#COVID19 update and a police officer dies of the virus...

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I found this graph in the comments at Capitol Fax on Thursday. It's within a post that contains portions of a IL Dept. of Public Health press release reporting 715 new cases of coronavirus with 16 additional deaths. The totals so far is 7,695 cases and 157 deaths.

12 of those 16 deaths came from Cook County according to the press release.

Further Logan, Macoupin, Mercer, Moultrie, and Piatt are now reporting cases and that makes  61 Illinois counties reporting cases of coronavirus.

The above graph is self-explanatory. Solid lines are cumulative or total cases and deaths from coronavirus the bottom dotted lines are the daily cases and deaths from coronavirus.

I want to give you this somber news from today it was announced that a Chicago Police Officer died from coronavirus. While many of us shelter in place in our homes the first responders police and fire aren't as able to do so. They still have to protect the public and remain the first line of defense in this pandemic. They don't treat the people who have the disease, however, they're the ones who crack down on the gatherings of more than 10 people. They're the ones who help to insure that this dreaded disease won't spread. I appreciate the fact that they're at risk in this pandemic especially.

Condolences to the family of narcotics detective Marco DiFranco.

In addition to the late Det. DiFranco 62 other police officers and 2 civilian police employees have been infected by coronavirus.

A hotel in downtown Chicago, Hotel Essex on Michigan Avenue is offering their rooms to those first responders concerned that they may transmit coronavirus to their families.

Block Club Chi: After City Cuts Funding For Englewood Preschool, Alderman Says He’s Trying To Get It Back #6WardChicago

6th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer is trying to get funding back for an Englewood learning center (preschool). Something that was evidently promised last year by former mayor Rahm Emanuel:

Last year, former mayor Rahm Emanuel praised Little Angels Learning Center, pledging $1.4 million to turn a vacant lot near the Englewood church from which it currently operates into an early learning center.

Emanuel has since left office, and the city just this month sent a letter to center founder Nashone Greer-Adams telling her the funding is being cut.

Chalkbeat Chicago reported this week that Greer-Adams got a letter from the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Lisa Morrison-Butler with the bad news for her center, which operates out of a church at 6701 S. Emerald Ave.

Sawyer says he wants the city to reverse the cuts.

“We’ve been a big supporter of Little Angels. They’ve been doing a phenomenal job with our children in the Englewood community,” said Sawyer, who had worked to get funding for the preschool program.

“A lot of their grant dollars were based on the programming they’d been doing over the years. They were held up as a model of what a preschool should be. How could they do that? It’s unheard of,” said Sawyer. “[Greer-Adams] came to me today in tears. She works so hard.”

“We’re not finished. There’s are going to be more conversations about this.”

NHS Chicago ribbon cutting/grand opening of new south side housing services hub #6WardChicago

I saw this via Nextdoor over the weekend. Sorry to have not been able to advertise this in advance. There were posts from NHS Chicago and Ald. Sawyer on their respective ig pages. The new NHS office is located on the first floor of the Seaway National Bank building on 645 E. 87th Street or actually the office is given an address of 639 E. 87th Street.

The interesting part about the space that NHS now takes up is that for many old timers it used to be the offices for ComEd where customers can pay their electric bill and get a few complimentary light bulbs. It also had been the offices of Seaway National Bank's loan department once ComEd moved out of this space.

Tribune: Starting this fall, free breakfasts, lunches available for all CPS students

I can't believe according to this article, school lunches in elementary school could go for $2.45 on average. When I went to Bennett-Shedd it was .75 and went up to .85 cents. Perhaps the quality of food today is much better.

Regardless CPS has found some money to provide free meals to all students. That's certainly excellent news:

The high number of students living at the poverty level in the district qualified CPS to meet the required threshold for full reimbursement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to CPS officials.

In the past school year, lunch at a typical elementary school  for students who didn’t qualify for assistance cost an average of about $2.45. High schools charges slightly more.

The district expects to serve 72 million meals to students in the coming year, two million more than during the last school year.

“If a student eats that day, the district gets reimbursed,” said Leslie Fowler, executive director of CPS’ nutritional support services. “But if they don’t eat, then CPS doesn’t get reimbursed and there’s no cost associated with that meal. We can’t predict what they do or don’t do, but we hope we can encourage them to participate.”

In the past, the school district’s free and reduced lunch program for financially eligible students was fraught with fraud. Several CPS school officials, including principals and assistant principals, were accused by the district’s Inspector General of providing false income information on applications for the free lunch program.

