Tinley Park sues ex-planner in downtown dispute

This is a horrible thing for the planner and the Village. Sure to worry any professional planner.

Tinley Park sues ex-planner in downtown dispute

Mike Nolan Daily Southtown

Tinley Park is blaming its former planning director for getting the village into a costly legal dispute involving now-abandoned plans to build The Reserve apartments in the village.

Saying in federal court papers that she "acted dishonestly" and was an "unfaithful, disloyal employee," the village claims Amy Connolly also "schemed" to alter development rules covering construction in and around Tinley Park's downtown business district, ultimately embroiling the village in two lawsuits concerning the apartment project, one of which was recently resolved.

Tinley Park's federal lawsuit, filed Monday and claiming Connolly breached her fiduciary duties as a village employee, seeks damages in excess of $75,000.

Her attorney, Patrick Walsh said Wednesday that "all of the allegations of misconduct (by Connolly) are false."

Tinley Park officials recently approved a settlement of the lawsuit brought by The Reserve's developer, Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, under which the Ohio nonprofit won't pursue plans for the 47-unit building.

Per the terms of the $2.45 million settlement, Tinley Park paid Buckeye $75,392 from the village's general fund, with another $684,608 coming from a legal settlement fund held on the village's behalf by its insurer, the Intergovernmental Risk Management Association. IRMA also paid another $1.69 million out of its own fund toward the settlement.

The U.S. Department of Justice last November sued the village over the project, alleging violations of federal fair housing laws. Attorneys for Tinley Park have asked that the lawsuit be dismissed.

Connolly was suspended from her job, which she'd held since the fall of 2007, about two weeks after the Tinley Park Plan Commission tabled a vote on The Reserve. She had played a key role in reviewing plans for the project and had determined it complied with village development rules in place at the time.

Connolly resigned in May of last year to take the job of city development director in Racine, Wis.

This past January, Connolly filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alleging her suspension by Tinley Park violated federal fair housing laws.

The village contended that the building was, per Tinley Park's Legacy Code, required to have street-level commercial space, while Buckeye maintained that its apartment development had been in compliance with village codes at the time the Plan Commission considered the project.

An amendment to the Legacy Code changed street-level commercial required to street-level commercial permitted — a change since rescinded by the village board — which made it possible for The Reserve to be in compliance with development rules.

Click to read the full article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/news/ct-sta-tinley-park-lawsuit-st-0504-20170503-story.html

https://patch.com/illinois/tinleypark/officials-respond-residents-concerns-affordable-housing-slotted-tinley-park

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/news/ct-sta-tinley-buckeye-lawsuit-st-0915-20160914-story.html

I hesitate to put this source in the blog post because of their obvious bias and florid prose but they provide a lot of background detail.
http://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2017/05/village-of-tinley-park-sues-erstwhile-planning-director-amy-connolly-in-federal-court-for-her-role-in-buckeye-scheme/

Zillow's Market Info By Zip Code

The map above shows Zillow's info on my Zip code in Sarasota, Florida. Change the Zip code to yours to see your info.

https://www.zillow.com//sarasota-fl-34243/home-values/?utm_01source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=emo-marketreport-see-full-report

Congress had to pass the bill so people could see what is in it

Source:
http://www.cbpp.org/

Congress had to pass the bill so people could see what is in it.

We need to fix Obamacare, but this Bill does not do that.

It is a big tax cut for the rich masquerading as health care reform.

Warren Buffett says it is a tax cut for the rich

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/07/buffett-says-ahca-is-tax-cut-for-rich.html

Forbes says it hurts everyone.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2017/05/05/how-gops-healthcare-bill-hurts-everyone/#6d8c33145cf2

It points out the value in having two houses of Congress. Hopefully the adult part of the Legislature can unscrew this mess.

President Obama's Library

One Big Problem With Obama's Presidential Library

Carving out space in Olmsted-designed Jackson Park for Obama’s presidential library misses an opportunity—and sets a bad precedent.

