Google will add a big block of office space next year in the Fulton Market district, indicating that there’s no letup to the company’s growth in Chicago.

The technology giant has leased about 132,000 square feet in a 12-story building that Sterling Bay has under construction at 210 N. Carpenter St., Google and the developer said Wednesday. Google, which has grown to more than 1,000 employees in Chicago, said it plans to begin moving workers into six floors of the building next fall.

As a five-year block on closing schools ends, Chicago Public Schools has agreed to consider other ways to fill schools that are losing enrollment before shutting them down.

The unanimous vote Wednesday by the city’s school board puts the public schools system in line with a new state law aimed at slowing school closures. A record 50 closings enacted in 2013 targeted schools CPS deemed were half empty, mostly in African-American neighborhoods.

Teachers at 19 Chicago charter schools will hold strike authorization votes next week that could open the door to the first-ever work stoppage at any charter school in the nation.

Votes will be cast Oct. 30 by teachers at the city’s 15 schools in the Acero network, the largest unionized charter operator in Chicago Public Schools. Teachers will vote Nov. 2 on a possible strike at four Chicago International Charter School locations: ChicagoQuest North, Northtown, Wrightwood and Ralph Ellison.

For the second time, the owner of the long-vacant former Motorola property has failed to pay property taxes on his 1.52 million-square-foot corporate campus at 2001 N. Division St. in Harvard.

Edward Harvard Holdings LLC, owned by Canadian Chinese business tycoon Xiao Hua Gong, has not paid either installment on the site’s property taxes. The first installment of the bill was due in June, and the second was due in September.

The mayor and trustees on the Libertyville village board will be getting their first raises since 1996, but whether the increases will be incentives for new blood to seek elected office remains to be seen.

Village officials on Tuesday made official an idea that had been percolating since last May, when it was raised by Trustee Jay Justice, 81, a retired corporate executive, and advanced by Mayor Terry Weppler, 67.

Rolling Meadows aldermen have taken the first step toward borrowing $13 million to build two new fire stations.

The city council took a 6-1 first reading vote Tuesday in favor of an ordinance to issue most of that amount — $9.5 million — in general obligation bonds to help pay for new firehouses on Algonquin Road and Hicks Road. A final, second reading vote is scheduled for Nov. 13.

The city may be facing a $6 million deficit in 2019 but, at Tuesday’s meeting, the Peoria City Council voted not to give up any benefits.

At Large City Councilman Sid Ruckriegel had proposed that, with the city facing a budget crunch, council members drop pension and health benefits that are provided to city employees.

It’s the beginning of tax-levy and budget season for the city of Champaign, and financial forecasts for 2019 say recent growth means more tax revenue for the city.

But it still faces long-term structural imbalances because of pension and health-benefit costs, staff say.