#already predicting she’ll be Gregory’s sister

[zibiscusloon]

Cassie sketches cause I’m manifesting her to be a feral lil menace just like Gregory

[go-redgirl]

Mayor Lori Lightfoot imposes city government hiring freeze days before speech about Chicago’s massive budget deficit

By GREGORY PRATT , JEREMY GORNER  and JOHN BYRNE CHICAGO TRIBUNE | AUG 23, 2019 | 4:15 PM

Days before she’s scheduled to give a speech on Chicago’s massive budget deficit, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has imposed a hiring freeze across all departments and positions in city government, including police.

The administration announced the move in a memo earlier this week from Budget Director Susie Park to all city commissioners and department heads. In an interview, Park told the Tribune there are about 3,000 vacancies citywide affected by the freeze.

“As you are all aware, the city is facing a large budget deficit next year,” Park wrote in an Aug. 20 memo. “In advance of upcoming discussions regarding reductions that will be required for the 2020 budget, effective immediately and until further notice, the Office of Budget and Management is implementing a hiring freeze across all funds, including grants. The hiring freeze is applicable to all departments and positions.”

Read the Lightfoot administration’s memo announcing a hiring freeze across city government »

The news comes as Lightfoot is scheduled to give a televised speech about the city’s massive looming budget deficit. The city also is conducting an online survey asking people to weigh in with their fiscal priorities, as well as which taxes they would increase to offset its expected budget hole. Lightfoot’s “State of the City” speech will be broadcast at 6 p.m. Thursday from downtown’s Harold Washington Library Center.

Lightfoot took office in May facing a gaping budget hole in the next fiscal year starting Jan. 1, the first citywide spending plan she’ll have to propose and push through the City Council.

When Lightfoot took office and prepared her 2020 budget, it was expected she would have to come up with a combined $528 million in tax increases and budget cuts. But in May, officials in then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration predicted the shortfall would be closer to $700 million because of costs previously covered with expensive borrowing practices and the city’s pension investments’ poor performance at the end of 2018 as the stock market took a dive.

Lightfoot has previously disputed the Emanuel administration’s budget hole estimate, saying, “It’s worse than that.” Her administration, however, has not yet offered its own estimate.

Facing massive budget hole, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to give ‘State of the City’ speech followed by citywide tour on government finances » The mayor repeatedly has said she will seek internal cuts before asking taxpayers to pay more as part of her next budget. “What she has asked of me and her commitment is, we will look internally first at government and see where those savings and efficiencies can come from,” Park said.

Park said the city is reviewing all budgets and taking a “hard look at our programs, services and operational needs" as the city faces “one of the largest budgetary gaps in recent history.” It was unclear how much the city expected to save with the new limits on hiring.

After a City Council meeting this summer, the mayor said residents will need to pay more to plug the budget shortfall, though she didn’t offer specifics. The mayor reiterated that point earlier this month.

"But the reality is, given the gap we’re going to face next year, given the pension payments that are demanded, we are going to have to look for additional revenue sources, there’s no question about that,” Lightfoot said. Chicago's 2020 budget shortfall may be more than $200 million larger than Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot expected »

Raising taxes is a delicate dance anywhere, but particularly in Chicago, where even Lightfoot as a candidate said the tax burden is forcing residents out of the city.

Ahead of next week’s speech, Lightfoot has reiterated that the city will “need to have help from Springfield to address the challenges that we have in the city.” That could take the form of a sales tax on professional services, which Illinois legislators would need to authorize.

In July, Lightfoot also said she might pursue raising the real estate transfer tax on expensive property sales to help close an enormous 2020 budget hole. Park told the Tribune layoffs also are on the table.

“Obviously we’re starting looking at the vacancies first but part of this exercise is to look at everything,” Park said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot points to real estate tax hike as possible budget fix as some aldermen again call to raise it and use money for homeless services » Park’s hiring freeze memo said departments can proceed with hires if interviews have been scheduled or held and if they’ve already made an offer, pending approval from the budget department and Human Resources.

