Well, it’s back to reality this Monday. WTTW News hopes you had a nice holiday weekend. We have you covered with stories ranging from the city budget to museum exhibits.
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Mayor Brandon Johnson delivers his budget address on Oct. 30, 2024. (WTTW News)
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The first sign that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposal to spend $17.3 billion in 2025 was dead on arrival came just minutes after he finished telling the Chicago City Council the only way to balance the city’s budget was to hike property taxes by $300 million.
Despite being one of Johnson’s closest allies, Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward) wasted no time telling reporters that he would not even consider voting for the largest property tax hike since 2016. The fact that Sigcho Lopez, Johnson’s hand-picked Housing Committee chair who has voted in lockstep with him, dismissed the budget proposal out of hand sent shockwaves through the City Council, frustrating the mayor’s allies while emboldening his critics.
As City Council members return to City Hall on Monday to wrap up budget hearings after a weeklong Thanksgiving break, there is no clear path to a deal with just 29 days left before the deadline to avoid an unprecedented shutdown of city government.
Some backstory:
Chicago officials have known since the end of August that budget negotiations were going to be fraught, given that the city’s 2025 budget would have to bridge a $982.4 million gap and fill a $222.9 million deficit in the current year’s budget.
For progressive alderpeople, Johnson's spending plan failed to make good on their shared promise with the mayor to invest in working-class Chicagoans by strengthening the city’s social safety net.
For more conservative alderpeople, the lack of any cuts in the budget plan made it impossible for them to reassure residents the city was hiking taxes as a last resort.
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Fonts displayed in the “Letters Beyond Form: Chicago Types” exhibit at the Design Museum of Chicago.
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You might think: “Design Museum? What Design Museum?” Here’s the scoop: It’s free, it’s walking distance from Millennium Park, and it currently has a show about different types in Chicago. By types, we mean letter forms — the shapes and styles of typography.
“Letters Beyond Form: Chicago Types” is a modestly scaled but ambitious exhibition currently occupying the Design Museum of Chicago on Randolph Street across from the Chicago Cultural Center. “The museum mission is frankly that design is everywhere,” curator Amira Hegazy told WTTW News. “Everyone in one way or another is designing and interacts with and around design. If you organize your closet and fold things in a certain way, that’s design.”
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This Week's Public Meetings and Civic Events
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Every Monday, WTTW News highlights the public meetings and civic events you should know about.
Chicago City Council
It's budget time at Chicago City Council, which means a series of hearings will be held for city departments all week. Find the schedule here.
City Club
Mayor Brandon Johnson will appear at a City Club of Chicago event on Tuesday at noon.
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Back in the Day: December 2, 1942 - Nuclear Fission Achieved at University of Chicago
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In 1942, the Manhattan Project was in full swing, building the atomic bomb that would end World War II. Before they could construct it, they needed to know how nuclear fission works by creating a chain reaction—the first-ever man-made fission. On this day 82 years ago, a group of 49 scientists led by Enrico Fermi gathered in a squash court under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago and achieved this sustained nuclear reaction. Their nuclear reactor, which was nicknamed "Chicago Pile-1" and was designed to split atoms, was a 20-foot-tall structure built of graphite blocks studded with several smaller blocks of uranium. In the early evening after 28 minutes of
testing, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved. The mayor and other elected officials weren't notified but the discovery ushered in the age of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
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Where is your favorite place in the Chicago area to go holiday shopping? Tell us why.
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published.
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- Digging into the latest news on Chicago's budget negotiations.
- What happens now with the Chicago Bears?
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5:30 PM|10:00 PM
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry
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