Chicago agrees to pay $1M and full fine for Daley's midnight destruction of Meigs

mikea

mikea

Touchdown! Greaser!
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iWin
After the $3M legal bill.

They finally agreed to the silly idea that you can't use airport improvement funds to bulldoze an airport. Dose meddlin' feds!

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meigs19.html

That whooshing sound you hear is the Chicago city accountants moving O'Hare and Midway airport money into other accounts to cover the $1M in "non-airport" money they're paying here.
 
now since they still have the control tower still standing if they could only pave a nice new runway and taxi area we would have a new Meigs that would sort of act as a big Middle Finger to the Mayor!!!
 
FAA needs to be able to add criminal charges for such purposeful deceit.
 
All together, a big yawn.

Unless the $1Mill comes directly out of the Mayors pocket, it won't/don't mean diddly squat, and will diswade him, or any other like minded public official, from absolutely nothing.

If they have to, they'll just raise the tax on something by a penny and recoup it in a couple of months.

Bottom line ... da mayor is still the mayor, he's got more $ and power than he did when Meigs was there, and Meigs is still gone ... forever.

He won.

mikea said:
After the $3M legal bill.

They finally agreed to the silly idea that you can't use airport improvement funds to bulldoze an airport. Dose meddlin' feds!

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meigs19.html

That whooshing sound you hear is the Chicago city accountants moving O'Hare and Midway airport money into other accounts to cover the $1M in "non-airport" money they're paying here.
Click to expand...
 
CapeCodJay said:
now since they still have the control tower still standing if they could only pave a nice new runway and taxi area we would have a new Meigs that would sort of act as a big Middle Finger to the Mayor!!!
Click to expand...

Why wasn't this done? (I'm sure I'm missing something but instead of fines, etc., I would just say "put it back".)
 
What are they trying to do? Make everyone in city hall die of laughter or something? A huge city the size of chicago having to fork out $1mil and a whopping $33,000 fine? That's more trivial to a them than if I had to pay the $10 fine for forgetting to sign the back of my vehicle registration form if I got caught.

That doesn't even rate sick joke. It's pathetic.
 
fgcason said:
What are they trying to do? Make everyone in city hall die of laughter or something? A huge city the size of chicago having to fork out $1mil and a whopping $33,000 fine? That's more trivial to a them than if I had to pay the $10 fine for forgetting to sign the back of my vehicle registration form if I got caught.

That doesn't even rate sick joke. It's pathetic.
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I agree and what I fear is that now there is this nice piece of waterfront land that will go the way of Corp. development!
 
fgcason said:
What are they trying to do? Make everyone in city hall die of laughter or something? A huge city the size of chicago having to fork out $1mil and a whopping $33,000 fine? That's more trivial to a them than if I had to pay the $10 fine for forgetting to sign the back of my vehicle registration form if I got caught.

That doesn't even rate sick joke. It's pathetic.
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It's better than just the $33K. I'm glad they had to pay something that at least resembles real money.
 
tom. said:
Why wasn't this done? (I'm sure I'm missing something but instead of fines, etc., I would just say "put it back".)
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'cuz it's Chicago, and if Da Mare don't want no airport, Da Mare don't gotta have no airport. Otherwise they could have fixed the runway instead of removing the rest of it. :(
 
Steve said:
Last paragraph in

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meigs18.html

Pressed on why the demolition had to be so secretive, he said, "There would be lawsuits galore. That's why. They'd be in federal court trying to monkey up the water."
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Yep. Friends of Miegs was ready to get a restraining order.

You should hear the saga of how they had to sneak around the public land at 2 AM to try to see what was going on. It was like the Manhattan project.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
It's better than just the $33K. I'm glad they had to pay something that at least resembles real money.
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The bill for O'Hare expansion just got a mysterious additional charge of $1 Million.
 
tom. said:
Why wasn't this done? (I'm sure I'm missing something but instead of fines, etc., I would just say "put it back".)
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Realistically, because the city owned the land and the feds didn't have the legal authority to make them do it. It bites.
 
gprellwitz said:
Realistically, because the city owned the land and the feds didn't have the legal authority to make them do it. It bites.
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The Chicago Park District owns the land. The City of Chicago supposedly has nothing to say about it...except that the entire board is appointed by duh mare.

One of the other fantasies in the original attack was that the Park District cancelled the lease for Meigs and the city had to remove it (at midnight, of course.) Then they used airport improvement funds to pay the costs, saying that the airport had to pay to it clean up.

Now you wanna talk about how the city never said how much revenue came in from the fees? They always said that Meigs was a drain on the revenue from Midway and O'Hare and would never let anybody see the books. They did things like making Meigs buy all of the trucks and snow plows that were used at the other airports. That's why be can be sure the $1M will be absorbed by other shenanigans.
 
