Take action: Residents in 4 wards have opportunity to directly influence expenditure of $4 million on infrastructure

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The walls of the Mess Hall community center in Rogers Park are covered in project proposals, in 2010. Photo by Samuel Barnett. See more photos from Barnett.

Major updates, 11:17 AM

We received an email Participatory Budgeting Chicago manager Thea Crum, at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Great Cities Institute, that four alderman will be conducting participatory budgeting in their wards, committing $4 million in discretionary spending (which is short of the $5.2 million in menu funds they have available).

The four alderman are:

  • Leslie Hairston, 5th
  • John Arena, 45th
  • James Cappleman, 46th (see details below)
  • Joe Moore, 49th

Continue reading Take action: Residents in 4 wards have opportunity to directly influence expenditure of $4 million on infrastructure

The Bike Swap on Saturday was an informative event

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Randy Neufeld, Even Jennings, and Mike Amsden. Photo by Eric Rogers.

Thank you to the tens of people who visited the Grid Chicago table at the Chicago Bike Swap in the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse on Saturday. We thoroughly enjoyed talking to current and (hopefully) new readers of our blog. We handed out pins, business cards, and demonstrated the site. Since there was no wifi or electricity available, we improvised: we showed off the website with an iPad and a mobile hotspot. MobileCitizen generously lent us the mobile hotspot for the day. I was also able to talk to people about the Get Lit campaign.

In addition to the myriad organizations signing up interested guests, and shops selling bike parts, handlebar smartphone holders, and cycling caps, there were many great presentations. I filmed two: a Q&A on bicycling with kids with three Logan Square parents called “Kids in the Saddle: Raising the Next Generation of Cyclists”; and “Decade of Revolution: the Rise of Bicycle Transportation in Chicago”. The videos will be up later this week – each are longer than 30 minutes and will take some time to edit for publishing. Continue reading The Bike Swap on Saturday was an informative event