Former President Barack Obama unveils details of his Presidential Center at the South Shore Cultural Center on May 3. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)

Grammed and rested, former President Barack Obama returned to work this week after a long vacation with First Lady Michelle. His first order of business, before his deep dive into the Democratic Party’s systemic gerrymandering disadvantage, was to introduce his presidential library and center, which is bound for Chicago’s South Side.
.

The Obama Presidential Center, which the president unveiled at a talk on Wednesday in Chicago, comprises a campus designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Based on the preliminary sketches and an architectural model, the vision for the center is modern but unfussy, featuring a vertical lantern-shaped museum and a low-slung library and forum building with landscaped rooftop gardens.

The design is in keeping with the architects’ work: formal and restrained, with a focus on materials and contrasting vertical and horizontal elements. Inasmuch as design can stand in as a metaphor for politics, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have Obama’s famously cool temperament down. The former First Family picked TWBTA over a group of finalists that number among the top design firms in the world: SHoP Architects, Snøhetta, Renzo Piano, David Adjaye, and Chicago’s John Ronan Architects.

It’s hard to find any objections with the design so far. But the same can’t be said for the site placement: As I wrote back in 2015, it has a critical flaw, one that sets a bad precedent for park use everywhere. Chicagoans may not miss the sports fields on the park’s perimeter that the presidential library will replace. However, there’s a risk here of missing the trees for the forest. Chicago is slowly giving away an historic park when the city and its partners should be creating new civic spaces where there’s opportunity.

Click to read the story:

https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/05/one-big-problem-with-obamas-presidential-library/525447/

Most Ordinary Americans in 2016 Are Richer Than Was John D. Rockefeller in 1916

by DON BOUDREAUX on FEBRUARY 20, 2016

in GROWTH, HISTORY, STANDARD OF LIVING

This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. (HT Warren Smith) By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later – in 1924 – the 16-year-old son of a sitting U.S. president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)

So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you would demand in exchange for your going back to live even as John D. Rockefeller lived in 1916? 21.7 million 2016 dollars (which are about one million 1916 dollars)? Would that do it?

What about a billion 2016 – or 1916 – dollars? Would this sizable sum of dollars be enough to enable you to purchase a quantity of high-quality 1916 goods and services that would at least make you indifferent between living in 1916 America and living (on your current income) in 2016 America?

Think about it. Hard. Carefully.

If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you travelled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.

And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit – as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent – were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.

To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.

Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.

Click to read the rest of the story:

http://cafehayek.com/2016/02/40405.html

Fixing the New Urban Crisis

Good article by Richard Florida

Fixing the New Urban Crisis

Cities are at the heart of the inequality that divides the nation. They’re also the key to the solution.

Editor’s Note: This is the last of our series of excerpts from Richard Florida’s new book, “The New Urban Crisis.”

When was the last time you heard a national politician talk thoughtfully about cities and urban policy or make them an integral part of his or her agenda?

Former president Barack Obama grew up in cities and clearly cares deeply about them, but even his administration failed to make any substantial moves on urban policy. The 2016 Democratic primary featured two former mayors, Bernie Sanders of Burlington, Vermont, and Martin O’Malley of Baltimore; a third, former Richmond mayor Tim Kaine, eventually joined the Democratic ticket as Hillary Clinton’s running mate. Aside from O’Malley’s invocations of urban policy (which I helped craft), cities and urban policy were rarely, if ever, mentioned during the 2016 primaries or presidential campaign.

The last time we had a serious national conversation about cities was back in the 1960s and 1970s, during the old urban crisis, when some cities exploded in riots and others teetered on fiscal collapse. Typically, if Donald Trump and other leading conservative politicians talk about cities, it is only to point to so-called liberal failures to solve chronic urban poverty and crime. The closest we get to a conversation about actual urban policy today is when politicians call for greater investments in urban infrastructure as a way to stimulate growth.

