City Budget Highlights.

I found this on the Chicago Sun Times web site. I found it interesting. My thoughts are italicized.

Highlights from Chicago's 2009 city budget

November 20, 2008

• 635 city employees laid off — possibly dozens less, depending on how many take cash incentives to retire.
• More than 1,600 vacant jobs eliminated.
  
• Six partial shutdown days around the holidays.
• Slow police hiring to 200 in 2009, saving $10 million.
• Because we definitely don't need more cops. We like being the Murder Capitol of the nation.
  
• Raise amusement tax to 5 percent on live theatrical, musical and cultural performances in venues seating more than 750 seats and 9 percent for sporting events, concerts and movies.
• Extend amusement tax to include 135,000 Chicagoans who get their cable TV by installing a satellite dish.
  
• Obviously Chicago owns the air and space that is directly above us. This is ridiculous.
  
• Increase parking tax — from $2.25 per car to $3 — on motorists who pay more than $12 to park.
• Lower Denver boot threshold from three unpaid tickets to two older than one year.
• Six-week amnesty for 3.5 million overdue parking and red-light tickets Dec. 1 to Feb.14.
• Basically only good for any tickets before Jan 1st, 2007. If you got it in 2008 you don't get any type of help.
  
• Blues and Jazz fests reduced from four days to three with fewer stages at each.
• Must not be making much money off the show.
  
• Double daily library fines from 10 to 20 cents.
• Raise ambulance fees from $325 and $8 a mile to $600 and $13 a mile for basic life support and from $400 and $8 a mile to $700 and $13 a mile for advanced life support. Nonresidents will pay $100 on top of that.
• Nonresidents should know better than to get injured or sick while visiting this city. Because your less of a person than those that live here.
  
• Raise residential permit parking guest passes from $10 to $16 for a book of 30.
• This makes sense to me.. strange.
  
• Increase the public vehicle license fee paid by limosuines and charter buses from $100 to $200 to $500 for everybody.
• Raise $9 million by requiring businesses and residential high-rises to purchase annual licenses for their garbage containers at a cost of $80 to $780.
• Cut $1.7 million city subsidy for free trolley rides.
• There's free trolley rides here? Wow.. I don't get out much.
  
• Privatize 35,000 parking meters by year’s end and apply $150 million to shortfalls this year and next. If it doesn’t work, more layoffs and tax hikes needed.
• Yes!! Privatize them so the company that gets the contract can make even more money than the city did! Brilliant!!
  
• Establish five-year, $100 million annuity with discretionary proceeds from the Midway Airport lease and spend $20 million a year through 2012.
• Save $5 million by consolidating city departments that handle consumer issues, human services, economic development and business affairs.
• Install red-light cameras at 50 more intersections.
• 50? Why not every 6 corner intersection and every intersection crossing a highway. Might as well make the most out of them. Will they catch bicyclists that don't stop as well?
  
• Raise $2 million by seeking sponsorships for city assets and events, beginning with a new agreement to provide beverage and vending services and city-owned facilities.
• Eliminate Fire Department Segway patrols in the Loop.
• There was a need for this to begin with?
  
• Raise daily and annual fees for merchants at Maxwell Street market to save popular Jumping Jack program for neighborhood festivals.
• Uh.. the Jumping Jack program is idiotic. What service does it really serve that the neighborhood organizers couldn't find in some other form?
  

Henry H Perrit Jr.'s View on the Proposed Chicago Event Promoter License

An incredible supporter of the independent artist community Henry Perritt has asked everyone to help distribute his White Paper, "Why the Event Promoters Ordinance should be rejected".

Please read it, repost it and repost it again. ANY and ALL feedback welcome.

