Stop! Before reading further or doing anything else, I want you to free your calendar for Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005 for the entire evening.
Why? Because it’s that time of the year when our mayor, Richard M. Daley, will come to hear your concerns at Chicago’s annual preliminary budget hearing. As usual, it’s held at Laughlin Falconer Elementary School 3020 N. Lamon Avenue. Register between 6 and 7 p.m. to speak and the hearings start at 7.
Can’t think of anything to talk about? Well how about: property taxes, drug dealing, CTA, Chicago Public Schools, potholes, 9% sales tax, city stickers, people putting illegal apartments in basements and attics, parking tickets, jobs for teens, booting of cars, police response time, hired trucking program, affordable housing, loud car stereos, police cameras, public urination, job training programs, privatizing of city jobs, CHA, stores selling loose cigarettes, storefront churches, garbage, businesses with ties to slavery getting city business, predatory lending, racial profiling, programs for seniors, people running stop signs, stores selling alcohol to underage kids, sexual predators being housed predominately in the black community, traffic lights and why they can’t be timed to allow traffic to flow, bicycle lanes, winter parking restrictions, encouraging businesses to locate in Chicago, Kedzie and Chicago Service Center, speeding of cars on residential streets, redevelopment of the Westside business districts, keeping the old 15th District station on Chicago Avenue as a police substation, police patrols, allowing Chicagoans to again register handguns, missing asphalt, Meigs Field, dead zoo animals, $40 million trucking scandal, white-owned businesses pretending to be minority-owned, city contracts to vend at the airport.
Is 25 bullets the new standard for police shootings?, putting photos of “johns” on the Internet before they’ve been found guilty, why wasn’t the name and photo of the mayor’s guard who sexually assaulted a woman at Sox park out there?, why no black farmers/businesses at Daley Center Farmers’ Market, eminent domain, proposed smoking ordinance, why so few nightclubs in black communities, corner corn carts?”why aren’t they licensed and inspected?, dogs without rabies tags, rats, police shootings, CPS not holding night schools and offering trade school classes at night, city taxes on gasoline, parking tickets on streets for “no parking bus zone” when the bus hasn’t run in almost a decade, outdoor basketball hoops?”why so many at the new Little Village High School and none in our community?, CPS suspension policy?”why are our children always sent to the streets without an alternative?, Identity Theft, prostitution on Cicero Avenue, AIDS, why so many gas stations are now being put into black neighborhoods, mail delivery, movie theaters, CTA bus stops/shelters, domestic violence, child abuse, the old Brach factory, roaming packs of dogs, police cameras, lack of free lakefront parking, Soldier Field renovation, Bungalow Initiative, why can’t we have a paper trail of our votes?, why aren’t littering laws enforced in our neighborhoods?, public drinking, Renaissance 2010, what is the maximum number of people for one house?, Cook County Hospital and that darn pharmacy that takes forever to fill a prescription, Maxwell Street Market, cable TV.
And last but not least, if you have nothing to complain about you can always just tell him what a wonderful job he’s doing.
? E-mail me: westside2day@yahoo.com or better yet tune in on Saturday Aug. 27 from 10:30-11:30 a.m. for my guest appearance on Trick City which will be live and accepting phone calls on CAN-TV channel 19.