Departments must submit a list of positions that fall under those exemptions with a justification for consideration to hire someone, Park wrote.

The freeze doesn’t apply to sister agencies like Chicago Public Schools and the CTA as they aren’t part of the city’s budget.

But the hiring freeze also will affect the Police Department, Park said. The city’s August police class just started, but the city is holding back the September batch “until we take a good look,” Park said.

Park plans to talk with police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to “see what that impact is and we’ll make some decisions around that.” “The city will work to ensure the hiring freeze does not impact police/patrol coverage, and to ensure the freeze doesn’t limit the number of personnel devoted to solving crimes,” the budget department said.

Currently, the Police Department is staffed with about 13,400 officers of all ranks, the largest roster of cops the city has seen since the 2000s. Its latest surge in police hires began around January 2017 as Johnson and Emanuel were under intense pressure to reverse the rising tide of violence ravaging the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Chicago ended 2016 with more than 760 slayings and over 4,300 people shot, the most violent year the city had seen in two decades. Since then, homicides and shootings have steadily dropped.

The newly minted officers have allowed the department, through promotions of existing officers, to beef up the supervisory ranks and the detective division. Police officials have said this was crucial after the department struggled in recent years with abysmally low rates of solving homicides and nonfatal shootings.

But critics of the hiring surge were bothered that the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for the effort would make the city too overpoliced and exacerbate the deeply rooted distrust between the police and African American communities. Some say that money could have been better used for economic development, such as neighborhood improvement projects, in those areas. It’s not unusual for the city to slow its hiring of police officers due to budget challenges.

Police hiring slowed in the final years of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration and persisted through Emanuel’s first term in office. This also led to less frequent promotions to the detective and supervisory ranks. In October 2008, Daley’s top cop, Jody Weis, acknowledged the city’s financial strain when he said the Police Department was down about 350 officers from its budgeted strength of about 13,500.

“Some people call it a hiring freeze or a hiring delay, I call it kind of a holding pattern,” he said then.

At that time, he also downplayed the staffing shortage. “We’re committed to filling those vacancies, but you’ve got to keep in mind we’re still about at 97 1/2 percent strength, and for any organization that’s pretty good,” Weis said.

After Emanuel was elected in 2011, he vowed to add 1,000 officers to the streets. But he drew the ire of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, the Police Department’s largest union, when it became apparent that he ended up merely shifting officers from two shuttered citywide units, and others from desk positions, to beat patrol duties instead of authorizing 1,000 new hires.

“The department manpower, to me, is like Enron accounting … the thousand-person reshuffle,” then-FOP President Michael Shields said at a luncheon that year, comparing Emanuel’s police staffing policy to the now-defunct scandal-plagued energy company.

Several months into Emanuel’s mayoralty, about 1,400 of the roughly 13,500 total positions were vacant and an additional 775 officers were on medical leave. At that time, Emanuel’s police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, resisted calls for more hires when the department, he said, wasn’t “operating at peak efficiency.”

In 2011, the number of homicides was among the city’s lowest in half a century and shootings, and other crimes, also were down.

In the following years, shootings and homicides in the city spiked, dropped and then spiked again as police staffing decreased by September 2016 to about 12,100 — roughly 400 fewer cops than during Daley’s final full year in office. Budget Committee Chair Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, said she didn’t know specifically how Lightfoot planned to roll out or administer the hiring freeze. But she said it makes sense given the city’s financial uncertainty.

“I generally think putting a pin in things until we get a full handle on the budget issues is a good idea,” she said. Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, who chairs the Zoning Committee, also said the hiring freeze seems like an appropriate move.

“I know the budget hole is going to be close to $1 billion, so what are the alternatives?” Tunney asked.

But Tunney, who said the Town Hall police district in his ward saw its manpower dip to 333 sworn officers in past years as Emanuel moved beat officers to higher crime neighborhoods before the district rebounded to over 400 officers as hiring increased, doesn’t want to give up those gains because of a Police Department hiring freeze.

