Meeting, anyone?

Jon Hale’s “One View” in the Wed. Journal could hardly have been said better. 

What's up with downtown?

Everybody and his brother and sister seems to be on board to discuss and explain Downtown OP (Marion St.) development tonight, 9/13:

Desman Associates [planning consultant, leading the meeting]; Ross, Barney & Jankowski, the architects designing the parking garage; The Lakota Group, which is responsible for area planning and streetscape; and Metro Transportation Group, working on transportation and parking issues.

I could be wrong, but it seems that this was already discussed and on the way to being done when the village board changed hands two years ago.  Are all bets off?  Some?

 

Later, from a well-placed source:

 

Tonight's meeting is an extension of the Crandall-Arambula plan for downtown, which was not specific about downtown proper — Harlem-to-Forest, Lake-to-North Blvd.  Trustees have picked up where they left off a year ago, planning now for the North Blvd. garage and the streeting of Westgate and Marion.  The problem remains what to do with the Colt Building.  Trustees will decide that issue in their 9/21 meeting.

Tangled Web woven

"The business of knitting and crocheting seems headed into a downward cycle," says Tangled Web Fibers owner Elin Thorgren, who's closing up on OP Ave. across from St. Edmund Church, adding, "And you know, there are some things going on in Oak Park, development-wise, that make it untenable to try to ride out the storm."  Of course.  A biggie is coming across the street and down the block that will utterly transform the OP-South Blvd. corner. 

I work, therefore I am

This interview with Al Gini is excellent.  Al makes sense, the writer, Tom Holmes, who covers religion etc., does an excellent job.

Davis tripped by inadequate info?

Congr. Davis repeats to the Wed. Journal that he did not know Tamil (terrorist) Tigers funded his recent trip to Sri Lanka. 

Davis . . . said neither he nor anyone on his staff were aware that any money from a terrorist organization was used to pay for his trip until the story broke in the Chicago Tribune. [He] said he first learned of the charges when a Tribune reporter called his West Side office before the paper's Aug. 24 story. The Tribune followed up with another story four days later on Aug. 28. On Aug. 25, the paper wrote a scathing editorial concerning the trip and politicians, such as Davis, who take "junkets," or trips taken by government officials and paid for with public funds.

 

Davis said the trip was public and that "there was nothing secretive about the trip."

 

He said some of his Sri Lankan constituents urged him to visit the country. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Census shows 44 people in the 7th Congressional District who identify themselves as Sri Lankan or part Sri Lankan.

D97 hurt by other taxers?

Here's someone who may be viewing a TIF as hurting the schools.  Compare with my most recent column in which I pick up briefly on Trustee Milstein's cooperation model as calling first of all for giving TIF $ back to schools.  This 9/12 opinion piece, by Joel Ostrow, does not quite say that, however.  In fact, it's mainly a (cogent) defense of Dist. 97 as responsible spender, except for teacher contracts, a big "except," and argument for its deserving an ok on its coming referendum -- which could not come at a worse time, with all the complaints about higher taxes. 

 

Another view-giver, Rex Burdett, does not agree.  He opposes a Dist. 97 referendum, accusing it of over-spending, nailing the League of Women Voters, whose

proposed solution (greater state funding of education) fails to quantify inevitable massive individual state income tax and, worse, ignores the root cause of the current dilemma-namely out-of-control local school expenditures due to salary increases far in excess of inflation and staffing increases disproportional to enrollment trends.

It's certainly true that schools-supporters have a mantra here, which he attacks, namely that it's the state's fault.  Maybe so, but this alternative view is in order.

Library speaker 9/9/06 part of big Muslim doings

OP’s Committee for Just Peace in Palestine speaker asked if Zionism is racism, compared Israel-Palestine today to apartheid-era South Africa — "It's much worse,” he said.  He’s Farid Esack, a Muslim theologian and author of Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression; On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today; and An Introduction to the Qur'an.

He had spoken two days earlier at Dominican U. ($10 a head) in a “dialogue series.”  DU says he’s been active in “the Call of Islam,” which as a message is said by the Muslim American Society to include this:

The Muslim regards himself as commanded by God to call all humans to a life of submission to Him, to Islam as a present participial act (42:15). His life goal is that of bringing the whole of humankind to a life in which Islam, the religion of God, with its theology and Shari'a, its ethics and institutions, is the religion of all humans.

He’s currently at Harvard Divinity, having just done a three–year stint at Xavier U., Cincinnati (where this blogger taught briefly in the late 60s).  Coming up at Dominican is a lecture 9/21 on “theological challenges and opportunities of Muslim-Catholic dialogue,” a lecture 10/30 on “Transforming the Self [sic], Transforming Society” an open meeting 11/8 of Chicago-based “Catholic-Muslim Dialogue.”

To Esack’s credit, he does not turn up in search of the Anti-CAIR or Front Page web sites, each of which has sensitive antennae when it comes to Islamism.  He does turn up in an Amazon-posted rave review of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, by Omid Safi, to which he contributed “an essay that takes the document ‘Progressive Islam - A Definition and Declaration’ as its point of departure.” In the essay he

is very critical of the views expressed by many liberal Muslims, whom he accuses of suffering from the same myopia as their fundamentalist adversaries: presenting themselves as 'authentic' interpreters of Islam and canonizing certain statements in the sacred scriptures without regard for the context. He is equally dismayed by liberal Muslims' failure to challenge that other form of fundamentalism: that US interests represent the axis around which the earth rotates. [Italics added]

Uh-oh.

TIF defended

No need for “timeout” on Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as Cook County Commissioner Quigley called for, says mayors’ group.

Oak Park's Kelo Problem, Part 2

From Death and Taxes - Monday August 28, 2006

Last week I talked about Oak Park's Kelo problem. You may say to yourself, "I understand that Oak Park likes to restrict the ability of owners of real estate to use their property, but so what?" To my mind, ... (read more)