Why the Event Promoters Ordinance should be rejected
[27 May 2008]

• The proposed ordinance does not address any public need



• Often justified as a response to the 17 February 2003 stampede in the E2 nightclub, which killed 21 people, the proposed ordinance does not address the problems that led to that tragedy:



• Too many people (1100) were in a venue that could safely accommodate only 300



• The City of Chicago had not determined the safe capacity of the venue



• The City had not acted on known building and fire code violations



• The venue’s security staff did not respond appropriately



• The proposed ordinance does not strengthen the City’s inspection and enforcement resources, powers, and will to act; instead it indemnifies the City from liability



• The ordinances regulating places where food is offered for sale require periodic city inspections; neither the proposed ordinance nor the existing PPA requires inspections



• The proposed ordinance targets event promoters rather than venue owners, although circumstances leading to the E2 tragedy were within control of the venue manager and not third-party promoters



• Venue owners, not third-party promoters, are in a position to control everything that might jeopardize the health or safety of fans



• The proposed ordinance does not fit the realities of how some of Chicago’s best music is made and promoted



• The 2007 Chicago Music City report prepared by a group at the University of Chicago for the Chicago Music Commission concluded that music in Chicago generates a payroll in excess of $1 billion annually and fuels the overall economy in Chicagoland.
• Significantly, it concluded that Chicago offers more kinds of music regularly than anywhere else except Los Angeles and New York, mostly in small clubs



• Most of the small clubs are operated informally and present bands and other performers that operate on a financial shoestring, rarely earning more than a few hundred dollars for a performance, and rarely netting more than a few thousand dollars per year for their music



• These bands and performers and the venues in which they perform scramble to attract an audience, relying on the band’s circle of friends and an occasional part-time amateur street team to distribute flyers and generate word of mouth



• The proposed ordinance contains several provisions that would burden small venues and less-known bands disproportionately



• It defines the regulated activity ( § 1-157-010, definition of “Event Promoter”) to include advertising so broadly that it would include:
• Word of mouth generated by a band or its supporters
• Distribution of flyers or posters publicizing a performance
• Free notices of performances on websites such as MySpace music pages, while exempting paid newspaper advertising


• It imposes unnecessary insurance requirements on promoters who have no control over safety in venues and thus are unlikely to be liable for injuries



• It prohibits fans under the age of 21 from engaging in promotion activities, although younger fans other play a crucial role in encouraging turnout for performances



• It would intimidate fans and band members from promoting a performance by requiring them to be fingerprinted and to fill out burdensome forms and keep burdensome records



• Paradoxically, it would regulate promoters for events at small venues while leaving intact the existing exemption for the venues themselves (PPA § 4-156-305(c))



• It exempts instrumental performances by groups with fewer than eight pieces (§ 4-156-305(f)) while providing no such exemption for small groups performing other kinds of music



• It exempts large venues, where any risk to public health and safety is greatest



• The proposed ordinance is unconstitutional
• It violates the First Amendment by regulating speech in the form of advertising over-broadly


• It violates due process by excluding ex-felons who have paid their debt to society and persons convicted of petty theft; federal court cases require a rational relationship between regulation of entertainment and risks to public health and safety; there is no such relationship here



• It violates equal protection of minority groups by disproportionately burdening promoters from such groups



• The City of Chicago should be supporting and promoting its smaller venues and lesser-known bands, but the ordinance imposes burdens instead



• The City should publish and distribute to hotels and airports a directory of smaller venues and lesser-known bands



• - It should provide links on its websites to private websites that offer current information about scheduled performances



• - It should provide financial support to smaller venues and lesser-known bands

Henry H. Perritt, Jr.
Professor of Law
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Member of the Illinois Bar
hperritt@kentlaw.edu
(312) 906-5098

Jim DeRogatis - Ordinance tabled (for now)

UPDATE: Promoter's ordinance tabled (for now)

Following a nearly unprecedented outpouring of concern from the Chicago music community and a meeting with activists and some of the top concert promoters and venue owners in Chicago, Ald. Eugene Schulter, chairman of the City Council License Committee, decided on Tuesday that he will not present the so-called "event promoter's ordinance" to the full council for a vote on Wednesday -- and that the committee will go back to work on fine-tuning the law.

Schulter and representatives of the city Department of Business Affairs & Licensing met with members of the Chicago Music Commission, Metro owner Joe Shanahan, Jam Productions talent booker Nick Miller and Double Door co-owner Sean Mulroney Tuesday morning, a day before the law was expected to be passed by the City Council.

