Up 4 percent? Or down ¼ of 1 percent? Both are true of Chicago these days

Call it a battle of dueling perceptions, if you will.

Fewer residents, but many more visitors?!?

For it was all over just about every publication Thursday that Chicago’s overall population is, once again, on the decline

TO BE EXACT, Chicago’s population dropped by 0.23 percent. In fact, just about every place in Illinois was on the decline, with the percentages being larger in other places. Which means that the losses hurt those places more, since Chicago has so many more residents it can spare.

Credit, or blame, for Rahm?

So how exactly does Chicago choose to combat this factoid – which can be used as ammunition by those people of ideological leanings that make them want to lambast the city for everything they see as wrong with the state of Illinois as a whole?

We got city officials to release their official study of tourism to Chicago.

Which officials said was at a record-high of 57.7 million people during 2018.

Made front page of World's Greatest Newspaper

ALL OF WHOM stayed at hotels, ate at restaurants and shopped at stores buying all kinds of the tacky trinkets most of us wouldn’t even think of buying. Too touristy!

The increase continues a trend dating back to 2013, which means this is something that soon-to-be former Mayor Rahm Emanuel will boast about when discussing the legacy of his eight years as the head of Chicago city government.

Which might make him like the almighty Wizard of Oz, telling us to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” every time someone brings up the fact that Chicago’s population has declined ever so slightly every year since 2015.

Placing us even closer to that day likely to come some time by 2030 when Houston manages to surpass Chicago as the nation’s third largest city – we’re Number Four will be the chant we’ll have to take up. Even though as far as anyone who lives here already knows, our city is really Number One. Something that all those millions of tourists have figured out for themselves.

  -30-

“Hot, Hot, Hot” has nothing these days to do with Buster Poindexter

I missed the intense heat wave of 1995. That period of scorching summer when the city was so unprepared that the death toll shot up faster than the thermometer occurred back during the time I lived in Springfield, Ill.

Chicago's theme music these days?



But I read the reports and heard the stories from my brother and mother, who were here back then.

SO I CAN appreciate the fact that while these past few days have been immensely uncomfortable, we should be thankful that we don’t have an absurd death toll mounting higher and higher.

That comes even though we may set an all-time record, as forecasts on Friday were saying that Saturday’s official temperature for Chicago would exceed 100 degrees. That would be a fourth straight day of temperatures in the century mark.

And it has been a miserable string of days.

It has been a time period in which I am thankful to be a freelance writer who works from home. It reduces the amount of time I have to spend in the outdoors.

ALTHOUGH I DID have to venture outside at one point Thursday night to cover a news event for a suburban newspaper I do some work for. It was early evening, and I still wound up with notes soaking wet from my sweat. When I finally got back home, the steering wheel of my car was dripping from my perspiration.

And I couldn’t help but notice when I checked the weather forecast Friday morning, I learned that it already was 91 degrees – and allegedly felt more like 104 degrees, on a day when the temperature was forecast to reach 101 (and in reality reached 103 degrees at O'Hare International Airport by mid-day).

It has been a miserable few days. And the thought that keeps going through my mind these days is to wonder how people survived prior to the invention of air conditioning.

Even if this is a record-high and not the norm (1911 and 1947 are the only other years that Chicago had three straight days of 100-degree temperatures) for a Chicago summer, we still experience heat each and every year.

BUT IT SEEMS that no matter how much we feel miserable, we should be a little bit thankful.

Because like I have already stated, we don’t have much of a body count running yet  -- six deaths overall as of Friday night, which is barely more than the five shooting deaths that occurred Wednesday on Independence Day from hot-headed people who shouldn't be allowed near firearms, regardless of what the NRA thinks the Second Amendment means.

There have been people who have died during the past few days, but it does not appear that we have any deaths that were brought on solely by the heat.

Maybe it means we learned the lessons of ’95. At the very least, everybody seems to be aware of the concept of a “cooling center” – that special place where people can go if either they don’t have air conditioning, or it isn’t quite working properly in their homes.

ALTHOUGH IN MY case, I must confess to having adequate air conditioning AND a portable fan (which was a birthday gift from my mother just a couple of months before she died) blowing air directly on me while I work.

Which is about the only thing that has made these past few days bearable (and probably the only reason I haven’t shorted out my laptop computer with excess sweat while I write copy).

That, and one other fact. I keep seeing those long-term weather forecasts that tell me the temperatures will take a (relatively) dramatic plunge in the next few days.

Temperatures in the 80s is still summertime warm. I won’t be basking in the outdoors and shivering from the breezes.

