Chicago Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) says he thinks he has solved the city’s budget for next year.
“We’ll just add an additional tax on every item that the Cubs sell this season,” Waguespack joked Thursday during a City Club of Chicago panel discussion on the city’s 2017 budget.
“I’ve never seen so many people wearing Cubs gear, not only in Chicago but just nationwide,” the alderman said. “It’s a good thing to see a team doing so well, because it does add to the bottom line. It adds to Chicago’s stature at a time when things are pretty difficult, when we see so much increase in crime and violence throughout our city, that we can have one thing to look at and say this is a good thing.”
Most states are spending less on K-12 education now than they did before the Great Recession. Illinois, however, is among the exceptions, according to a new report.
Five Chicago aldermen want to surplus funds from a tax increment financing, or TIF, district located in their wards and use the money to help “alleviate the budget crisis” at the cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools.
Chicagoans who are organizing a ballot initiative to create a community-funded mental health center on the West Side submitted double the required petition signatures to the election board Friday.
A group of Chicago aldermen proposed a package of ordinances Wednesday to generate revenue for the city’s cash-strapped public schools.
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district has a $300 million budget gap, and schools are reportedly facing a 7 percent funding cut in the upcoming academic year.
“We’ve received some money from the state, but it’s just not enough,” Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said at a press conference before the council meeting with fellow aldermen, the Chicago Teachers Union and other education advocates.
“We need to find more progressive and more viable solutions to increase revenue so that all of our schools can be adequately financed, so that we can give quality teachers an opportunity to teach in our schools,” he continued. “When I had a conversation with a principal yesterday, she was perplexed that she could not hire a 20-plus year veteran school teacher because she could not afford it. That’s not right.”
Chicago Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) says he thinks he has solved the city’s budget for next year.
A group of Chicago aldermen proposed a package of ordinances Wednesday to generate revenue for the city’s cash-strapped public schools.