Daily Links for October 23

October 23, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

As a civilization, we may not be getting smarter. However, the technologies we use certainly are. Since the introduction of the smartphone, we’ve witnessed the emergence of smart homes, smart power grids, and even smart football stadiums for helping fans find parking spaces. Lately, the trend has been to go big. Infrastructure applications are ever increasing in size and scope for transmitting, collecting, and processing big data in an effort to better understand and navigate our surroundings.

Examples of scalability with regard to smart technology now include “smart cities” like Chicago. It appears that the third largest city in the United States will become a leading model for collecting and managing big data from sensor nodes and cell phones throughout the area.

That’s 237 square miles and 2.7 million residents participating (knowingly or not) in an experiment expected to yield some impressive enhancements. Examples include:

Landline Mag: Illinois Tollway to spend more on technology, thanks to truck-only toll increases

Truck-only toll increases approved six years ago will add up for the Illinois Tollway Authority, as the agency plans to spend more on electronic signage and state-of-the-art cameras to track missed tolls and collect money from toll violators.

The Illinois Tollway Authority presented its tentative 2015 budget to finance and operations officials on Oct. 15.

“Revenues are projected to increase from $1.02 billion budgeted in 2014 to $1.17 billion in 2015, primarily due to a truck toll rate increase previously approved by the Tollway Board in 2008,” Tollway officials announced.

With this thesis highlighted, Greenbaum, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, has just published a guest editorial that provides in one place a useful example of the distortions, demonizing and inversions of logic used by those who fight against pension reform. To understand why public employees, and their union leadership, remain sincere in their delusions regarding pensions, Greenbaum’s missive may serve as Exhibit A. Because she has joined a chorus that is funded not only by the billions that are spent by public employee unions on political and educational propaganda each year, but also funded by elements of those same Wall Street financial interests they routinely deride.

Let’s examine some of these misleading arguments and tactics, in no particular order:

(1) Identify key reformers, demonize them, then accuse anyone who advocates reform of being their puppets. Greenbaum identifies a lot of “demons,” i.e., opponents, who have been the victims of character assassination for years: John Arnold, a “hedge fund billionaire,” Charles and David Koch, the “conservative billionaire brothers,” and, of course “Wall Street [whose] shenanigans, not sound financial knowledge, posed the real threat to the solvency of these funds.” The fallacy here, notwithstanding the vicious and unfounded attacks that have tainted these individuals, is that whether or not pensions are financially sustainable or equitable to taxpayers has nothing to do with who some of the reformers are. And what about liberal democrats who advocate pension reform, such as San Jose mayor Chuck Reed, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Connecticut treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo, and countless others? Are they all merely puppets? Absurd.

Existing home sales in the Chicago area fell in September from a year ago, its third year-over-year decline, but tighter inventory drove prices higher for the month, according to data from the Illinois Association of Realtors.

In the nine-county Chicago metropolitan area, home sales, including single-family and condominiums, totaled 9,117 homes sold, down 6.4 percent from year-earlier sales of 9,737 homes. However, the median price in September was $195,000, up 5.4 percent from $185,000 in September 2013.

The city of Chicago saw an 8.7 percent year-over-year decrease in home sales last month, with 2,187 sales, down from 2,395 in September 2013. The median price rose 8.7 percent to $250,000 from $230,000 a year ago.

Enrollment at Chicago Public Schools this year dipped below 400,000 students for the first time in at least 20 years.

Student enrollment on the 20th day of school this year continued a decline that began in the early 2000s. The 396,683 students counted on that day represents a reduction of roughly 3,800 students from a year ago, according to district statistics released Tuesday.

Most of the schools that saw the biggest drop, of 15 percent or more, from a year ago were clustered on the city’s South and West sides. Those parts of Chicago have seen population declines for years and were hardest hit by school closings a year ago.

In a blockbuster deal that could change the Chicago journalism landscape, the parent company of the Sun-Times plans to sell all of its suburban daily and weekly newspapers toTribune Publishing, sources said.

Once the sale is completed, Wrapports LLC would continue to publish only the Sun-Times daily tabloid and the Reader free weekly, according to insiders. Tribune Publishing, parent company of the Chicago Tribune and nine other newspapers nationwide, would acquire the Aurora Beacon-News, the Elgin Courier-News, the Lake County News-Sun, the Naperville Sun, the Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune, the SouthtownStar, and the 32 weekly newspapers published by the Pioneer Press.

Terms of the deal are not known, but the agreement between Jack Griffin, CEO of Tribune Publishing, and Michael Ferro Jr., chairman of Wrapports, is said to be on a “very aggressive timeline.” No contracts have been signed, but sources said Sun-Times Media personnel are already working to make the necessary system changes by early November.

The Chicago City Council’s watchdog sued Mayor Rahm Emanuel and key aldermen Tuesday, accusing them of hindering his investigative abilities by not properly funding the office.

Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan’s lawsuit is the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter feud between aldermen and the watchdog who has the power to investigate them. Khan long has complained that a lack of funding has hamstrung his office’s ability to look into possible wrongdoing in the City Council, and his lawsuit takes those complaints a step further, into Cook County court.

In the suit, Khan argues that the court should “require the defendants to provide the legal and necessary funds to fulfill the important obligations and responsibilities” of his office. The suit names Emanuel and Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, chair of the council’s Rules Committee; Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, chair of the Budget Committee; and Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, chair of the Finance Committee.

Some hurdles remain, but teachers and school officials in Mundelein Elementary District 75 are hopeful a settlement can be reached as the two sides prepare for another negotiating session.

While there is said to be progress on salaries, teachers contend the earnings of more experienced educators would stay behind those of other districts. School officials dispute the contention the district loses up to 20 percent of its teachers per year who may be looking elsewhere for higher pay.

A session scheduled for Wednesday would be the 15th since negotiations began in January. The contract ended June 30, and a mediator has been overseeing the process since June.

Chicago Public Schools will announce on Wednesday the first sale of the 47 school campuses it shuttered in a massive 2013 closing — selling Peabody Elementary School on the near Northwest Side for about $3.5 million, district officials confirmed Tuesday.

It’s also putting several more shuttered schools on the market, Chief Operating Officer Tom Tyrrell said.

Peabody, a property of two buildings in the 1400 block of West Augusta Boulevard, will be sold to a private developer who plans to split the property with the Northwestern Settlement should the Board of Education approve the sale at its monthly meeting.

Chicago motorists filed 5,179 vehicle damage claims “specific to potholes” this year — an avalanche twice as large as the last four years combined — thanks to the road remnants of a brutal winter that wouldn’t quit, the city clerk disclosed Tuesday.

The cost to Chicago taxpayers won’t be known for years. That’s how long it takes for individual claims to be processed by the City Council’s Finance Committee.

But judging from the $387,928 paid out from Jan. 1 through Oct. 8 to 1,302 motorists whose vehicles were damaged as far back as 2008, the pricetag could be staggering.

Tinley Park severed its 35-year relationship with a local ambulance provider this summer in a move that officials said will save the town money.

But less than two weeks after the contract ended, the village received a final, shocking bill from Trace Ambulance for nearly $500,000.

The money was for fees the company typically waived in the past, Trace President Christopher Vandenberg said.

CARTOON OF THE DAY

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