Sooooo, I don't have children yet, however, as a parent I would have fought tooth & nail not to pay over $2/day to feed my child. They'd get sent to school with a lunch from home at the very least.

Still this development under which this program has been expanded one thing is for certain CPS is dominated by low-income students.

Sun-Times: Chicago crews to start dibs demolition

Photo via Chicago Dibs

 Thankfully over the past few days most of the snow has melted away, but expect the city to remove your "dibs" from the street on Monday. This news probably would've been appreciated earlier in the weekend, but hopefully if you're able to you should probably remove your items from the street tonight!

Dibs isn’t dead in Chicago, but it’s about to take a break after one last weekend.

On Monday, the Department of Streets and Sanitation will begin a job nearly as painstaking as side-street snow removal: carting away the lawn chairs, beat-up couches and discarded toys that have helped Chicagoans stake claim to cherished parking spaces they have cleared of snow.

Chicagoans were urged to spend the weekend removing their space-saving items or risk having city crews do it for them.

The time is right to declare a final weekend of dibs, the controversial but time-honored tradition that City Hall has condoned with a wink and a nod.

In a winter that has featured a relentless barrage of snow and cold and the fifth-highest snow totals in Chicago history, there appears to be a break in the action. There are cold temperatures but no major snowstorms in the forecast until March 2.

That gives Streets and San crews that have been piling up overtime a rare chance to clear the streets so they don’t look quite so tacky.

“As is the case with each winter season, crews remove items from city streets near the end of the winter season,” Streets and Sanitation spokeswoman Molly Poppe said Friday.

“With weather conditions improving and the snow melting, Streets and Sanitation crew will begin to remove the ‘dibs’ debris and other obstructions from the public way, beginning next week.”

Since the cold weather is back...

Since the "polar vortex" weather has returned it's OK to rerun this information. Of course if you want either transport or to know where the nearest warming center is please call 311. Other than that we posted this information before - during the earlier "polar vortex" weather - from State Rep. Elgie Sims:

• Keep Warm Illinois
• A website aimed at identifying warming centers around the state and other information necessary to assist with keeping warm during the cold months of the year.
• Getting Around Illinois
• The website will provide residents and motorists with information regarding the status of our roads.
• ComED energy assistance
• Customers are encouraged to notify ComED as quickly as possible if they experience an outage.
• Customers can text OUT to 26633 to report any outages and receive restoration information, or they can contact ComED by calling 1-800-EDISON-1.

Upcoming shredding events

Coming October 26, 2013, Illinois Service Federal is having a "Shred-O-Rama" at both of their locations in Bronzeville & Chatham. You can visit their Chatham location located at 8700 S. King Drive on Saturday from 10 AM to 1 PM. Please refer to the flyer above for more info.

Also 6th Ward Ald. Roderick Sawyer is organizating a 'Shred-A-Thon" next month, this information was just shared with us earlier this week:

ALDERMAN RODERICK T. SAWYER TO HOST SHRED-A-THON

Sixth Ward Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer will host a Shred-A-Thon on Saturday, November 9 in the parking lot of the 6th Ward Service Office, 8001 S. King Dr. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Alderman Sawyer has dedicated this day for getting rid of your paperwork that is safe for the environment while protecting all your personal information. For more information, call (773) 635-0006.

Also a flyer for this event can also be seen at this link!

South Side man 12th cold-related death

South Side man 12th cold-related death - The SouthtownStar

Sometimes I'm not always timely, but I do often like to show that there are places you can go to get out of the cold. To be sure however I'm not certain what this man's circumstances were:

An elderly man found unresponsive Feb. 4 outside his South Side home died in part because of the cold, marking at least the 12th cold-related death in Cook County this winter.

Fred Battle, 80, of the 7300 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, was found unresponsive outside his home and pronounced dead at 11:52 a.m. Feb. 4 at University of Chicago Hospitals, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said.

Battle died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease, but cold exposure was a secondary cause of his death, according to an autopsy performed Tuesday. His death was ruled an accident.

I'm sure a lot of us could do better jobs on this, but we need to check on our elderly and be sure that they're taking care of during any extreme weather whether we're talking heat or the cold snap we're currently experiencing.

Here's a link to warming and cooling centers around the city.