The disconnect between the vital economic role of cities and our policymakers’ neglect of them could not be more palpable or troubling. Our ability to innovate and grow the economy depends on the clustering of talent, companies, and other economic assets in cities. Metro areas are our premier platforms for technological innovation and wealth creation, as well as for social progress and the fostering of open-mindedness and political freedom. They are our best laboratories for devising and testing new strategies for creating high-paying jobs and raising living standards.

Click to read the full article:

https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/05/fixing-the-new-urban-crisis/521043/?utm_source=nl__link3_050517

Among My Souvenirs

Congressman Sam Johnson and Dr. Kay Tracy

I am attaching a copy of my "bracelet speech". I belonged to an organization in DC called Capitol Speakers. Women in the public eye, such as ambassadors' wives, as well as TV personalities, etc., joined to take a speech course and then practice speaking at monthly meetings. I wrote this little talk to give to that group. Sam Johnson, Congressman, from Texas, was supposed to attend for the presentation but that was the day when the Capitol was evacuated because of an anthrax (?) scare, so he didn't make it. Subsequently, I, along with George and some friends, went to his office and had the presentation there.

Sam Johnson read the little talk into the Congressional Record. As you will gather, I had his bracelet. I am attaching a picture as well. Sam has a bad arm, suffered as a result of torture while imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton, where he was John McCain's roommate.

I still find the whole thing moving. By the way, a nun had John McCain's bracelet.

Dr. Kay Blythe Tracy
_______________________________

[Congressional Record: December 20, 2001 (Extensions)
Page E2347] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr20de01pt2-31]

AMONG MY SOUVENIRS

______

HON. SAM JOHNSON
of Texas
in the House of Representatives
Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article by Kay Blythe Tracy, Ph.D.:

_______________________

Americans now are inspired and united by every musical note of "God Bless America.'' But back in the sixties, we were a nation in discord, singing many different tunes. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote songs of Camelot, while Pete Seeger asked, "Where have all the young men gone?''

The story I'm going to tell you today is about what happened to one of those young men. This story began in the sixties, when POW/MIA bracelets were conceived as a way to remember missing or captive American prisoners of war in Southeast Asia. Traditionally, a POW/MIA bracelet is worn until the man named on the bracelet is accounted for, whether it be 30 days or 35 years.

I bought my bracelet in 1970 for $2.50. It has, "Lt. Col. Samuel Johnson, April 16, 1966'' engraved on it. I wore the bracelet faithfully for many years, but eventually took it off and put it away. But every time I opened my jewelry box, I saw it. And every time I saw it, I was saddened, and I thought of Lt. Col. Johnson, and I said a little prayer.

The bracelet led to my first foray into the wonderful world of e-Bay, the on-line auction service, where I listed it for sale. I thought that anyone who would buy it would treasure it and it would be out of my sight, out of my mind. To my surprise, bidding on the bracelet was brisk.

On the seventh, and final, day of the auction, my husband George asked me if I knew what had happened to Col. Johnson.

"No,'' I replied. "I never wanted to know.'' But George went to the Internet, and returned with information. Of the more than twenty-five hundred POWs, and the three to six thousand MIAs, only 591 men returned. My brother, a Marine Lieutenant, did not.

After spending seven years as a prisoner of war, Sam Johnson did.

I was so happy I cried.

When I contacted Congressman Johnson's office, his aide, McCall Cameron, told me that he and Mrs. Johnson were on vacation with their grandchildren.

Grandchildren! More tears.

Congressman Johnson said he would very much like to have his bracelet. So, I cancelled the e-Bay auction, and today I am returning this souvenir. In the words of Randy Sparks, "A million tomorrows will all pass away, ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.''

And in my own words, I say to Sam, finally,

"Welcome home.''

_______________

To Dr. Tracy, I say, "Thank you. We will never forget. God bless you.''

Congressman Sam Johnson