Here's your new ward map, Chicago. It was approved by City Council today by a 41-8 vote. The number of votes is notable as it means the map will not go to residents to a vote. more ›

Occupy Chicago's legal representation and Chicago's Corporation Counsel are set to meet today to discuss a permanent site of operations for Occupy Chicago. more ›

Under the new policy, female city employees would get four to six weeks of paid maternity leave. more ›

WBEZ's Sam Hudzik reported it was tightly scripted affair until Emanuel opened the meeting up to questions from the floor. more ›

You know Emanuel wasn't going to let the moment pass without looking back at what his administration has achieved since he took office. Hell, he graded himself on his first 30 days in office. more ›

Here's another way for City Hall to save millions - do away with unnecessary offices. more ›

City workers racked up over $10,000 in overtime pay through April, giving Mayor Emanuel more fuel for his demand labor accept work-rule changes, lest layoffs happen. more ›

Ed Burke says only a city hearing can remove his security detail. (Neener neener neener.) more ›

Drivers: it's time to get your new city stickers and City Clerk Susana Mendoza's office quietly started online sales earlier this week, a full two weeks before in-person sales begin. more ›

Mayor-elect Emanuel released his 72-page "transition plan" yesterday. It reads largely like a business proposal where the goals have been set but no details have been provided as to how to achieve them. Big on rhetoric, vague on substance, much like Emanuel's mayoral campaign. Having read the report, we agree with Mick Dumke's assessment of it. Right now, Emanuel gets points just for sharing it. How he implements this plan is another matter. more ›

Some of you expressed curiosity that Mayor Daley's final City Council meeting might tackle some tough city business. We'll just call you eternal optimists, instead of "silly." Though Ald. Ed Burke did propose a measure in today's meeting requiring cell phones contain a special feature built into them allowing parents to block their kids from what called an "epidemic" of teens texting while driving, much of the session was reserved for what 30th Ward Ald. Ariel Reboyras called the "resolution of all resolutions" - two hours of praise for the outgoing Elective Majesty. The aldermen even pooled their allowances together and gave Daley a parting gift of a crystal bowl engraved with the city seal, the start and end dates of Daley's time in office and the names of the 129 City Council members with whom he served. (We don't know if there were asterisks next to those who were indicted.) more ›

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Last week Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported that Mayor-elect Emanuel and 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke have had a series of meetings recently and in the interests of making peace with each other before Emanuel is sworn in next month. It looks as though Burke's position as chairman of the Finance Committee is safe. But with a $1.2 billion budget deficit to tackle, it seems as though both men agree that the number of City Council committees needs to be cut. more ›

For voters in 14 wards, it's Election Day again as the polls are now open for the ward runoffs. The city Board of Elections is predicting a low voter turnout - fewer than one in four voters are expected to cast ballots - and that tends to favor incumbents. So if you're wanting to get rid of Danny Solis in the 25th Ward because he took campaign donations from the companies responsible for the elevated lead levels in the air around Perez Elementary in Pilsen; or if you want to Rhymefest to be your alderman in the 20th Ward because he may have some ideas to improve the ward you agree with (and/or because he co-wrote "Jesus Walks"); or if you want to hand old and crotchety Bernard Stone his walking papers in the 50th, today is your opportunity. more ›

9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale is considering stalling the proposed Costco on the Near West Side because the 2007 land swap the Daley Administration agreed to with the Illinois Medical District will deprive the city of more than $1 million annually in rental income. more ›

Rahm Emanuel is finding out how difficult it can be as mayor of Chicago this week - and he's not even officially a candidate yet. While news broke yesterday that Rob Halpin, who is renting Rahm's house in Ravenswood, is considering a bid for mayor, Emanuel almost got popped in the face with an egg during a stop on his "Listening Tour" in Little Village. According to Politico, Emanuel was telling a resident of La Villita about "strong leadership and principle" when someone in the crowd hurled an egg at him. Although a member of the press that was covering the stop got hit with the egg, the candidate cut the conversation short. more ›

As Rahm Emanuel comes closer to making a formal announcement of the inevitable, he's also taking steps to consolidate his power heading into the upcoming mayor election. To begin with, Rahm has hired Blake Sercye, an African American field organizer from the Quinn campaign. That move has several benefits for Emanuel. Taking Sercye off the market as a hired gun keeps a talented organizer with knowledge and connections in a critical community (Sercye is an Austin native) from going to work for a rival candidate. Sercye also helps counter charges that the campaign doesn't have support in the black community. more ›

City Clerk Miguel Del Valle held a press conference Monday to dispel rumors that he was dropping out of the race for mayor. “Under no circumstances will I leave the race for mayor,” Del Valle said, responding to a column published over the weekend by Michael Sneed claiming that he's “negotiating for a top position with the Chicago Public Schools in exchange for his exit from the mayoral race.” more ›

We've just heard that StreetWise, the venerated Chicago publication that provides jobs for many of the city's homeless people, may be going under. The publication, which has been around in Chicago for the past 17 years, depends on an unusual mixture of advertising, grants and vendor fees to support itself. We talked to the magazine's executive director Bruce Crane who said his magazine has been hit in every single revenue stream. "We're receiving lovely letters from organizations that usually fund us," he said. "All of them say 'due to the changes in the financial market...'" more ›

In case you didn't notice, the Chicago skyline has been showing its Irish pride like everyone else by wearing its finest green outfits. Every few weeks a few brave individuals travel to the tops of the city to change the colors of the lights on the tops of our skyline, but how do they do it? "Magic and pixie dust," he said. Of course, Randy Stancik, building manager of the Sears Tower, was joking. It is actually a manual process, Stancik said. It takes two men about two hours to change the colors, attaching theatrical gels to the tops of the 22 spotlights that illuminate the antennae. more ›