Three days of stalled, blocked, and broken on this show — and today somebody's actually sticking a probe in the dirt in Bronzeville. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: the South Side's first elevated bike path, what the elected school board transition actually changes, and a housing piece that picks a fight with how this city builds. Brian, the trail first. Block Club Chicago, with Jamie Nesbitt Golden:
BRONZEVILLE — Plans for the South Side’s first elevated biking trail moved forward Monday as county workers began the first in a series of environmental soil testings for the Bronzeville Trail project. Members of the Bronzeville Trail Task Force — joined by State Rep. Kimberly du Buclet and Bronzeville Community Farm’s Rosalyn “Roz” Owens — were on hand to mark a milestone signaling that work to convert the two-mile abandoned rail into a public park is officially underway.
Something actually got started today. County workers began soil borings at 45th and State for the Bronzeville Trail — two miles of abandoned rail embankment they want to turn into the South Side's first elevated bike path. After three days of watching things get blocked, somebody put a probe in the ground. I'll take it. Let's be precise about what we mean by 'started,' though. Soil testing is Phase 1 — and on a former rail embankment, you run into the dirt first: whatever's been soaking into it for a hundred years. Right, and nobody puts that on a press release: what's actually under a century-old train line? Because contamination findings can stall this thing long before anybody lays a board. State Rep. du Buclet calls the borings 'technical work that represents something bigger' — sure, but the technical work is also where this can quietly die. A hundred million dollars, per Block Club — same ballpark as the 606's Bloomingdale Trail back in 2015. And here's the contrast that sticks with me: this is a big South Side mobility bet on a corridor where the CTA can't hit nine percent of its own bus reliability targets. That's the standard I want to hold it to. You want to build people an elevated park to ride bikes — great, beautiful. Now run a bus on time on the same blocks. Do both. Not one. Chicago Board of Education writes:
We hosted a webinar on June 17 at 6 p.m. to share information around CPS’ upcoming transition to an elected school board. The session also shared more about Board responsibilities, what is required to be a Board Member, and what being a Board Member is like.
So the Board of Education's got a webinar up — June 17, recording posted, slide deck in English and Spanish, a whole Q&A doc. This is the transition to a fully elected board, supposed to be complete by 2027. One webinar. That's the public outreach for handing voters control of a multi-billion-dollar school system. And here's what nags me — there's a superintendent-CEO search running on that same site, right now, while the board's only half-transitioned. So who actually picks the next CEO if the elected board isn't fully seated? Right — three moving parts at once. The board transition, the registration that opened June 8, the CEO search. And the thing nobody's saying out loud is what the mayor still controls, versus what these new members will actually touch. Registration's open, candidacy starts in January. The information exists. But does a parent in Englewood know this page is here at all? And if they don't, you've got people voting for a body when most of 'em couldn't tell you what it controls. A YouTube link doesn't fix that. Put it on the same block as a school, in a gym, with people who can answer a real question. Jordan Powell V, writing in Chicago Contrarian:
The supply is currently outstripped by the demand for affordable housing. Rather than turning to another catastrophic stab at urban renewal, lifting existing regulations will increase the housing supply, resulting in a much better path to success.
So here's Jordan Powell in the Chicago Contrarian, arguing the fix for the housing shortage is to unshackle the private sector — kill the zoning rules, the minimum lot sizes, the parking mandates, and let supply and demand do the rest. And it's a real argument. The parking mandates alone are a genuine cost driver. But here's the friction — the Council just approved two housing projects this week, and they didn't sail through. They got shaved down by aldermanic prerogative. Animal spirits. Right. Tell that to the Avondale project where a private developer with clean approvals got 47 units cut because somebody didn't like the parking math. The market didn't fail there. One alderman used a veto. And the West Loop tower came in at twenty percent affordable. If unleashing the private sector is the answer, twenty percent is what unleashed looks like? I want the number, not the theory. What I'll give the piece — it puts an ideology on the table. This week, the housing debate has been Springfield, suburbs versus city. Powell gives us another axis: deregulation versus local control. Sure, but he skips the part where the regulation he hates often lives in the ward office more than in the FHA. You can deregulate all day, and the ward veto still kills your building. If Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you make sense of the city, consider subscribing and leaving a quick review wherever you’re listening. It really helps other people find the show.
You’ll find links to every story we talked about today in the show notes. If one caught your ear, that’s the easiest place to dig in a little deeper.
That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.