CTA Tattler: Red Line trains stack up for evening rush due to track problem

Looks like I beat this delay just barely. I arrive at 95th Street not long before this problem with the tracks developed just north of 79th Street. A 30-minute wait for a train and who knows how travel was affected at trains were forced to share a single track north and south. The post notes that at 8PM repairs were still ongoing but who knows if they're finally completed by now. If you know leave a comment here!

Would you like text messages on street sweeping?

I recieve an e-mail advertising Anti-Tow a service where you could recieve text notices on street sweeping. Currently it's only available in the 1st Ward, but who says they have to have all the fun. For example if you there is a page for the 1st Ward with a map of the available street sweeping areas.

You can check out the Anti-Tow website @ http://antitow.com, but you can also check out this post from the Parking Ticket Geek at his blog:

First ward Chicago alderman Proco Joe Moreno may have been in office only four months, but he’s already ahead of his aldermanic colleagues when it comes to technology.

Just a few days ago, Moreno’s office debuted a new text alert system to warn constituents when street cleaning is scheduled for their block, so they can remember to move their cars and avoid tickets.

Residents of the 1st Ward can use their cell phone to sign up for this free service by texting a specific code number that reflects their geographic position on a map. The night before and the morning before street sweepers hit your street, you’ll get a text message reminding you to move your car.

The idea came out of the frustration of the typical complaint of parking tickets for street cleaning that constantly flow into aldermanic ward offices all across the city.

Sounds good doesn't it?

That reminds me there was a comment in a post about a shooting near Harlan in 2009 about e-mail blasts with regards to criminal activities, especially any shooting that may occur in any given area. I hope that enough people will consider that necessary instead of knowing about potentially dangerous situations hours after the fact. Hopefully we can cut that down to minutes or seconds after the fact.

In light of this idea let's return to that idea. And you can request Anti-Tow services for the 6th Ward using this form @ http://antitow.com/antitow-availability/. And let them know that not only you want text messages for sweet sweeping, but for any other major situation that may develop in our neighborhoods.

Health Clinic Opens in Englewood

CPR:

The first federally qualified health clinic is opening its doors in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

The Beloved Community Family Wellness Center had been operating in three rooms at St. Bernard Hospital.

Beloved is moving to a new $2 million clinic on Halsted Street. The number of patients is expected to double to about 10,000.

Margie Johnson is executive director of the center.

JOHNSON: For year the Englewood community has gone without adequate healthcare and the individuals that reside in Englewood are what would be classified as low income.

The majority of patients have no insurance there. The services offered will range from prenatal to senior care. This center is also connected to a church founded by US Rep. Bobby Rush!

New Sales Tax Rollback Plan Coming For Cook County

CBS2:

It's considered a long-shot, but a new push for tax reform in Cook County is set to be presented at a County Board meeting Tuesday.

County Commissioner Tony Peraica (R-16th) is expected to present an ordinance to repeal what's left of the countywide sales tax increase the board approved in 2008.

Commissioners already reduced 0.5 percent of the sales tax, cutting the total tax rate in Chicago from 10.25 percent to 9.75 percent. In doing so, they overrode a veto by County Board President Todd Stroger.

Where's the Neighborhood Stabilization Money?

Gaper's Block Mechanics has a post regarding neigborhood stabilization money. A group of community activists & community groups seek a city council hearing by sending a formal letter to Ald. Ray Suarez, chair of the Chicago City Council's Committee on Housing and Real Estate.

There is a map there I post that here. At the website http://www.chicagonsp.org/home.aspx and there is a post there which shows all the neighborhoods slated to get money. Of those communities Chatham and Englewood are listed.

Justifications include high foreclosure rates and areas where homeowners took subprime loans.

EveryBlock: Notify your neighbors

EveryBlock has announced a new feature that allows users to post neighborhood announcements:

You'll now find a link to "Notify your neighbors" near the top of each place page on our site (example). Click that, and you'll get a simple form that lets you post a message to the neighborhood. Once you've posted it, we'll publish it to each nearby neighborhood, ZIP and block page so other EveryBlock users can see it. It will also go out in our e-mail alerts and RSS feeds for the appropriate geographic areas. (It'll be labeled an "announcement.") Note that you'll need a free EveryBlock account to post.

What might you use this for? It's intentionally open-ended. We've been making the feature available experimentally over the last few weeks, and people have used it for a variety of things: asking the neighborhood a question, reporting lost pets, warning neighbors of nearby crime incidents, renting out garages, pointing out upcoming rezoning projects, selling candy machines, chatting about missing mailboxes, alerting people to some water main flooding and announcing community events. One person in Chicago is using it to post things he hears on the police scanner. A councilmember in San Jose is using it for community outreach.

