Dominick’s task force put in public eye

I don’t envy the people who will be serving on a newly-created city government task force that will draw the public’s scrutiny – even though the issue it is dealing with is far from the most significant problem confronting Chicago these days.

Will Dominick's stores soon have no parked cars nearby?

That problem being, of course, Dominick’s.

AS IN THE chain of supermarkets that are about to cease to exist in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Jewel early on said it would purchase a few of the Dominick’s locations and convert them to their brand.

While the new Mariano’s chain of supermarkets came in last week and said it would purchase a few more Dominick’s stores, while also building some new sites for their brand of upscale markets.

But those two deals account for about 15 supermarkets out of the 72 facilities that were part of the Dominick’s chain.

Come the end of 2013 (Dec. 28, to be exact), there are likely to be a whole lot of Dominick’s stores that suddenly become vacant storefronts – even if companies such as Whole Foods or Pete’s Fresh Market come in and buy out a few more Dominick’s locations.

IT’S ALSO NOT the same as if a little neighborhood market were to close its doors. We’re talking about the large stores that, with their parking lots, can easily take up an entire block.

Those are going to be gaping holes in the appearance of Chicago and the suburban communities. Just envision the kid whose teeth are falling out, giving him a smile with gaps.
 

Only in Chicago’s case, there’s no equivalent of the tooth fairy coming along to leave money to help us cope with the loss.




How many will live on like this former Dominick's store?

Instead, Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a task force to be chaired by Deputy Mayor Steve Koch whose purpose will be to figure out what to do with all those “gaps” – as in the stores that no other supermarket chain has interest in obtaining.

WHAT OTHER KINDS of businesses might be capable of using the structures for their purpose? Or, might be capable of coming in and using the land upon which those former Dominick’s stores are built?

The one thing that ought to be apparent is that we can’t just do nothing about the situation.

These kinds of gaps in a community can become a blot that spreads to a major hole going far beyond the lack of a supermarket nearby.

It’s also important because, while this task force is only concerned with the soon-to-be abandoned Dominick’s locations in Chicago, the way the city handles this issue will also impact the way surrounding suburbs will cope with their loss of a Dominick’s supermarket.

YOU’RE GOING TO have the public watching to see what becomes of their former Dominick’s, and you’re going to have suburban municipal officials taking their lead from this task force.

Which means this task force is going to face pressure. If it manages to screw things up, it is going to get ridicule on a level far above its mere dollar figures.

Because Dominick’s was a part of the Chicago character – one of the chains that for many decades dominated where we got our food from. What could be more important to some people than that?

There may be deals that would have a larger economic impact on Chicago than the replacement of supermarkets. But this is one of those deals that people will place undue attention to.

Will a vacant Dominick's be uglier than '13 baseball?

SO FOR THOSE city, organized labor and industry officials who will devote their coming weeks to figuring out how to replace the Dominick’s stores, they had better realize we, the public, will magnify the significance of their every screw up.

So they better not make any, or else they’ll become even more detested among Chicagoans than either the White Sox or Cubs are these days after the god-awful seasons they produced in ’13.

  -30-

Skeptical of the smoking stats!

5,500 and 6,400. The two new statistics that I’m not quite sure I believe.

Or, even if they are true, if they really mean all that much.

THOSE ARE THE numbers that aides to Mayor Rahm Emanuel were using on Tuesday to try to justify the proposal to raise the tax on a package of cigarettes by 75 cents.

City Health Department officials admit that this new tax would result in cigarettes costing more in Chicago than anywhere else in the United States. Which they say is a good thing.

Because it would persuade some 5,500 adults to quit smoking (because they can’t afford it anymore) and some 6,400 teenagers to never start smoking in the first place.

It’s my own gut instinct that says people who are determined to smoke are going to, regardless of the official price of a pack of cigarettes. Although even if those number of people do wind up not smoking because it becomes too expensive, is it really worth that much.

BECAUSE WE’RE TALKING about some not-quite 12,000 people out of a population of 2.7 million in the city, or some more than 8 million in the Chicago metro area.

The 11,900 that city officials are saying will not smoke? That’s a pretty insignificant number.

Personally, I’d respect city government more if they’d just come out and admit they want to gouge the people who are so addicted to tobacco that they can’t get by without their two-pack-a-day fix!

At least that would be honest.

NO MATTER HOW much they want to talk about saving $235 million in long-term health costs from problems caused by smoking, they really want the added tax revenue.

There are many areas to which the money – about $10 million per year, city officials say – could be put to use.

Including the child health care programs that city officials say they want to support. A noble goal.

But I wonder at what point do we start seeing people taking extreme measures to avoid buying cigarettes in Chicago? Will it turn out to be like gasoline – where anybody who can possibly avoid using a gas pump in the city limits does so?

WILL WE GET those places selling “cheap smokes” just across the city limits/state line in Hammond, Ind., and surrounding Hoosier communities seeing a sudden surge in business.

