HillBuzz

Here’s something interesting: tomorrow the City of Chicago is enacting a “reduced service day”, where everything administrative in the City shuts down to save money.  Local media report the City saves $2.5 million per day for every “reduced service day” it enacts. There are plans to have 15 of these “reduced service days” in 2010, where the libraries, city health clinics, City Hall, and every non-essential, non-emergency service is shut down to save money. 

This brings up a lot of questions for us. 

For starters, it feels like the City has a lot of fat it can trim from the payroll so that it doesn’t have to shut EVERYTHING down for a whole day every once in a while.  We’ve worked on projects for the City, and many people collecting checks from the government don’t do any actual work.  There are people whose parents are political Ward Captains and other kinds of operatives in the Daley Machine who sit at a desk and read the newspaper all day.  One friend of ours who works for the City has one of these “legacy” workers assigned to her team.  His father is a well-known member of the black community loyal to Mayor Daley.  So, the son collects a very large salary to sit on his legacy butt during the day, reading magazines, never doing any of the work he’s supposed to do. Our friend can’t say a word about him.  His performance reviews are filled out by someone above her.  He takes up space in her department and is technically on the books as being part of her team, but he’s free to do as he pleases, collecting big City checks. 

How many of these guys are on the payroll? 

How many other jobs out there are redundant, particularly in the Parks Department, where City workers are notorious for taking a crew of six guys out to dig a hole:  one guy with a shovel, three guys leaning against the truck to keep it from flying away, another guy to supervise the shoveler, and a final guy to make sure the three guys holding down the truck don’t fly away with the truck. 

We wish we were kidding, but this is all true. 

Has a large Democrat-controlled city government ever been properly audited for graft, fraud, and scams like this?  It feels like the City would be auditing itself, and we all should know what the result of that would be. 

It also feels like the City could very easily get away with “reduced service days” every Monday.  If they can do it tomorrow and the world won’t end, then they could very likely do it next Monday too, with similar results. Why can’t the City government run on just 4 days a week?  The City has already outsourced its parking ticket collections to a private firm.  The City’s parking lots are largely in private hands as well.  So the revenue-generating arms of the City are already privatized. Whatever papers need to be pushed at City Hall sure feel like they can wait until Tuesday.  So why not save $2.5 million every Monday?  

But, we all know that’s not going to happen — so what about the Olympics? 

During Market Days weekend (the street festival here in Boystown at the beginning of August), the “Support the Bid” people had a booth at the festival encouraging Chicagoans to abandon their suspicions and doubts and embrace the Chicago Olympics bid.  The bottom line is this:  barring some sort of miracle that saves Rio, Chicago will indeed be chosen as the site of the 2016 Games. It’s between us and Rio.  

The IOC wants desperately to give the Games to Rio, because South America is the only inhabited continent besides Africa to never host the Games.  For the longest time, we thought it would be crime that kept the IOC from giving the Games to Rio.  Large swaths of the city are not under government control, with gangs of street criminals preying on anyone who wanders too far away from the private-security-patrolled tourist traps like Copacabana.  Chicago has crime, too, but nothing like the gangs of feral children and teens who murder people in the streets.  You’ll get mugged in Chicago, by 3-4 big guys up to no good, but you most likely will survive the attack with your life and all your limbs.  Not so in Rio. 

But, interestingly, Chicago’s been using another weapon entirely against Rio.  

The “Support the Bid” people passed out little fliers emphasizing Chicago’s transportation grid and how athletes will be able to reach any venue within 15 minutes for the Chicago 2016 Games.  Apparently, this is the biggest complaint of the athletes at any Games:  they do not like to sit in cars waiting to get to a venue.  Apparently, they stretch and prep at the Athlete’s Village and then feel like they cramp up and lose potential every minute they are in a car heading to the venue.  In Rio, the streets are Byzantine and congested, with twists and turns and no straight routes anywhere.  It will take an hour or more, according to the “Support the Bid” people, to get from the Athlete’s Village to various venues around Rio.  There is absolutely no hope for Rio to fix its transportation problems by 2016.  The city is built around large, beautiful mountains and staggered on various scenic hills.  All wonderful for postcards, but not so great for transporting athletes. 

So, it really is ingenious of the “Support the Bid” people to employ transportation needs against the Rio bid.  The crime issue was bringing up too much emotion, especially considering the fact its CHILDREN in Rio that are robbing and murdering people in large packs.  Arguments were being made that Olympics investment could give these children a better future and maybe then they wouldn’t have to be part of these feral packs (people are naive and crazy to think the Olympics will reduce crime in any way, but the IOC is indeed naive and crazy on so many levels). But, transportation has no emotional connection to it.  Either athletes can get to venues in 15 minutes, or they can’t. It’s as simple as that. 

And there really is no way Rio can complete with Chicago in terms of transportation.  It’s one of the easiest major cities in the world to navigate in.  Our rail and bus system, though imperfect, is light years ahead of Rio’s. For the most part, you can go almost anywhere in the city without being robbed or murdered.  Almost. 

