Division Street

Ben and Mick at Clout City take a closer look at the strangest and most surprising votes cast on Wednesday in the Children’s Museum debacle.

Perhaps most surprising was Bob Fioretti, who, as the Chicago Journal reports, had at some point even advised Brendan Reilly on the issue.

And a constituent at Clout Street says that Fioretti’s office told him he was a No vote a mere two days before the meeting.

Fioretti’s explanation that the most recent draft of the museum’s design won him over sounds pretty thin, especially given his ridiculous assertion that aldermen weren’t lobbied by the administration. In fact, several aldermen have anonymously confirmed to the Tribune and the Reader that a whole lot of shakin’ was going on.

Fioretti has been an independent force in his rookie season as an aldermen, but he appears to have trod that well-worn path to the Dark Side.

Other surprises: Ricardo Munoz and Toni Foulkes supporting the mayor; Leslie Hairston not. And Helen Shiller isn’t even a shadow of her former self; she’s a shadow of her shadow.

Anyway, go read Mick and Ben’s piece.

P.S. I saw Billy Ocasio with one of those cheat sheets during an appearance on Chicago Tonight about the Olympics; he tried to argue that Millennium Park came in on-time and on-budget. Our mayor can control time and space!

Former CTA chief Frank Kruesi is being fitted for the jacket for the absolute disaster that is the CTA Superstation - and maybe he’ll even do his boss a favor and wear it. But how does Rich Daley escape from responsibility for once again bungling a big project? Paging the IOC!

“With the new expenditures, the project - originally budgeted at $213 million - will have consumed about $320 million,” writes Ben Joravsky at Clout City.

“I remember when the City Council passed the funding for this project back in 2005. A few aldermen told me they voted for it because they had no choice - it was one of the mayor’s pet projects. Keep in mind, the Olympics is another one of Mayor Daley’s pet projects - which everyone, including Barack Obama - feels compelled to endorse.”

(As if he ever opposed a Daley project. Can anyone name one?)

“Let’s hope the IOC gives the games to Rio,” Joravsky writes. “It will be a miracle if this bunch gets through the games without driving us bankrupt.”

Of course, the Children’s Museum is another pet project destined to go the way of the Superstation, Soldier Field, the expensively screwed-up expansion project at O’Hare, the five-years-behind-schedule CHA “transformation,” the massively overrun 911 center and on and on . . . including Millennium Park, whose mesmerizing Bean seems to have put a spell on everyone who thinks it’s the model of urban planning. And all that is just for starters. (The city is TIF’d to the hilt; consult Joravsky for the skinny on that scheme.)

Is it too pat to say the emperor of city management has no clothes? I mean, I haven’t even mentioned torture, Meigs Field, Robert Sorich, the criminal response to the 1995 heat wave, the police department, or Daley’s Friends & Family Program, which conveniently slips the minds of all those Todd Stroger bashers.

Paging Mike Madigan! I think we’ve got a bill of particulars for impeachment must stronger than the stew of incompetence and corruption emanating from the governor’s office.

Let’s take a closer look at the Superstation, just to get a whiff.

(more…)

* “Naively, perhaps, I’ve always thought of our cultural institutions as the custodians of Chicago’s better nature,” Lynn Becker writes upon discovering even more deceit in the museum’s PR campaign. “I would never have imagined that such an institution - and for the moment let’s be kind and include the CCM among them - would conduct a public campaign built out of deliberate deception, withholding of information, race-baiting, gutter politics, and an almost pathological proclivity for telling lie after lie.”

* “Now that the ever-compliant Chicago City Council has voted 33-16 to approve the Chicago Children’s Museum Grant Park land grab, the real battle can begin: In the courts, where there are no aldermen who cower in fear of crossing Mayor Richard M. Daley, the plan’s most powerful supporter,” writes Blair Kamin at The Skyline.

* “This is a rehab project for an existing building,” Pete Scales, a spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development, tells Bloomberg. “That’s something that gets lost in the debate.”

That’s because it’s not true.

* I’ve got more on Mayor Hee-Haw and his farmhands over at the Beachwood.

The Tribune has it here.

See how Ben and Mick did!