Made aware of concerns in many corners of Chicago's arts communities, Schulter asked DBA for more facts and figures about the alleged "problem venues" and "underground promoters" that the ordinance was designed to curtail. Some of those who attended the meeting said DBA had to admit that it had no hard information and that it has not formally studied the extent of the alleged problem that the law was crafted to address; they had only the anecdotal evidence of the single tragic incident at the E2 Nightclub five years ago.

The law will return to committee for more work and public input before a council vote is considered again. Schulter told the meeting he expects that process will take at least a month.

"We are not sure when it will come out of committee for a vote, but we hope that Chairman Schulter will wait until he and the city have engaged the music community publicly and meaningfully so their concerns can be heard and hopefully incorporated into the eventual law," said Chicago Music Commission board member Bruce Iglauer.

"We are pleased that Chairman Schulter has responded to community concerns here, and we look forward to working with him, members of the Committee, DBA staff and other music community stakeholders to come up with a workable version of the ordinance."

Posted by Jim DeRogatis on May 13, 2008 01:00 PM

City of Chicago's Event Promoter License & Me

Ok, so what's the big deal about the Event Promoter License that the City of Chicago wants to enforce?

Here's the deal. I consider myself an Event Promoter. I might only put on 2 concerts a year and 1 dj night a month but that's considered an Event Organizer/Promoter.

So now, if this license passes I have to pay $2,000 a year in order to do what I like to do, at this point, as a hobby. Even though my events are within legitimate venues that have all the permits and licenses that are required. Even though I haven't made any money at all doing this in the past 2 years. In fact, I've given money away for these things to happen.

Technically, this effects every person that puts together any type of an event. A dj night, a concert, an art opening, any type of event that charges a cover at the door.

Well, they did change the terms of the license since last year.

Last year this license went all the way across the board. It effected every single person that ever put on a show. Here's one of the major ways it changed.

The license fee before was $2,000 for every 2 years, for everyone. For the little people like me all the way to the charity organizations and up to major organizations like, everyones friends, JAM Productions.

Here's how the license fees changed.

License fees, payable every two years, would range from $500 to $2,000, depending on the size of the venues in which the promoters operate. The city, non-profit organizations promoting their own events and promoters at "fixed-seating" venues with at least 500 seats, such as the United Center, would be exempt.

So here's a quick thought. Last year the license got shot down. You know why? Because places like the United Center, JAM Productions, the Rosemont and all the other major players said they'd take their business to the burbs. An action like that would culturally crush the city of Chicago. Not to mention the amount of money the city would lose out.

So now the city is listening to the major players and they decided that they shouldn't have to pay for this license. Even though, out of all the people that will be effected, the major players are the only ones that could afford such a ridiculous fee.

Here's another thing that I noticed from the Tribune's article. It's in regards to the E2 incident that happened almost 5 years ago.

Months after the stampede, an independent panel that reviewed the disaster and emergency response concluded that inadequate city inspection procedures and lack of city agency coordination allowed the club to stay open months after a court ordered it shut.

So wasn't it the city's fault that all this happened? Oh yea, the city doesn't do anything wrong.

If you want more information on this please follow these links.

Chicago City Council panel OKs licensing plan for event promoters
Chicago's promoter's ordinance: What the city wants, the city gets?
Jim DeRogatis' Blog
Chicago Music Commission's site
Rules inspired by E2 stampede approved


If you are an event promoter please contact your Alderman and express your concerns BEFORE Wednesday May 14th.. If you don't then don't feel bad that you have to leave the city to do the events that you like to do.

The floor at this meeting is not open to the public. It's a hearing for the Aldermen to vote on whether or not to impose the license.

This site will help you find out who your Alderman is and how to contact them.

http://www.chicityclerk.com/citycouncil/alderman/find.html

Go there, find them and contact them. Let them know your concerns and let them know how it will effect you.

If you can, appear at the hearing. Maybe if enough people show up to boo down the license they'll listen.

The hearing is on Wednesday May 14, 2008, at 10:00 a.m.

The City Council meets in the Council Chamber located on the Second Floor of City Hall, 121 North La Salle Street.