Or what of the places within the city – usually in the seedier neighborhoods that most need help but don’t’ get it – where locals know which stores will sell them “loosies.”

As in cigarettes sold individually.

It’s most definitely an illegal act. But there are those people who think they’re Al Capone reincarnated and that they’re “providing a service” to people who merely want to indulge their taste for tobacco.

AND WHEN IT comes to wanting something easily accessible and cheap, some people are more than willing to overlook the legalities of any issue.

As for me, I don’t smoke. It is just one habit I never picked up on. I wish it were practical to think of tax increases like this as a way to seriously decline the number of people who feel compelled to smoke cigarettes. I’m just realistic enough to know that life isn’t quite so easy.

If only the addition of another tax were the way to do it.

Instead, we’re going to get these taxes going higher and higher and some people will pay it. But many others will manage to find their alternatives.

WHICH WILL RESULT in no one getting paid a tax. Because avoiding the tax will be the whole point of the purchase.

The healthcare issues and other problems related to smoking will remain. But the increased tax revenues just won’t be there to back up a solution.

Isn’t that a pleasant thought for the day!

  -30-

EXTRA: Cook is hardball w/ softball

The Cook County Board had serious issues (cremation instead of burial for the indigent, constitution of the Metra commuter rail board) on its agenda Wednesday.

Yet what was it that seemed to generate the most enthusiasm amongst the officials who represent Illinois’ largest county?

SOFTBALL. OR SHOULD I say a gold-colored cup filled with a ratty-looking, dinged up ball that was put on display as the “trophy” won by the Cook County softball team.

For the past three years, the team consisting of staffers from various county government agencies has played games against other government-inspired teams.

Such as the Illinois governor, the mayor and the City Council of Chicago (separate teams, you wouldn’t expect them to play together?). The city treasurer. Heck, even the Chicago-based staff of the federal government’s General Accounting Office.

County officials passed a resolution declaring themselves the champions for the third straight year of this competition – pointing out that in three seasons, they are undefeated.

AS IN 20-0 since 2011.

Not bad, although I wonder what would happen if Cook County were to take on one of the teams from the Illinois Legislature – where the state Senate and House of Representatives take each other on annually for some of the most intense sporting bragging rights ever claimed.

WHITE: Never could top Ernie Banks

Or if an Illinois secretary of state team containing one-time Chicago Cubs minor leaguer Jesse White himself (who’s more athletic at age 78 than most people are in their prime) were to take on the county ballplayers?

But it seems that the county will keep at their play – county Board President Toni Preckwinkle says she plans to take the field in 2014 along with her colleagues.

ALTHOUGH COUNTY COMMISSIONER Deborah Sims, D-Chicago, said she was skeptical anybody would be willing to play against Cook ever again.

PRECKWINKLE: Wants to play

“I’d advise you not to win so much, or nobody will want to play with you,” she quipped.

And Preckwinkle had the final say; claiming the cup on display at the county board meeting ought to be treated like the Stanley Cup (which goes on tour so the fans can see it, up close).

“Everybody gets this cup for an hour,” she snapped.

  -30-

Mell’s still keeping the real post of significance, probably ‘til he departs

A lot of people have been making a big deal about the fact that one of the longest-serving aldermen, Dick Mell of the Northwest Side’s 33^rd Ward, is talking retirement.

MELL: Not really leaving

He says he wants more time to spend with the grandchildren – including the two granddaughters who are the children of incarcerated former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whom the soon-to-be former alderman is helping to care for.

YET THE KEY to truly understanding the significance of what is happening is the fact that Mell plans to keep his title as Democratic committeeman from the 33^rd Ward. Because that’s the position of significance politically.

It is the one that will give him a say in the ward’s activities. It is the one that means his opinion will have to be listened to in terms of his daughter – state Rep. Deborah Mell, D-Chicago – being picked as his aldermanic replacement.

It means he will have an actual say in terms of picking a new state representative, should Mayor Rahm Emanuel decide that Deborah will be his pick for the City Council.

Even if Emanuel should decide to pick somebody else as 33^rd Ward alderman, the fact that Mell remains the committeeman means that the new alderman will have to acknowledge Dick’s views on issues. Probably to the point where anyone as alderman other than Deb Mell would be made to feel very uncomfortable in the post.

ALTHOUGH IT ALSO means that a 33^rd Ward Alderman Deborah Mell would have to listen to her father in a way that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan doesn’t necessarily have to acknowledge her father; Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

DEBORAH MELL: A future alderman?

But I have to admit that bringing up Deborah Mell and Lisa Madigan in the same breath strikes me as being natural, in large part because the two of them have always struck me as being among the few political siblings who had the innate intelligence that they probably would be qualified for their political posts even if their fathers weren’t politically connected.

