities with more residents — New York and Los Angeles — grew a bit more in the year. The census bureau says New York added 67,000 residents and Los Angeles added 34,000.
In Illinois, of the 10 most populated cities only Rockford and Waukegan saw a drop in population. And in both cases the drop was less than 1 percent.
Read more at NBCChicago.
(Photo: NBCChicago)
