[posted by Mike Murray]

* ‘Infrastructure is good’: Daley

With a street repair project in the background and a lousy economy on everyone’s mind, Mayor Daley defended this year’s $1.7 billion plan to build five libraries, fix several high-traffic bridges and resurface 550 blocks of streets across the city.

“Infrastructure is good for the economy and good for jobs,” Daley said on the Northwest Side on Friday, when he also announced a five-year, $8.4 billion plan for capital improvements citywide. “All these improvements basically strengthen economic development, jobs here in the city, and it helps businesses — especially now with so many of our residents struggling financially, it is very important.”

Daley stressed the city is cutting operating expenses but said annual sewer and road improvements are not only fiscally responsible, they’re an essential part of keeping a city in business.[…]

While the five-year plan includes an array of infrastructure upgrades, including a whopping $3.9 billion at O’Hare and Midway airports, the mayor’s office offered a sampling of this year’s project list:

* Daley demands Obama take a pay cut

“I hope every federal employee from the president all the way down takes 15 days without pay to turn that money back to taxpayers’ use, because they’re getting laid off, they’re getting cut back, there are no jobs out there,” Daley said Friday.

An animated Daley offered the advice during a press conference on the Northwest Side to announce $1.7 billion in projects around the city. The projects use money that comes from bonds and federal and city coffers, including tax increment financing districts.

Daley said road, library and sewer construction projects are necessary to keep a city running and, at these times, people employed.

But as he spoke about the projects, he reflected on what’s happening in city government: layoffs and furlough days. The mayor says he’s taking 15 unpaid days this year and believes every level of government — all the way up to the president might do the same to save taxpayer dollars.

* Daley: Scott wouldn’t benefit from project

Mayor Daley denied Saturday that Michael Scott, a member of the Chicago 2016 committee, would financially benefit from a proposed West Side development near the site of a potential Olympic venue.

“He’s not involved,” Daley said after the Bud Billiken Parade, where he spent the morning riding a float blasting out the music of Beyonce. “He’s supporting the Olympics. Everybody is supporting the Olympics.”

Scott, a real estate developer and president of the Chicago Board of Education, said Friday he would not profit if the affordable housing and retail project, near a proposed Douglas Park Olympic venue site, was developed with his assistance.

The Chicago Tribune reported last week that Scott was “potentially positioning himself to cash in” on the Olympics through the proposed development.

* Daley’s nephew gets break from city pension funds

When they started their real estate investment company three years ago, Mayor Daley’s nephew Robert Vanecko and his partners made a promise to five City of Chicago pension funds they were seeking as investors:

We’ll put $7 million of our own money into the deal to show we believe in our high-risk strategy of investing city retirees’ pension money in developing inner-city neighborhoods.

That assurance helped the start-up venture known as DV Urban Realty Partners quickly land $68 million from the city pension funds.

But now it turns out that Vanecko and his partners — Chicago developer Allison S. Davis and his son Jared Davis — will put in just $3.5 million, half of what they initially promised.

* Daley’s nephew lays plans for S. Loop

Next up for DV Urban Realty, the investment company Mayor Daley’s nephew created to manage city pension money: building a $120 million high-rise in the South Loop.

Robert Vanecko and his company have a contract to buy what’s now the South Loop headquarters of the National Association of Letter Carriers at 1411 S. Michigan, which they plan to knock down and replace with a 220-unit apartment building.

DV Urban — which Vanecko owns with partners Allison S. Davis and Davis’ son Jared Davis — has spent more than $4.7 million from city pension funds on the deal, records show.

* County, unions discuss contract length, wording

ROCKFORD — Contracts for the county’s two largest labor unions are up in October, which gives county management more leeway to make cuts than last year.

Or, at least, county administrators won’t be locked in to contractual raises like they were last year.

Negotiations have started with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 473, which represents 725 county employees; and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 50, which represents more than 100 deputies and detectives.

AFSCME and the FOP are coming off four-year agreements. Given the economic realities, however, it’s likely the new contracts will be shorter.

* County departments prepare for more cuts

ROCKFORD — Top county officials are demanding an additional 10 percent cut from all county departments as they prepare the fiscal 2010 budget.

The demand potentially means dozens of layoffs and most certainly means hour reductions and wage freezes in some departments. It’s also an indication that despite some recent news indicating a small economic rebound, the situation in Winnebago County remains troubling.

County budget crunchers estimate they’ll take in $46.1 million during the fiscal 2010, which begins Oct. 1. That’s the lowest the county’s income has been since at least 2006.

The reasons for the shortfall include projected slow property tax growth, declines in sales tax revenue, as well as less money from licenses, permits and fees.

* Forging a friendship

Mayors of Aurora and Romanian town meet on common grounds

* Chicago schools report spike in year-round schools

School officials say 132 schools in the nation’s third-largest district will be year-round for the 2009-10 school year. That’s up from 41 last academic year.

The year-round calendar starts Monday. It affects about 80,000 students.

* Chicago Public Schools Adds More Schools to Year-Round Track

* Should Empty Homes House Chicago’s Poor?