Just released by Save Grant Park:

Fight over Children’s Museum Far from Over
City Council vote only Round One in a 15 Round Fight

CHICAGO - While expressing disappointment over the City Council’s decision to provide over $539 million in taxpayer subsidies for a children’s museum in Grant Park, opponent’s of the move say the fight is far from over. In addition to the current lawsuit against the city and several more that are planned, Save Grant Park says they will continue grassroots efforts to block construction of the Children’s Museum at Allstate Place.

(more…)

The vote was 33-16, according to the Tribune’s Dan Mihalopoulos.

Earlier, Mihalopoulous reported that “Yet another major local institution says its position on the Chicago Children’s Museum plan for Grant Park was misrepresented in newspaper ads where the museum listed what it said were supporters.”

Tell me again, Berny Stone, which side lied their way through this debate?

“The Art Institute was listed in the ad in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, but Art Institute spokeswoman Eric Hogan told the Tribune Wednesday that director Jim Cuno’s letter to the Children’s Museum was meant “as a personal letter of support” that does not reflect the Art Institute’s position.”

On to the courts . . .

*

BREAKING! Reader John Kuczaj reads my mind:

“CTA airport express plan crippled.”

” . . . Huberman asked the CTA board Wednesday to approve $45.6 million in additional spending to finish construction of the shells for the station and subway tunnel . . . ”

QUICK! Someone get Jennifer Farrington on the phone! We’ve found the ideal site for the Children’s Museum: at the center of the city, near public transportation and underground.

Richard M. Daley’s Zoning Committee predictably followed Richard M. Daley’s Plan Commission in voting to support Richard M. Daley’s Children’s Museum’s proposed move to Richard M. Daley’s Grant Park, in a prelude to Richard M. Daley’s City Council giving full approval next Wednesday, which from now on will be referred to as Richard M. Daley’s Wednesday, according to a new ordinance issued from the office of Richard M. Daley.

Voting in favor of the museum’s move:

* Ed Burke (D-Daley), who must always live with the fact that he’ll never be anything more than Richard M. Daley’s Finance Commitee Chairman.

* Margaret Laurino (D-Daley), a legacy.

* Berny Stone (D-Daley), who also served the real Daley, became a Republican for a time, ran for mayor twice, and opposed his son’s run for alderman against primo hack Ted Matlak.

* Ray Suarez (D-Daley), who came up through Streets and San and who unfortunately isn’t the same guy as that NPR dude.

* Latasha Thomas (D-Daley), a Terry Peterson (D-Daley) protege.

And, natch . . .

* Bill Banks (D-Daley), patriarch of the First Family of Chicago Zoning with a killer ride.

(more…)

Another disingenuous ad from the Children’s Museum appeared in the Sun-Times today. The top photo, of course, isn’t Daley Bicentennial Plaza. It’s the fieldhouse on the plaza. The bottom photo pulls the virtual camera back to an aerial view of . . . some weird concoction of walkways that apparently constitutes a new fieldhouse on top of a a new underground museum.

*

Of course, from the museum’s viewpoint, “what it could be” constitutes this and this site only.

One of my Beachwood readers points out the historic nature of the Pfleger Flap.

“Pfleger, a longtime friend of Wright’s and Obama’s, could not be reached for comment.”

*

To pick up on what a Division Street commenter points out, I wonder if there is video of Pfleger excoriating Children’s Museum opponents from the pulpit; he’s already called their position “morally indefensible” and stood by Mayor Daley’s ridiculous assertions of racism.

*

What’s unfortunate is that I happen to think Pfleger has nothing but the best of intentions. But zealousness and a trigger-happy mouth that overwhelm facts and reasoned discourse are not virtues no matter what the cause; they are the exact traits decried in others who also think their causes are righteous. True leaders maintain minds open to honest inquiry and evaluation with an allegiance to truth, rather than allowing themselves to be absorbed into insular environments and their choir books.

Including:

* I think everyone’s missing the point about Mayor Richard M. Daley speaking at Northwestern’s commencement. Does NU president Henry Bienen believe that Daley is a good role model for ethical public service?

* Tony Rezko’s Las Vegas gambling debts.

* Children’s Museum parody songs.

Over at today’s Beachwood Reporter.

Please visit, and then return here for more political blogging throughout the weekend, after I duck out for some coffee that sadly won’t be from Dunkin’ Donuts.