Chicago, Chicago, that pesticide town… A recent state study of composted grass clippings, leaves, and brush from around Illinois found that “the levels of pesticides were, overall, consistently higher in the Chicago metropolitan area samples. It appears that homeowners and other landscape generators in heavily urbanized areas apply more pesticides than their downstate counterparts” (UIC Solid Waste Management Newsletter, December).
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Get these people off the coasts! The upscale firm Backroads, of Berkeley, California–which bills itself as “the world’s #1 active travel company” featuring bicycling vacations–offers a total of one bicycle ride in the midwest (through southeastern Minnesota).
The Loop office glut: in the public interest. “When the real estate agent showed me this space last spring, I took one look at the building and lobby [203 N. LaSalle] and told them it was ridiculous, don’t even waste my time or theirs by going up,” writes state ACLU executive director Jay Miller in the Illinios Brief (Fall). “Knowing that rents in buildings like these run $30 or $40 a square foot, I could not believe that they could get us in for under $10, which is less than the building’s operating expenses.” The ACLU was able to increase its office space by 50 percent while cutting its total rent by 10 percent.
“Ironically, [DuPage Republican] Pate Philip could become the best friend Chicago school reformers ever had,” writes Jim Nowlan in Tax Facts (November). “He could attach strings to funding for Chicago schools to force changes that have been blocked thus far because of turf and patronage issues internal to Chicago politics.”
