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* With unemployment rates climbing, workers forced to retrain for high-demand jobs
Retraining programs seem to hold the best hope for unemployed workers to change their situation. However, the reality seems to be that workers who take retraining do little better than those who don’t.
Too often, they want the retraining program that will have them back in the job market in the shortest amount of time. They are competing for the available jobs with everyone else in their situation. And until businesses are ready to hire again, the scarcity of open positions means it may not matter how well-qualified a worker is.
* Big jump in Chicago gas prices
* Chicago Home Sales Rise in February, But Prices Drop
Chicago home sales jumped 41 percent in February from a year ago. The median price dropped 19 percent.
* Local home sales up 32% in February
The median price in the Chicago area — at which half the homes sell for more and half for less — fell to $165,000 in February, a 10.3% decrease from last year, according to the release, and down from $175,000 last month.
* [Will County] Home sales up across the board
* Lake County home sales up 43 percent in February
* Illinois farmers buying land back from shell-shocked banks
Prices for raw land in exurban Chicago have plummeted to around $10,000 an acre from $50,000 an acre or more during the peak of the housing boom…..And for banks that lent heavily to residential developers, there’s a lot of raw land on the books. Case in point: First Midwest Bank, with $7.7 billion in assets, had $113 million in seriously delinquent residential development loans as of Dec. 31; nearly $33 million, or 29%, of that was secured by raw land, according to an investor presentation the bank made in February.
* Yellow lights shorter in Chicago
Most Chicago yellow lights last three seconds, the bare minimum recommended under federal safety guidelines. In the suburbs, yellows generally stay on for four to four-and-a-half seconds….City officials insist, however, that Chicago’s three-second yellows adhere to sound engineering principles and predate the installation of red-light cameras by decades. And they say the number of red-light-running violations caught on camera is tiny compared with the volume of traffic, proof that yellows in the city are not a trap.
* Duncan had list of favor-seekers
When U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan ran Chicago Public Schools, his office quietly kept a log of elected officials and others seeking to help kids win admission to the most coveted schools in the system, a former top Duncan aide said Monday.
That list has now come under the scrutiny of both federal officials and the schools inspector general as part of a probe of whether clout played a role in admissions to Chicago’s elite schools, sources said.
* Duncan’s staff kept list of politicians’ school requests
The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan’s tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley’s office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
* CPS board to review school food service
* Daley to Chicago Teachers Union: Only shared sacrifice can avert drastic budget cuts
Daley was asked whether the threat to raise class size to 37 students might prompt him to sign off on another school property tax hike on the heels of last year’s $43 million increase.
“You can’t raise real estate taxes. People can’t even pay ‘em today. That’s the difficulty. I’m just telling you,” the mayor said during a news conference at Mozart Park fieldhouse, 2036 N. Avers, called to make yet another push for property tax relief.
* Mayor Daley considers extending deadline to apply for property tax relief
The Chicago Tax Assistance Center has received just 20,000 applications — and only after a surge prompted by a TV news report last week about the lack of interest. To date, 5,000 of those homeowners have received debit cards totaling $600,000.
* Learning from the NIU tragedy
* Strike up the bandwidth; Google parade marches through Peoria
Woodruff High School cheerleaders traded their pompoms for special signs Monday, cheering not for the school’s team, but for Google.
Each of the six cheerleaders held a sign with a letter spelling out Google. At the Google parade, Mayor Jim Ardis, members of the City Council and County Board and about 50 people marched to music from Woodruff’s pep band in another push to attract Google to Peoria.
* Pekin council approves 2011 city budget
* City won’t publicize fire station closings, but union does
* Woodland School raises $12,000 for Haiti relief
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:03 am
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Many farmers and land speculators will make a nice profit twice, maybe 3 times, on the same piece of land, if they wait out the market. It’s all about location and timing.
Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:17 am
Did anyone else notice it took six Tribune reporters to get the school enrollment log story — which was a huge yawner — into the paper?
And they wonder why they are broke.
Comment by CircularFiringSquad Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:24 am
Duncan is going to have to move onto something else. The last thing this Administration needed was another Chicago moment. The knives are out and he will have to move on.
I recommend moving him ASAP to another role within the Administration.
Comment by VanillaMan Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:24 am
Thank you for including the farmers reclaiming their land story from Crains. That is sweeeet on so many levels.
Also, as I read about the students who may be
“threatened” with class sizes of 37 students I am obligated to remind people that in the 1950’s and early 1960’s schools which were educating the post war baby boom often had class sizes of up to 40 students per classroom. Sure, it’s probably too many, and sure I’m talking about a different generation of more motivated students and a different generation of non-union teachers, but still.
Comment by Responsa Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:47 am
The Chicago Public Schools story fits with your other piece on ethics. It’s the people calling for special favors who should be castigated. The paper wants to blame the School officials because people called them for special treatment. It sure reads to me that Duncan set it up to manage these callers in a way to keep the pressure off the principals. If Duncan had done nothing and let it all go to the individual principals, the paper would be complaining too.
Comment by Redbright Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 9:52 am
The google parade reminds me of Mattoon’s Bagelfest. I don’t know how many people remember that Bagelfest started as a way to attract Kraft and its Lender’s Bagels factory to Mattoon. I’m a member of the Tribe from Mattoon, and let me tell ya, we don’t have Bagelfest because of a heavy Jewish presence.
Comment by cermak_rd Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 11:15 am
Excellent job, Mother Trib, on another “there’s no there there” story. Elected officials called at the request of their constituents to ask if they could get into a certain school. Often their requests were rejected because of low scores and full schools. Non-connected parents also appear on the log for too having asked for consideration. In other scandalous news, a man tried to have a speeding ticket wiped from his record by requesting court supervision. Yawn.
Comment by Boggles the Mind Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 12:11 pm
Good roadway engineering designs include a factor for ‘driver expectations’, it’s when you look beyond the numbers and design something the driver expects. A 3 second yellow is NOT what a suburban driver expects - so please do not use the excuse of sound engineering for your revenue program. If you want to keep your cameras and your 3 sec yellow then instal advanced warning lights far enough in advance to let drivers know when the lights are changing, it would actually be the safe thing to do, if that’s what you care about.
Comment by highwayman Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 12:49 pm
=== A 3 second yellow is NOT what a suburban driver expects ===
But any suburban driver who’s been to Chicago knows that the yellows are quicker in Chicago. And have been for 50 years. So, spare me.
Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 12:53 pm
“Strike Up the Bandwidth” one of history’s great headlines!
Comment by rdb Tuesday, Mar 23, 10 @ 4:51 pm