Meaning, I wouldn’t be offended by the idea of a new “Alderman Mell,” even though I realize that some people remain miffed that she refused to vote “yes” to impeach her brother-in-law – and, in fact, was one of the few people who were on record as supporting Blagojevich.

I’d take Dick Mell’s talk of retirement more seriously if he were giving up the committeeman post. As it turns out, he’s keeping the position that often is the source of a government official’s true source of power.

ANDRADE: A future rep?

THE GOVERNMENT OFFICE is the position that pays the salary that gets acknowledged to the Internal Revenue Service as the main source of income. The political party post is the one that gives an official their true source of power within their respective wards.

It makes me wonder if Dick Mell is determined to become the 33^rd Ward equivalent of Dick Daley or Harold Washington – both of whom held the mayor’s post until the day they died.

In the case of Washington, he literally died at his desk at City Hall.

Not that I’m predicting an end to Mell’s stint on this Earth any time soon – although at age 75, who’s to say what will happen; or when!

OTHER THAN TO have to admit that regardless of how the circumstances shake down (a new “Alderman Mell” and “state Rep. Jaime Andrade, D-Chicago,” if Dick gets his way), there isn’t going to be any dramatic change in the way things operate up around the Logan Square neighborhood.

For Dick Mell will still have the political post he has held since the days when we were all awash in the red, white and blue of the Bicentennial.

  -30-

And on this corner, we see a couple of crackheads selling drugs to your kids…

How many people would think to use the 45^th anniversary of the date of the shooting death of Martin Luther King, Jr., to take a bus tour of some fairly decrepit neighborhoods in Chicago to point out all the things that are wrong?

EMANUEL: Is he really all-powerful?

That actually was the tactic of the Chicago Teachers Union, which on Thursday put together a bus tour meant to take unsuspecting people to the neighborhoods that will be impacted by the Chicago Public Schools plan to close some 60 facilities.

AS THOUGH IF people see for themselves the street gang-infested neighborhoods that some children would now have to walk through or attend schools in due to the closures, officials will suddenly feel sympathy.

Somehow, I doubt it worked. Largely because the Chicago schools officials already are putting on their “game” face that they’ve acted, and they’re not in a reconsideration mood.

That’s how I take schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s comments earlier this week about how she’s insulted that people are describing the schools closure plan as “racist” because so many of the schools that will be closed down are in African-American neighborhoods.

Somehow, I don’t think taking people on a bus tour of black-oriented neighborhoods will sway that many people, because too many Chicagoans already are oriented to ignoring such neighborhoods.

PERHAPS THEY MIGHT think, “It’s not my neighborhood,” so they don’t concern themselves with it. One only has to look at recent activity along Michigan Avenue involving robberies to realize that there are no barricades between neighborhoods, and we really are tied together as one city.

One’s problems ought to be considered as all of our problems.

Now I have stated before that I think the real tragedy concerning the fight about closing schools is that it puts people living in substandard neighborhoods into fighting to maintain schools that are substandard themselves.

We ought to be thinking about how to improve the opportunities for those people – rather than encouraging this particular fight that has the ability to make everybody look seriously stupid.

OR ARROGANT, WHICH is how the Emanuels are now coming across in this particular political fight.

Take Mayor Rahm’s brother, Ezekiel, the one who is getting attention these days for the book he recently wrote about the lives of himself, Rahm and third brother Ari. He also is the guy who went on the Huffington Post to “advise” the Chicago Teachers Union to, “give in now. Give in now. Rahm will win. He always does win.”

He also elaborated that the unions, by putting up any fight to Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools (who are merely following Rahm’s dictates on this issue) are merely “banging their heads against the wall.”

That’s tough talk! It seems that Rahm Emanuel (if his brother’s talk is at all true) thinks he’s already as mighty and powerful a municipal executive as anyone named Daley!

AS ONE WHO remembers the mayoral terms of people like Eugene Sawyer, Mike Bilandic and Jane Byrne, I’m well aware that it isn’t the position itself that gives people the power to treat Chicago like their personal fiefdom. Particularly in the case of Byrne, this city has a way of snapping back at people who try to push too hard!

It makes me wonder if the final outcome of all of this is going to be the bloody political showdown that will make the racially-tinged hostility of “Council Wars” seem like a political tea party!

All I know for sure is that we have a teachers union that is angry enough to charter a bus to drive around some neighborhoods that many of us try to pretend do not exist. That is, if we have ever even bothered to set foot in those neighborhoods (which may be the real problem).

It could end in a hard-fought victory for the mayor, if certain circumstances work in his favor.

THEN AGAIN, IT could also turn out to be a case where Emanuel (as in the mayor) gets hung out to dry.

Could this someday become the sight of a bloody mess? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

Because that kind of arrogance (“He always does win!”) is usually the type of attitude that causes people to desire the equivalent of a severed head put on a pike just in front of the Picasso statue!

  -30-