But, if the City is having so many money problems in 2009, and if things are only going to get worse before they get any better in terms of the economy, then how on Earth is the City going to actually pay for the Olympics in 2016?  The “Support the Bid” people claim “billions in federal transportation dollars” are going to flood Chicago once we secure the bid in October.  If you don’t realize by now that 80% of that money will go towards graft and corruption, you have not been paying any attention.  Sure, Democrats in Congress will send all that tax money to Chicago through Ray LaHood at the Department of Transportation, but little of it will actually create any improvements in the city.  Most of it will be lost to nebulous “construction studies”, “environmental impact studies”, PR efforts, and other “mistakes” so common with federally funded infrastructure projects (like the “wrong” machines or materials being ordered, or pipes being cut the wrong length, or some error in the concrete pouring that means all of it has to be torn up and redone again…and again…and again). Someone could spend a lifetime studying the waste and corruption built into federally-funded infrastructure projects and never be able to get a firm grasp on where, exactly, all that tax money really goes when it rains down upon a city like Chicago from Washington. 

So, a lot of shady people connected to Mayor Daley are going to get very, very rich off these Olympics projects.  The “Support the Bid” people trumpet the fact that 90% of what’s planned to be built for the Olympics are “temporary structures” that will be torn down after the Games end. 

We have very mixed feelings about “temporary structures”.  

On one hand, that feels like a colossal waste of money — to spend billions tearing up parks and building Olympics structures, just to rip them all down after the Games and dump all that construction material into a landfill somewhere.  That feels wrong on so many levels, especially coming from Democrats who claim they are so environmentally conscious.  

But, look at Beijing and the problems they’re having barely a year later with all the grandiose buildings they constructed for their Games.  The “Bird’s Nest” is an empty shell that’s being used as a bargain flea market.  The spectacular “Water Cube” isn’t being maintained properly, and is slowly moldering and mildewing from neglect. It’s like these magical buildings floated down from the sky and now sit abandoned by people who have no idea whatsoever what to do with them all. 

And it costs millions and millions of dollars a year to keep those buildings from collapsing into complete ruin. 

So, maybe it isn’t really as wasteful, in the long run, to build temporary structures for these games.  The “Support the Bid” people claim new tennis courts near Boystown will be left after the Games, along with a white water rafting course that will be built on the ruins of Miegs Field airport near downtown (a small private airport Mayor Daley wanted to get rid of for years, so right after 9/11 he declared it a public hazard and had bulldozers gut large X’s up and down the runway in the middle of the night to kill Miegs…when private planes were still in the hangers and were, thus, unable to fly away so they had to be loaded onto boats and flatbed trucks at owners’ expense…which still ranks as one of the ballsiest and craziest things Mayor Daley has ever done in Chicago). Supposedly, an Olympics pool complex will also be left for Chicagoans to enjoy…though, just like Beijing, the cost of upkeeping that will be astronomical (when the City already has an awful lot of community pools, not to mention a lake with many public beaches in nice weather). 

The “Support the Bid” people also claim the City will make billions of dollars in tourist traffic to Chicago because of the Olympics.  Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense where all these tourists are supposed to come from or what, exactly, the Olympics is going to do to bring them here. Beijing built awe-inspiring architectural projects that people still go to China to see a year later.  But, if Chicago’s bid is based around temporary structures, what exactly will people be flocking to Chicago to see when the Olympics are over?  Chicago itself is a remarkable city that’s always a joy to see — but how will the Olympics convince people to make Chicago a vacation destination if they don’t know that already?  Sydney and Atlanta didn’t build anything monumental for their Olympics Games — did those cities receive massive tourist boosts after their Games to justify all the spending?  How many people dream about going to Georgia to see Centennial Park? More likely, they go for World of Coke or the truly stupendous and awesome Georgia Aquarium (the absolute best aquarium we have ever been to). How much does the fact Atlanta hosted the Olympics in 1996 impact someone’s decision to go there? How long after the Olympics did Europeans, Asians, and South Americans forget about Atlanta?  Because, supposedly, the big point in hosting the Games is to get a city on the cultural radar for people who only think of the United States as New York, Los Angeles, Washington, or maybe Miami. 

Living in Chicago in these last days before we win the Olympics bid feels like watching a good friend sign a bad mortgage deal we know will blow up in her face.  The lender is promising her all these nebulous, magical benefits we know will never come true, and we try to tell her the money she’s shelling out just isn’t worth it in the long run, but she’s got stars in her eyes and we know there’s nothing we can say or do that can stop her. So, this person we care deeply about is on a collision course with mild disaster and all we can do is watch it happen. 

Chicago will get the 2016 Games. 

Chicago will not be able to pay for them. 

Chicago will not see the return on its investment that the “Support the Bid” people claim. 

Chicago will indeed put on one Hell of a party in 2016…and it will be absolute Hell to live in the City for two weeks before the Games, during the two weeks of the Games, and during the two weeks after the Games. 

And then, after that, it’s going to be one long, painful Olympics hangover. 

How many “reduced service days” will the City need to recover from that?