Use it for classifieds, use it to report local news, use it to ask questions or otherwise pass information to your neighbors...Use it for things we haven't thought of! You can think of it as a 21st century community message board.

(Eventually we might add categorization, so that you'd be able to browse classifieds vs. news reports vs. neighborhood questions, but we wanted to keep it as simple as possible to start.)

I hope we'll see these notifications in the 6th Ward's EveryBlock feed!

 If you take advantage of this, what might you use this for?

Early applications available for Ill. heating help

Pantagraph.com:

Early applications for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will be available beginning Tuesday. Quinn says he encourage eligible residents to apply so "they can stay safe, warm and healthy this winter."

Under the program, heating bill payments are made to utilities on behalf of households. In Illinois, households earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible.

The governor's office says this year the program is expected to spend $150 million to aid 300,000 households this winter. More information is available by calling 1-877-411-WARM.

If you know anyone in need, please pass this information along to them!

South Siders Spend Billions Each Year Outside of Their Neighborhoods

CPR:

South Side of Chicago residents are forced to spend billions of dollars each year outside of their communities. There are few restaurants or retail shops for them to go to in their own neighborhoods. And basic shopping needs such as groceries and household items often go unmet. Public policy, political will and race play into how the South Side is developed. But some communities are looking for ways to overcome those hurdles, and tap into the buying power of South Side residents.

So what about this:

If you want to find out about retail leakage, the place to go is LISC Chicago. It’s a nonprofit that promotes neighborhood growth. What a lot of people don’t know, says LISC Business manager Jake Cowan, is that underserved communities actually have a lot of spending power. Cowan says it may seem surprising, but the fact is a community’s buying power isn’t necessarily related to median income.

COWAN: The concentration of incomes, in specifically middle-income families, is great enough that in almost every Chicago neighborhood there is more buying power than in suburban neighborhoods and including affluent neighborhoods like the Wilmette’s of the world. Your average Chicago neighborhood – because of the dense population – has more money in the pockets of people going to stores.

Retail leakage occurs in lots of communities, even affluent ones. Every neighborhood isn’t going to get—or even want—the shiny new grocery store. And there are some South Side areas with bustling shopping districts such as Pilsen. But for the Washington Park, Roseland, Oakland and Grand Boulevard neighborhoods, the dearth of shopping has a ripple effect: food deserts and overpriced low-quality goods at low-quality stores. Cowan says neighborhoods like these can attract retailers. He’s seen it happen – if they have the right strategy.

COWAN: With regard to graffiti and trash, can they get their sites cleaned up so that when they take that retailer on the tour to show them the opportunity they can picture themselves there. But a community’s determination is sometimes not enough. Other powerful forces are in play.

This quote takes a look at a neighboring area Auburn-Gresham:

MERRIMAN: Public policy plays a big role in sort of determining what areas grow and what areas don’t grow.

David Merriman is a public economics professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

MERRIMAN: Sometimes the criteria is which alderman has the most power or what looks best for the mayor rather than whether or not is in the best interest of citizens.

Merriman points to retail corridors on the North Side that have benefited from city tax financing. Leaders in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood have been deliberate as they try to spur economic development. ambi: Auburn-Gresham Auburn-Gresham is full of brick bungalows, two flats and black working families. Before white flight occurred between 1960 to 1970, there was a variety of businesses and department stores in the area.

Do you agree or disagree with the assessement that I placed in bold? Do aldermen do the mayor's bidding instead of looking at what's best for their own communities?

Read the whole thing! There is more about Auburn and the commercial strip along 79th Street in this CPR article.

Via CapFax morning shorts!

EveryBlock acquired by MSNBC.com

In doing this blog EveryBlock.com was one of my favorite tools. Now who knows where it will take off as MSNBC purchases this startup:

EveryBlock.com, the Chicago-based local-news Web site founded by programmer-journalist Adrian Holovaty, has been acquired by MSNBC.com for an undisclosed sum.

(Note: Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal reports that the price was "several million dollars.")

Under the all-cash deal, which closed last week, EveryBlock will remain headquartered in Chicago, where five of its six employees work. Its Web sites in 15 cities will remain independent, although MSNBC President Charlie Tillinghast says EveryBlock's technology will be used in MSNBC.com's local-news section and will be used to power new features on the nationally focused Web site.