“We would want to maintain that sworn officer strength,” Tunney said.

_______________________________________________________

OPINION:  Unfortunately, another Democrat ran City.  Its good someone have been elected, like Mayor Lightfoot to access and address the issue with the intentions of trying to balance the budget to the extend of imposes a ‘city government hiring freeze.  Instead of just letting everything get more and more out-of-control.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot should also start reduces in house salaries for those ‘top heavy’ employees that are in those positions.   Everyone need to give up a certain amount until the budget is more than under control.  

And, even after that, keep a ‘freeze’ on salaries for the next three to four years until the budget is balanced.  

[reviewsfeed-blog]

Happy Thursday everyone!

Today is a bank holiday, so I get to enjoy being off work! It will be strange going back for one day tomorrow, mind. How are you all?

I’ve had a happy couple of days as I have just watched my sister graduate from University with a 1st honours degree. I am a very proud sister right now!

  Today I am putting together another Down the TBR hole post, to make sure the list doesn’t become unruly. I’ve accepted it’s going to remain long… and it will always be added to, but I can try, right? For anyone unfamiliar with how this post works, here are the rules: –

The meme was created by Lia @ Lost in a Story:

Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.

Order on ascending date added.

Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books.

Read the synopses of the books

Decide: keep it or should it go?

So, shall we review the next ten books on my list?

  The Secret Library – Oliver Tearle

Goodreads – The Secret Library

As well as leafing through the well-known titles that have helped shape the world in which we live, Oliver Tearle also dusts off some of the more neglected items to be found hidden among the bookshelves of the past. You’ll learn about the forgotten Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens, the woman who became the first published poet in America and the eccentric traveller who introduced the table-fork to England. Through exploring a variety of books—novels, plays, travel books, science books, cookbooks, joke books and sports almanacs—The Secret Library highlights some of the most fascinating aspects of our history. It also reveals the surprising connections between various works and historical figures. What links Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’s Fables? Or Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack to the creator of Sherlock Holmes? The Secret Library brings these little-known stories to light, exploring the intersections between books of all kinds and the history of the Western world over 3,000 years.

This is pretty much a no-brainer for me. It also guarantees that my TBR will get a lot longer after I’ve read it! I am always looking for new ways to discover new books… and I think this book will do just that for me!

Verdict: Keep

  Because You’ll Never Meet Me – Leah Thomas

Goodreads – Because You’ll Never Meet Me

Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures. Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals with a bully set on destroying him.

A story of impossible friendship and hope under strange circumstances, this debut is powerful, dark and humorous in equal measure. These extraordinary voices bring readers into the hearts and minds of two special boys who, like many teens, are just waiting for their moment to shine.

This book and the sadness of the near impossible friendship between these two boys make me want to read this book. I think we have all experienced similar feelings of confusion or isolations during our teenage years, so I am hoping to relate to these characters in one way or another.

Verdict: Keep

  The Iron Ship – K. M. McKinley

Goodreads – The Iron Ship

An incredible epic fantasy begins!

The order of the world is in turmoil. An age of industry is beginning, an age of machines fuelled by magic. Sprawling cities rise, strange devices stalk the land. New money brings new power. The balance between the Hundred Kingdoms is upset. For the first time in generations the threat of war looms.

In these turbulent days, fortunes can be won. Magic runs strong in the Kressind family. Six siblings strive – one to triumph in a world of men, one to survive murderous intrigue, one to master forbidden sorcery, one to wash away his sins, one to contain the terrible energies of his soul.

And one will do the impossible, by marrying the might of magic and iron in the heart of a great ship, to cross an ocean that cannot be crossed.

I was won over by “epic fantasy” if I’m honest. It is my favourite genre of all time and I am intrigued by the combination of magic and the industrial revolution. By all means, this is not a slight book; at 650 pages, but I am up for the challenge. This is a keeper.

Verdict: Keep

  Nevernight – Jay Kristoff

Goodreads – Nevernight

In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?