It seems like another lifetime, but just a few years ago, Chicago neighborhoods faced a tsunami of condo conversions. That wave—plus the demolition of public housing towers—left many of the city’s poorest people struggling to find a place to live. Now the foreclosure crisis has displaced tens of thousands more Chicagoans, and left empty homes in their wake. A lot of people see a new opportunity to revive neighborhoods. But there’s also fear that people most in need will be squeezed out of this chance for housing.[…]

LUDWIG: The more vacant and abandoned properties on a block, the less the people who are currently there and have been there for years and are good, responsible property owners want to be there, they see, ‘Oh, maybe I should get the heck out of here,’ this neighborhood isn’t going anywhere, so to speak.

And that’s exactly what Ludwig wants to avoid. The neighborhood stabilization program she mentioned, that’s how the city got $55 million from the federal government. And here’s where the competing goals come in: do you use that money to fix up buildings and sell them? Or do you turn them over to non-profits to run as rentals?

* More parking spaces without meters?

“Theoretically, there could be,” said Avis LaVelle, spokeswoman for Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the private company that took over Chicago’s parking meters and raised prices. LaVelle doesn’t know that anyone has done a tally about how many more spaces there could be, but if people park efficiently, “like urban parkers,” there could be room for more cars than under a single-meter system.

So there’s a silver lining in the new meter system — in case you were in search of one.

Chicago Parking Meters has put up 2,200 parking meter boxes. One box replaces 10 meters.

* Pedaling slowly

The city issued a request for proposals from vendors interested in operating a bike-sharing program here. But that yielded only two proposals, says Brian Steele, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation. And neither was judged adequate to meet Chicago’s needs.[…]

The city has also been looking more closely at some of the potential pitfalls that a bike-sharing program might face. Could a rider hurt while using bike-sharing sue the city for damages? What style of bikes would work best in Chicago? Where would the bikes be located? And what would be the best way to minimize vandalism?

Answering those questions is taking longer than bike enthusiasts might like. But in this instance, we’re glad to see the city pedal cautiously. Haste could prove costly, as Paris learned. That city’s program, which has 20,000 bikes placed at 1,000 stations, was supposed to cost taxpayers nothing. Advertising giant JCDecaux had contracted to operate the program for free, in exchange for outdoor ad space.

But vandals routinely smash bike frames, cut chains and slash tires. JCDecaux has had to replace 16,000 bikes, according to a National Public Radio report. Eight thousand bikes have been stolen. Given the extent of the damage, the city of Paris recently agreed to subsidize $500 of each replacement bike’s cost. That’s expected to total $2 million per year.

* Love the park, can’t play there

But the park, in Lincoln Park’s pricey Hartland Park development, recently was closed to families who don’t live in the subdivision.

The park was slated to be transferred to the Chicago Park District, but the park district won’t take it because the roads and sidewalks leading into it are private, according to Ald. Scott Waguespack’s (32nd) chief of staff and members of the Heartland Park Master Homeowners Association.

The sidewalks and streets were supposed to be transferred to the city, but it won’t take them because they don’t meet city standards or, in the case of the sidewalks, requirements laid out in the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to documents sent to Belgravia Group, Hartland Park’s developers.

The homeowner’s association said they were forced to shut off public access to the park, at Hermitage and Schubert, because they were assuming liability for anyone playing in the park.

* Chicago’s Lakefront Trail: A path to danger?

The limited data the Chicago Park District keeps about crashes on the 18-mile trail — one of the busiest multi-use recreational paths in the country, according to parks officials — show that crashes do happen. Between 2002 and 2008, Park District employees — most of them lifeguards — reported 126 wipeouts that included people colliding with each other, swerving to avoid each other or hitting rough patches and losing control, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of Park District “patron incident reports.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests these incidents are only a small part of a bigger problem. Dr. Rahul K. Khare, an emergency room physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, says it’s common for him to treat at least five path-related injuries during an eight-hour weekend shift when the weather is nice. “You do see some significant fractures, lacerations, concussions,” Khare said.

The Park District doesn’t have a comprehensive system for tracking collisions and other problems on the trail, making it difficult to assess if slow zones, speed limits, additional signs or other safety measures could make the path safer. A list of police responses to crashes is difficult to create, Chicago Police say. The Fire Department is reviewing a Sun-Times request for ambulance responses.

* On trail, history repeats

The trail runs along an unused railroad bed from the Dan Ryan Woods near 80th Place to Whistler Woods in Riverdale. It was one of the area’s first “rails to trails” projects. The Chicago Department of Transportation spent $5 million in state and federal money on the trail, buying the land and paving it. It officially opened June 2, 2007.

The Chicago Park District controls a large part of the trail — from 104th Street south to 127th Street — while the Cook County Forest Preserve District controls either end. The street portions are maintained by CDOT.

Peter Taylor said the trail is troubled by gang activity. He wants the Park District to provide “simple things” like lighting, water fountains, more trash cans and maybe a bathroom. He also wants better maintenance, through sweeping up of trash and cutting back vegetation, and a better police presence.

* Heat doesn’t faze Lollapalooza crowd