CHICAGO CUBS
Pena making most of trip to Boston
May 21, 2011
…Republic and moved to Haverhill, Mass., in his teens. He played briefly with the Red Sox in 2006, and some of his Cubs teammates asked him last week what Fenway Park was like. “I said, ‘I’m not saying a word. I want you to take…
Quade has no fear of pitting Soriano vs. Green Monster
May 20, 2011
…After thinking it over Thursday night, Cubs manager Mike Quade went with…DeWitt in left. As for when the Cubs are at the plate, hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo…the Monster.” Cashner watch: The Cubs will send Andrew Cashner to see Dr…
Youth baseball: Grant Township duo headed for Friendly Confines
The Chicago Cubs may be a second-division baseball team in the National League but a couple of first-rate players will be at the Friendly Confines …
DUPAGE COUNTY BOARD
Give border towns fair shake in remap
– 05/22/11
There is a possibility that the democratic controlled state house and senate may create a new legislative map that takes some of the border communities of DuPage and splits them up into small pieces and puts them into new legislative districts that…
Proposed County Board District 5 map unveiled in Naperville
Naperville residents got a glimpse Wednesday night at a proposed new DuPage County Board map for District 5, which would include almost all of Naperville. …
MOTOROLA MOBILITY
Illinois tax incentive packages growing larger
By David Mercer, Associated Press – 05/22/11
According to state records, Illinois’ government agreed last year to give $272.7 million in tax breaks and other incentives to 67 companies that had invitations from other states to move jobs elsewhere
METRA
Pay daily fee parking by phone at Naperville, Route 59 stations
About to miss your train? Forget your Smart Card, cash or credit card to pay for your daily fee parking space? Commuters now can pay-by-phone …
NICTD eyes boost in non-peak train ridership
The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District is launching a campaign in hopes of attracting riders during nonpeak service hours.
Ridership numbers during those hours on …
CHICAGO CUBS
Pena making most of trip to Boston
Cubs first baseman has opportunity to visit with family, teammates from college
By Paul Sullivan, Tribune reporter
8:35 p.m. CDT, May 21, 2011
BOSTON — Carlos Pena returned to his alma mater, Northeastern University, on Saturday to help retire the number of his former teammate Greg Montalbano, who died of cancer in 2009.
“It was cool to see my old teammates,” Pena said. “That was very, very cool, emotional and special for me. Beyond that, I’ve just been spending time with my mom, dad, my brother and my sisters.”
Pena was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to Haverhill, Mass., in his teens. He played briefly with the Red Sox in 2006, and some of his Cubs teammates asked him last week what Fenway Park was like.
“I said, ‘I’m not saying a word. I want you to take it in when you get there,’ ” he said. “For me, when I got to Wrigley, I was flipping out when I saw it — it was a special moment. So why would I ruin it for them if it’s the same type of feeling? And I assume it will be the same way if you walk up there and see that Green Monster if you’ve never seen it.”
Pena considers himself lucky to have called both ballparks home.
“Sometimes we don’t realize how special we are to play in places like this,” he said. “That’s crazy. Babe Ruth played here. The history of baseball, that’s what it’s all about — places like Wrigley and Fenway. I don’t want to forget I’m wearing a uniform and playing in places like this. That’s what dreams are made of.”
Out of left field: Blake DeWitt started in left field, his first career start in the outfield. DeWitt began taking fly balls in the outfield a few weeks ago in hopes of getting more playing time now that Darwin Barney is the everyday second baseman.
DeWitt said he studied the caroms off the Green Monster on Friday to see how it plays.
“I’m just worried about catching the ball and throwing it,” he said. “I can’t go out and try to be perfect.”
Quade has no fear of pitting Soriano vs. Green Monster
Cubs manager keeps left fielder in place, uses Ramirez as DH
By Paul Sullivan, Tribune reporter
9:03 p.m. CDT, May 20, 2011
BOSTON — After thinking it over Thursday night, Cubs manager Mike Quade went with Alfonso Soriano in left field on Friday at Fenway Park and used Aramis Ramirez as the designated hitter.
Quade said he wasn’t concerned about Soriano’s ability to play balls off the Green Monster in left.
“I have no fear,” he said. “I don’t worry about that at all. Everybody talks about the Monster, which is fine, but try playing right field here — that’s a much tougher chore.”
Soriano made a fielding error in the seventh inning, though the Green Monster wasn’t a factor. Quade said Soriano might DH on Saturday, with Blake DeWitt in left.
As for when the Cubs are at the plate, hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo had them concentrating on line drives before Friday’s game, even though the Green Monster is an inviting target for right-handed hitters.
“I’m not saying we can’t pull the ball, but you’ve got to have the right approach to pull the ball,” Jaramillo said. “You’ve got to stay inside the baseball if you’re going to try and hit a pitch that’s in to that Monster. Hopefully we don’t let that Monster get in the way and just execute at home plate and we will hit the Monster.”