This isn’t a case of does it stay… rather, it should be on my current reads list.

Technically, I’m listening to it via Audible, and it’s so fantastic that I have already purchased Godsgrave with my next credit. I’m already two-thirds of the way through and I cannot wait for the first book to come to its conclusion!

Verdict: Keep

  Streets of Darkness & Girl Zero – A. A. Dhand

Goodreads – Streets of Darkness Goodreads – Girl Zero

There are some surprises that no-one should ever have to experience. Standing over the body of your beloved – and murdered – niece is one of them. For Detective Inspector Harry Virdee, a man perilously close to the edge, it feels like the beginning of the end.

His boss may be telling him he’s too close to work the case, but this isn’t something that Harry can just let lie. He needs to dive into the murky depths of the Bradford underworld and find the monster that lurks there who killed his flesh and blood.

But before he can, he must tell his brother, Ron, the terrible news. And there is no predicting how he will react. Impulsive, dangerous and alarmingly well connected, Ron will act first and think later. Harry may have a murderer to find but if he isn’t careful, he may also have a murder to prevent.

I originally added these books when the author was featured in Writers Magazine. Whilst they do sound interesting, I’m not sure I want to read them as much as I did when I added them originally.

Verdict: Bin

  The Best Kind of People – Zoe Whittall

Goodreads – The Best Kind of People

What if someone you trusted was accused of the unthinkable?

George Woodbury, an affable teacher and beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual impropriety at a prestigious prep school. His wife, Joan, vaults between denial and rage as the community she loved turns on her. Their daughter, Sadie, a popular over-achieving high school senior, becomes a social pariah. Their son, Andrew, assists in his father’s defense, while wrestling with his own unhappy memories of his teen years. A local author tries to exploit their story, while an unlikely men’s rights activist attempts to get Sadie onside their cause. With George locked up, how do the members of his family pick up the pieces and keep living their lives? How do they defend someone they love while wrestling with the possibility of his guilt?

With exquisite emotional precision, award-winning author Zoe Whittall explores issues of loyalty, truth, and the meaning of happiness through the lens of an all-American family on the brink of collapse.

  I had forgotten I added this to the TBR; to be honest, a part of me wonders why. You think it would never happen near you.

One of the teachers at my school was arrested and charged for a sexual crime.

Whilst I was no more involved than being taught by him, the story is close to the bone. Guilty or not, I don’t think I would be comfortable reading and trying to sympathise with the accused based on what has happened here.

Verdict: Bin

  Shantaram – David Gregory Roberts

Goodreads – Shantaram

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.”

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas – this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.

I think this was an impulse addition to the TBR as well. Not sure why and I can’t even justify it.

Verdict: Bin

  Red Rising – Pierce Brown

Goodreads – Red Rising

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

This sounds like the perfect blend of Fantasy and Science Fiction. When it comes to technical sci-fi, I get a bit lost. Red Rising and the plot is one I think and hope I can really get behind. I love the idea of rebellion against oppression!

Verdict: Keep

  If We Were Villians – M. L. Rio

Goodreads – If We Were Villians

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.

Ten years ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extra. But in their fourth and final year, the balance of power begins to shift, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.

Part coming-of-age story, part confession, If We Were Villains explores the magical and dangerous boundary between art and life. In this tale of loyalty and betrayal, madness and ecstasy, the players must choose what roles to play before the curtain falls.

It involves crime, theatre and Shakespeare. Need I say more? I absolutely love anything that centres around the stage and I am truly hooked by this synopsis.

Verdict: Keep

  So there you have it! I decided to bin 4 out of 10 books, so that isn’t too bad!

Have you read any of the books I’ve mentioned and want me to change my mind? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

The next instalment of Down the TBR Hole #11 - in which I review the books on my list and decide what stays and what goes #bookworm #bookblogger #TBR #amreading Happy Thursday everyone! Today is a bank holiday, so I get to enjoy being off work! It will be strange going back for one day tomorrow, mind.