BUT IT WILL be a notable drop – one that won’t feel quite so stuffy as though I’m being asked to inhale cotton when I breathe.

How good does this look right about now?

And when we get back to a time when we have sunny skies AND cool breezes, I think I will appreciate it all the more.

I know the weather has become extreme when I’m looking forward to the day when I can wear my leather jacket without having people around me look at me like I’m insane.

  -30-

Everybody has an interest in census figures

Whether we want to admit it or not, there is a lot riding on those Census Bureau forms we’re all going to be asked to fill out some time next week.

There are some ethnic groups that are hoping to strengthen their overall influence in this country by getting as high a count as possible, while there are government entities that want to show they have as many people as possible so they can claim a larger share of funding provided by the federal government to local programs.

THERE EVEN ARE some ethnicities that are trying to bolster their influence by refusing to participate in the Census, in part on the grounds that they’re punishing the government entities that they think ignore them by holding down the overall count.

Hit them in the pocketbook, so to speak. A lesser population count threatens the amount of money that local governments receive. And the honest truth is that much of what local governments do is reliant upon the federal government to provide some money to help pay for it.

Personally, I’m skeptical such a strategy will work. And I’m not referring just to the overpublicized threat of a Latino Census boycott being pushed by a few ministers and other activists. I recently read an account by which Arabs in this country who are tired of being ignored were urged to ignore that Census form when it shows up in the mail – on the grounds that it really doesn’t matter.

I think that ignoring that Census form merely gives people in power more excuses to justify ignoring you. After all, if you weren’t counted, technically, you don’t exist.

ONE GROUP TRYING to persuade people to account for their newborn children on the Census form literally said that if your kid gets missed this time, it will be another decade before they can be acknowledged.

Not that government officials really care much about any of this. They just want the cash, which a study released Tuesday by the Washington-based Brookings Institute pointed out was rather substantial – particularly when it comes to the large metropolitan areas such as Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.

That study says that in 2008, governments in Illinois received $19.11 billion in federal funds for programs where the population count was a determining factor. Only California, New York and Texas got more.

Considering that the Chicago metropolitan area has become so dominant in Illinois’ population, it reasons that a large share ($12.68 billion) came to what is officially classified as the Chicago/Naperville/Joliet area. Only New York and Los Angeles got more.

OF COURSE, ALL of our counties all got significant amounts. Cook County received $10.11 billion (third highest in the nation for a county), while DuPage County also ranked in the Top 100 ($700.59 million, ranked 97th), while all the other Illinois and Indiana counties that comprise metro Chicago are in the Top 200.

At a time when our state and local governments are facing financial struggles of their own, I know for a fact that they’re all counting on getting every single dollar possible from the federal government in order to help balance out their budgets.

I have been hearing too many public school officials in recent weeks talking about their financial problems. The last thing they want to have to do is educate kids in their school districts whose family heads couldn’t be bothered to fill out a Census form.

They still have to, even if the amount of money they receive from federal education programs doesn’t truly reflect their population.

YOU MAY HAVE figured out by now after reading this commentary that I am something of a geek when it comes to the Census figures. When combined with reapportionment, I think they are the two most interesting stories that take place every decade.

Considering that both of these issues are going to occur in the next two years, I think we’re approaching an interesting time period – more interesting than this year’s elections which are going to be the usual partisan blather, along with a lot of cheap talk from Republicans about how they’re going to “save” the nation from ourselves.

Yawn. If you want to know the truth, what interest I do have in the elections is because I know that the winners will influence the partisan ties of the government officials who wind up using the Census figures compiled this year to put together those political maps that will be used throughout the 2010s.

I find these two issues interesting because they truly are about people.

THE CENSUS TELLS us how many we are and where we live. Then, the process of redistricting shows how those two factors can be twisted for political purposes. And when I say twisted, I fully acknowledge that both major political parties do the twisting.

Heck, even the Green Party would engage in political maneuvering, if they were in any position to do so.

But it all comes back to the Census, which I view similar to how I view voting. If you don’t vote, you lose your right to complain. If you don’t fill out that form and be counted, you might as well be saying you don’t exist. So you shouldn’t complain when the political powers-that-be decide to ignore you.

Personally, I want to exist so that when they try to ignore me, I will have every moral right to complain.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Somebody spent an absurdly large amount of time going through census tracts to (http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/0309_census_dollars/0309_census_report.pdf) try to compile this study.

Municipal officials around the nation (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-met-census-federal-funds-20100308,0,4724414.story) are going to be reviewing this study to try to determine how much more money they can get if they can provide a full and accurate population count.