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The Board of Education Is Where the Money Meets the Kids If you want to know who holds power in Chicago, don’t start at City Hall. Start at 1 North Dearborn, where the Chicago Board of Education meets. That seven-member Continue reading Why Chicago Needs More Reporters Covering the Board of Education
The sign was zip-tied to a chain-link fence at 2415 West North Avenue, half-covered by a flattened Bud Light box someone had stuffed through the links. Eight and a half by eleven inches. Printed on what looked like a library Continue reading The Paper Trail Behind a Zoning Change Nobody Asked For: How Chicago’s Document Machine Creates Accountability Theater
By Toni Marchetti Take a slow ride down 63rd Street west of Pulaski, past the western fence of Midway Airport, and the blocks look fine. Mowed lawns. Flags on the porches. Brick bungalows and two-flats with the siding power-washed. That Continue reading The Disappearing Midway: Why Chicago’s Middle Neighborhoods Matter
The first time I opened the City of Chicago’s FY2025 budget book, I was at a coffee shop on Western Avenue, and the woman at the next table asked if I was reading a novel. The thing runs 642 pages. Continue reading How to Read the Chicago Budget Like a Narrative Document—And Catch What the City Is Hiding in the Footnotes
Community organizations in Chicago are not a supplement to city services. They are often the service. When a block club shovels out a senior’s curb cut, a mutual aid group distributes diapers after a benefits delay, or a neighborhood land Continue reading How Community Organizations Fill the Gaps Left by City Services
The letter arrives at CDOT’s 30th Street yard on a Tuesday in March. 25th Ward letterhead, signed by the alderman, requesting a speed bump on the 3100 block of South Springfield Avenue. One page. Block, improvement, fund code. CDOT logs Continue reading The Aldermanic Menu Money That Never Gets Spent and Where It Goes Instead
CHICAGO — The Chicago Transit Authority is not just a bus and train system. It is the city’s circulatory system. When the CTA runs short on money, the damage does not stay inside station turnstiles or bus garages. It spills Continue reading Why the CTA Funding Gap Affects Every Chicagoan’s Daily Life
The Morning the Bus Didn’t Come It’s 7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday in Austin. You’re standing on the corner of Chicago and Laramie, coffee going cold in your hand, watching the CTA tracker app bounce from “Due” to “Delayed” to Continue reading The CTA’s Money Problem Is Already Wrecking Your Commute
The CTA’s Money Problem Is Already Wrecking Your Commute By Toni Marchetti | Investigative Reporter, answerchicago.org You know the drill. You check the tracker, see a bus is two minutes away, and step out the door. Then you wait. And Continue reading The CTA’s Money Problem Is Already Wrecking Your Commute
The 2023 aldermanic race in the 15th Ward produced 4,712 petition signatures. By the time the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners finished hearing objections, 1,347 of those signatures had been thrown out. The candidate who filed the objection won the Continue reading The Power of Naming in Chicago: From Petition Signatures to Neighborhood Rebranding