Mike do you believe that there will someday be a new Meigs field?
As you are both a pilot and a Chicagoian (sp?) - whats your "gut" on the situation.
 
mikea said:
The Chicago Park District owns the land. The City of Chicago supposedly has nothing to say about it...except that the entire board is appointed by duh mare.
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Note that I didn't say which part of the city! But yeah, they're both attached closely to the Daleys.

And answering CapeCodJay's question (posed to you, but I'm a pilot who used to live in the City of Chicago and now lives in the suburbs), I don't think that there's any chance of the airport being rebuilt. I think most Chicagoans don't see it for the tragedy we take it to be. They see that there's a park there now that they can take personal advantage of and may actually use themselves.

It comes down to a sense of elitism, as in "small airports are for the elite", even if we don't want them to be perceived that way. Unless and until we can find a way to change that perception on the part of the general public, it'll be very difficult getting the average resident to have a sense of moral outrage commensurate with ours. Yeah, they might say "Wow, I didn't know he did that! That's outrageous! But I never used the airport anyway, so it's not that big a deal." But they aren't about to vote him out of office on the basis of this.
 
CapeCodJay said:
Mike do you believe that there will someday be a new Meigs field?
As you are both a pilot and a Chicagoian (sp?) - whats your "gut" on the situation.
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Two mayoral candidates, Jesse Jackon, Jr. and Bill "Dock" Walls say they would rebuild Meigs. They aren't going to win but there is a thought they may force a runoff election.

The Chicago electorate is only going to think they love seeing Tom Petty at the no-bid Clear Channel concert venue on Northerly Island park.

If they'll forget that his cronies sold city trucks to relatives and then paid hourly rates thereafter to hire them while they're parked, Meigs is small potatoes. The City Clerk got indicted as part of that deal. It never touches Daley directly.
 
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gprellwitz said:
It comes down to a sense of elitism, as in "small airports are for the elite", even if we don't want them to be perceived that way. Unless and until we can find a way to change that perception on the part of the general public, it'll be very difficult getting the average resident to have a sense of moral outrage commensurate with ours.
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Unfortunately, fencing in the airports for security doesn't help the matter, the way it is often done. With a little thought, the fences can be arranged such that there are places for the kids to play, benches for people, and so forth. I don't consider parks/golf courses and airports to be incompatible uses if done with forethought.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Unfortunately, fencing in the airports for security doesn't help the matter, the way it is often done. With a little thought, the fences can be arranged such that there are places for the kids to play, benches for people, and so forth. I don't consider parks/golf courses and airports to be incompatible uses if done with forethought.
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If you've seen One Six Right, you will see the way Van Nuys has done it; much as you describe. We (1C5) have a restaurant on the field with picnic tables right next to the Navy T-2 Trainer on static display. Meigs was always neat because you could sit on the grounds of the park across the harbor inlet and watch the planes and helicopters come and go. I remember watching rescue divers do practice entries off helicopters right next to the airport.
 
gprellwitz said:
If you've seen One Six Right, you will see the way Van Nuys has done it; much as you describe. We (1C5) have a restaurant on the field with picnic tables right next to the Navy T-2 Trainer on static display. Meigs was always neat because you could sit on the grounds of the park across the harbor inlet and watch the planes and helicopters come and go. I remember watching rescue divers do practice entries off helicopters right next to the airport.
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Meigs had a public observation deck. I remember going there as a mere lad and I'm a lot older than you.

The last years at the end the cops wouldn't let anybody get close. The public parking lot was filled with police cars because they used it for storage for the police detail. A lot of taxi drivers didn't know how to get to Meigs.
 
gprellwitz said:
And answering CapeCodJay's question (posed to you, but I'm a pilot who used to live in the City of Chicago and now lives in the suburbs), I don't think that there's any chance of the airport being rebuilt. I think most Chicagoans don't see it for the tragedy we take it to be.
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Grant,

You'd think so, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the reaction of my non-pilot friends from the area. To them it wasn't so much about the airport, but they were appalled at how blatant an example of Chicago politics that was.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Grant,

You'd think so, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the reaction of my non-pilot friends from the area. To them it wasn't so much about the airport, but they were appalled at how blatant an example of Chicago politics that was.
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First, Kent, what are you doing up at 3 AM? Shouldn't you be getting some sleep before you get back on the road?

Second, yes, they are shocked and apalled, but see it as politics as usual in Chicago and don't see the loss of the airport as a big thing, just the loss of something without due process. They're not jumping out trying to get it rebuilt (with the notable exception of some at Friends of Meigs).
 
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