The Abingdon-Avon CUSD #276 will begin enforcing a mask mandate for staff and students on Monday, Sept. 13.

The school board voted 6-1 Wednesday night to require masks, in compliance with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s PreK-12 mask mandate.

Thirty years ago, September 1991, Illinois’ first riverboat gambling facility, the Alton Belle Casino, opened in Alton, thus launching a statewide gaming industry that evolved into storefront and social club video terminals, online gaming and sports betting. Taken together, the enterprises have forever changed the tax structure that the state and host communities now depend upon. The IBJ caught up with the original sponsor of the legislation, retired former state Sen. Denny Jacobs, 83, a Democrat from East Moline, for a lookback on the significance of the birth and growth of legal gambling in Illinois.

Kids have returned to school, football is back and pumpkin spice has once again taken a hold on the coffee and dessert industries. But that also means the sun will disappear sooner.

On Nov. 7 at 2 a.m. clocks will be turned back an hour and daylight saving time will come to an end in 2021. We will have to say farewell to the sun an hour earlier every night and hello to the chilly days of winter.

Agreeing with the governor’s changes to an ethics bill could come up with the Illinois House returning to Springfield on Thursday.

Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, called the House back to take up changes to the state’s energy policies. The House could also take up an ethics bill the governor amended.

In March 2021, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot awarded a $600,000 contract to Unqork, a New York-based cloud computing and software company. The expectation was for Unqork to manage the IT behind the Emergency Rental Assistance program, or ERAP, a coronavirus-era initiative that provides up to 15 months of rental and utility assistance to renters and landlords. ERAP was a long time coming: The program was created in the December 2020 federal bipartisan Covid-19 bill, and the money didn’t begin to distribute until May 2021.

City officials were quick to praise Unqork, with Chicago Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara thanking Unqork in June “for its creativity and diligence in creating this customized platform that will allow us to get these funds directly to those who are most in need.”

An Illinois federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit against the city of Chicago over the police department’s stop-and-frisk policies.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrea Wood orally ruled on Aug. 31 that the motion for class-action certification was granted, law firms representing the plaintiffs said in a statement on Tuesday.

Nearly 12 years after Warrenville banned video gambling, the city council has lifted the prohibition.

The Warrenville City Council voted 5-3 on Tuesday to approve an ordinance that allows video gambling by creating terminal licenses and a new liquor license classification with local restrictions.