Even after watching Hurricane Irma wreak havoc on Florida, Rik Mallin is sticking to his plan.

Mallin is fixing up his Villa Park home so that he can sell it, move to the Florida Panhandle and escape Illinois’ rising taxes.

Some Rolling Meadows residents are expressing frustration over a proposed 4.8 percent city property tax levy increase to fund police and fire pensions, local roads and the city’s general fund.

If the tax hike is approved by aldermen in November, it would mark the second year the city’s property tax levy has gone up 4.8 percent.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on Friday vetoed a bill that would prevent local governments from setting up their own “right-to-work” zones.

Democrats sent Rauner the bill to try to combat an ongoing legal battle that the governor hopes will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure he rejected asserts that only the General Assembly can make laws creating right-to-work policies, in which people can work for a company in union-protected positions without having to join the union or pay union fees.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised an “all hands on deck approach” to recruiting Amazon. He got it. More than 600 local leaders joined Emanuel’s committee to persuade the Seattle-based digital retailer to locate its planned second headquarters in Chicago.

Who’s all-in to woo Amazon HQ2? Name a Chicago-area bigwig and he or she is probably on the list: CEOs, law firm partners, college presidents, pastors, other movers-shakers. It’s impressive. The co-chairs are Oscar Munoz of United Airlines, former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Jim Reynolds of Loop Capital and Miles White of Abbott. We hope every committee member finds a way to talk up Chicago to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his team.

There are only three weeks to go for cities vying for Amazon’s second headquarters to put forward their proposals.

More than 100 locations have expressed their intentions of landing the online juggernaut, which would create about 50,000 jobs, but the official Request for Proposals instructs municipalities to work together and submit one proposal for their entire metropolitan statistical area, which, for the St. Louis region, consists of counties from Missouri and Illinois.

In the final year of a school closing moratorium, Chicago Public Schools officials announced Friday they may shutter or consolidate schools at the request of parents, principals or “community members.”

In school action draft guidelines that had to be published by Oct. 1 under state law, district leaders said they also might phase schools out, move school attendance borders or locate two separate schools in a single building in the rapidly shrinking district. None of the guidelines differed greatly from last year’s; feedback will be collected only for 21 days via a dedicated email address: CEOGuidelines@cps.edu.

A multiyear renovation of a once-shuttered Rosemont hotel complex near the Allstate Arena could enter its next phase soon, with the promise of tax increment financing dollars.

Owners of the 200-room Hyatt Place Chicago/O’Hare Airport, which opened in June 2016 at 6810 N. Mannheim Road, and a rear four-story hotel building still to be converted into a La Quinta Inns & Suites will get up to $7 million in TIF dollars, under a redevelopment agreement approved by the village board this month.

Palatine Township Elementary District 15 and an employee union have different perceptions of how contract talks are going for support workers.

About 435 workers, whose collectively bargained contract expired June 30, are represented by the Educational Support Personnel Association. Another negotiation session Thursday night with a federal mediator concluded without a tentative deal. Salary and benefits have been sticking points in the negotiations for secretaries, nurses, program assistants and other support workers.

Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana had a different message today for 64 reserve deputies who had received pink slips earlier this month because of expected budget cuts.

“It’s business as usual until they hear otherwise,” Caruana said today. “Come to work until I further advise you not to.”

The leader of a metro-east development authority is “very disappointed” the state has refused to help finance a $12 million plan to transform the former Hotel Belleville/Meredith Memorial Home building into senior apartments and retail space on the Public Square in downtown Belleville.

To clear the way for the project, dubbed the Lofts on the Square, the Southwestern Illinois Development Authority, or SWIDA, asked the state for $9 million in financing: $8 million in low-income housing tax credits and a $1 million loan.

But the Illinois Housing Development Authority declined SWIDA’s application.