"We see EveryBlock developing some fundamental technology in pursuit of their local mission that has extensions to other things we do," says Mr. Tillinghast.

BTW, once again the Ward 6 feed from EveryBlock.

New area code, more dialing in store for Chicagoans

Another one?

Chicagoans will soon see a third area code added for local phone numbers, meaning everyone will have to dial 11 digits to make a call anywhere in the city.

The Illinois Commerce Commission announced Monday that the city, presently served by area codes 312 and 773, will receive a third area code this fall. The 872 area code will “overlay” the existing codes to supplement the phone number supply, according to a release from the ICC.

The 773 area code officially reached “exhaust” in late July and though individual numbers remain available, there are no more unassigned prefixes available, the release said. The first prefix in the new area code will go into service on Nov 7.

With the 872 area code, current customers will keep their numbers and 312 or 773 area codes. The new area code is being introduced to assure a continuing supply of prefixes and blocks to assign to new and growing telecommunications service providers, the release said. Consumers seeking additional phone lines will, in most cases, be able to receive 312 and 773.

I still have the magnet on my refrigerator from Ameritech when the 773 area code was created.

Map project will give South Siders new view of neighborhoods

Chi-Town:

One morning last week, the block-by-block grunt work of verifying a database of businesses in Kenwood was anything but glamorous for college students Juan Lindstrom, Ruben Ornelas, Lauren Foster and Johana Muriel-Chandler.

But the payoff, a searchable map of every type of business in parts of the South Side, will shed light on what services residents have at their disposal in a way that Google Maps can’t touch.

That’s the idea behind the University of Chicago’s Resource Mapping Project.

“What does the environment look like?” says Colleen Grogan, the co-director of the project. “What’s the economic vitality in the community, what are all the social services provided?”

...

The four students split into pairs and spent 20 minutes recording the business names, hours and types of services: a 24-hour laundromat, three restaurants, a game store, a currency exchange and a dentist.

The slice provided some insight into what the project hopes to accomplish.
...

Much of last week’s survey in Kenwood meant verifying business listings on residential streets, checking buzzers on homes and condominiums to see if business names were listed.

“We do know that a lot of these people do have businesses where they work from home,” says Ornelas, a senior political science major at the University of Chicago.

That’s something the survey team will verify later, because people such as accountants who work from home provide useful services that also need to be included, even if they don’t have a sign hanging out front.

...

The project’s leaders hope to have the Web site up and running for the public to explore by the end of the year. At first it will have data for just six neighborhoods – East Side, Grand Boulevard, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Washington Park and Woodlawn. Eventually, the group wants to survey all 32 South Side neighborhoods. A National Institutes of Health grant for which the project has applied could help pay for that, Grogan says.

Just as important once the site is live, Grogan says, is finding ways to keep the data current, since businesses come and go.

I look forward to a survey of the neighborhoods of the 6th!

What's the worst CTA station and bus route?

Over at the Red Eye. Here's one 6th Ward bus route and two ward CTA L Stops:

CTA bus driver Steve Fuentes writes about the No. 34 South Michigan: "From the 80 or so routes I've driven, I would start by nominating the No. 34 South Michigan. Reasons: Over-crowding, rude customers, buses are left very dirty after serving street, conversations on the bus almost always include much foul language, and frequency of disturbances on bus!"
...
Cathy Reed of Ravenswood writes about the 79th Street Red Line station: "Sometimes, the racial disparity in this city is so obvious by the way the CTA stations are maintained.

This past Saturday, I called RTA Travel Info for directions to go to Harvard Avenue on the South Side. I got off at the 79th Street Red Line stop and tried to find the No. 29 bus, but I could not find it.

I asked a CTA employee in the upstairs booth which way to go to get to Harvard. (There is a bus stop on both sides of the street.) She said that I would have to ask the person in the booth downstairs, that person would have the information and slammed her booth window shut.

And to boot, the 79th Street 'L' station is one of the most raggedy, worst-looking-looking stations in the city. Just take a look at the Damen Brown Line station for a comparison and you will see what I mean."
...
Javarry Rodriguez, 22, of South Shore writes about the 69th Street Red Line station: "I would have to say the 69th Red Line station. That station will make you want to vomit. Wait I almost stepped in vomit twice. Where were the janitors? That's horrible and I shouldn't have to smell or see that coming home from a long day of work."

Do you have any stories to tell about CTA service on our part of town?

Via Uptown Update!