Cashner watch: The Cubs will send Andrew Cashner to see Dr. Lewis Yocum in Los Angeles on Monday for a second opinion on his shoulder injury. Cashner experienced more tightness in his rotator cuff last week while rehabbing in Mesa, Ariz., and has been shut down.
“I think the world of Lew, and for the kid’s sake, you’ve always got to see someone else,” general manager Jim Hendry said. “And his agent agreed, so it’s the right thing to do.”
The Cubs aren’t worried that Cashner will need surgery. He’s not expected to return before the All-Star break, though no timetable has been given.
“Obviously I’m worried for the kid, and I feel sad for him,” Hendry said.
Extra innings: Randy Wells will start for Triple-A Iowa on Sunday, and Hendry said he’ll likely return to the Cubs on Friday or Saturday against the Pirates at Wrigley Field. … The Cubs began Friday’s game with a 98-107 interleague record.
Youth baseball: Grant Township duo headed for Friendly Confines
News-SUn staff report May 23, 2011 02:18AM
The Chicago Cubs may be a second-division baseball team in the National League but a couple of first-rate players will be at the Friendly Confines next Sunday.
That’s when Grant Township Area Athletic Association members Sydney Goessele and Anastasia Brown will be swinging for the fences, so to speak, as they participate in the next level of play in the MLB’s Pitch/Hit/Run baseball/softball competition.
Sydney and Anastasia qualified to go to Wrigley Field by virtue of posting top scores in a local tournament.
League play in the GTAAA is now in full swing, after an impressive series of Opening Day events at Veteran’s Park.
The next big thing for all the players will be picture day on Sunday, June 5.
GTAAA is a private, non-profit organization, based in Fox Lake/Ingleside.
GTAAA offers baseball, softball, T-ball and basketball to younths in the community.
The objective of the organizion is to implant firmly in the players the ideals of good sportsmanship, honesty, loyalty and respect for others by providing a system of supervised, competitive athletics.
GTAAA is always looking for Volunteers. For more information on how you can make a difference, call (847) 587-7608.
DUPAGE COUNTY BOARD
Give border towns fair shake in remap
There is a possibility that the Democratic-controlled state house and senate may create a new legislative map that takes some of the border communities of DuPage and splits them up into small pieces and puts them into new legislative districts that straddle Cook County. The concern is that a DuPage border community could become a very small part of these new dual-county districts.
I believe special consideration must be given to these border communities. Ten DuPage communities reside on the Cook County border. These Cook-DuPage border communities have very different property tax, sales tax, gas tax and legislative agendas. There are recognized differences between them for everything from public transit, how each county gets its water and separate community college districts. These areas and others eventually need Springfield legislative support.
DuPage and Cook communities also have separate legislative agendas. The DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference lobbies legislators for 36 communities. Cook County has a separate west central mayor’s caucus representing 37 Cook communities that border DuPage.
The border community’s ability to receive legislative assistance for needs, from roads to community grant proposals, will be greatly diluted if this fractional representation becomes a reality, especially if compared to the unfair advantage that whole communities within a legislative district will have. The message you would be sending with such a map is that border communities such as Roselle, Elmhurst, Wood Dale, Itasca and Bensenville do not deserve to be heard as a whole.
And whatever shape the map takes, allow the communities time to comment on it. There has been some important legislation coming out of Springfield regarding transparency as of late — it would be a shame if that consideration of transparency didn’t extend to the proposed map before a final vote.
Paul Fichtner
Elmhurst
Member, DuPage County Board, Dist. 1
Proposed County Board District 5 map unveiled in Naperville
By Dan Cassidy dcassidy@stmedianetwork.com May 23, 2011 03:42AM
Naperville residents got a glimpse Wednesday night at a proposed new DuPage County Board map for District 5, which would include almost all of Naperville.
A group including District 5 board members John Zediker, Tony Michelassi and Jim Healy has been working on a new map for the district. The county is mandated to redraw its district boundaries based on the 2010 census, which showed population growth in District 5.
DuPage faces a July 1 deadline to finalize its new County Board map.
To make all six County Board districts contain about the same number of people, 11,000 residents in the current District 5 have to become part of other districts.
District 6, which has about 3,000 people too many, will also have to lose population.
The map presented Wednesday night at a Naperville League of Women Voters meeting showed the District 5 boundaries being very similar to what they are now. There were two areas that would change under the proposed map: The vast majority of the University Heights subdivision would move into District 3, and an area in the north of the district bounded by Lucent Lane on the north, Yender Road on the east, Naperville Road on the west and the Burlington Northern-Sante Fe Railroad tracks on the south would also move out of the district.
“We would have liked to have kept all of Naperville” in the district, but it just wasn’t possible, Healy said of the proposed map. “We had to lose some things in the east (of the district).”
No other ways of arranging the district map made sense, he said.
“Some said we should give all of Aurora to District 6, but you can’t do that,” he said. “We would lose too many people, and District 6 also needs to lose people (already). Any movements have to make it so, in the end, every (district) ends up being equal.”
He said the map was designed to try and keep cities in the same district if possible, and in fact, it was drawn with the thought of trying to keep individual neighborhoods in the same district.
In the end, Healy said, “the district really changes very little. People will be surprised. There aren’t that many changes.”
According to Healy, at public hearings, “everybody said it was OK to lose the two areas” leaving District 5 under the proposed map.
At the meeting, residents were able to talk to District 5 representatives and get a look at the proposal.
Mary Wright, vice president of the Naperville League of Women Voters, said it was important that people have a chance to look at the map.
“It’s important for citizens to know what happening in government,” she said.
She called the proposed map a “logical” solution to the District 5 problem of having to lose some areas to help even out population among the county’s districts. She also said it is good that Naperville will remain almost entirely in District 5.
Resident Connie Burns was impressed with the proposal and the meeting itself.
“These people deserve high marks,” she said of the county officials who gave the presentation. “This is great.”
The District 5 proposal will now go to the county Redistricting Committee, which will also soon be receiving proposed maps from the other districts. In the end, it will be the full County Board which will approve the new districting map for the county.
MOTOROLA MOBILITY
Illinois tax incentive packages growing larger
By David Mercer, Associated Press
CHAMPAIGN — As the recession started to ease in 2010, an increasing number of companies asked the state to give them tax breaks and other incentives to keep their jobs in Illinois.
So state officials said yes. Again and again and again.
According to state records, Illinois’ government agreed last year to give $272.7 million in tax breaks and other incentives to 67 companies that had invitations from other states to move jobs elsewhere. That’s more than quadruple what Illinois promised the 44 companies that received incentives packages in 2006, and more than double the financial commitment in 2009, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.
With promises of $230 million already made this year — including an unprecedented $100 million package for Motorola Mobility and another being negotiated now with Sears Holding Corp. — 2011’s tally will almost certainly surpass 2010’s.
Gov. Pat Quinn and state economic development officials agreed to the incentive packages as Illinois wrestled with a multibillion budget deficit, one that would lead the governor to push through steep income tax increases earlier this year.
State officials say they had little choice but to ante up when approached by companies with offers from elsewhere as the recession began to ease up.
“That’s when they would come to states and say we may do this in your state, or somewhere else. What do you have?” said Gabriel Sanders, deputy director of the Office of Business Development at the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
Department spokeswoman Marcelyn Love said state officials knew they’d face criticism if they didn’t try to retain the jobs and investment. “Would you like to see these jobs go out of state?” she asked.
But there is no shortage of critics of the state’s approach. Some say Illinois had to commit more money at least in part because it was desperate to hold down rising unemployment — statewide, the unemployment rate was 10 percent or higher for much of last year.
“Illinois essentially got caught with their pants down — a lot of other states were very aggressive out there,” said Brent Pollina, vice president of Park Ridge-based Pollina Corporate Real Estate, which works with companies looking for new locations. “All the sudden the state desperately needed to create jobs because of their unemployment levels and they said wow, we need to do something here.”
Illinois promised, on average, about $10,000 per job in 2006. By 2010, the figure had ballooned to about $17,000.
The incentives Illinois offers include tax breaks — primarily through the Economic Development for a Growing Economy program — as well as job training and direct grants. The tax breaks require firms to maintain or create certain numbers of jobs. In some cases, the companies don’t receive the breaks if they don’t live up to the terms.
Most of the deals are heavily focused on retention of existing jobs with usually much smaller numbers of new jobs promised, and in many cases no new jobs at all. For that reason and others, economists almost universally condemn the incentives as bad policy.
The tax breaks, most say, usually just subsidize existing positions — or worse, pay companies to move existing jobs from one place to another, often just a few miles away. Few if any companies will decide to stay or go based strictly on a tax cut whose size and significance is likely dwarfed by considerations such as labor, transportation and building costs.
“What they need is a stable tax environment where the state provides good public services — infrastructure, public education and things of that sort,” said Fred Giertz, an economist at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. “Going out and having that kind of `let’s make a deal’ approach is not generally that productive.”
“If you’re a politician,” he added, “it doesn’t really look that way. For a politician it’s sort of more dramatic and more obvious (to offer incentives); you can cut the ribbons and take credit and so on.”
Other states have been spending more, too. Missouri agreed to $58.5 million in tax credits in 2006 and just over $101 million last year, according to its Department of Economic Development. And Texas used its main incentives programs to make deals worth $52.7 million in 2006, a figure that jumped to $103.4 million in 2010, according to Gov. Rick Perry’s office.
But those packages were dwarfed by Illinois’. Some of the bigger deals from 2009 and 2010:
• Motorola Mobility, the consumer electronics maker, just this month agreed to a $100 million deal to keep the company’s headquarters and 3,000 jobs in Libertyville. It is one of the largest incentives deals in state history.
• Last October, Chrysler agreed to a $62.1 million deal to maintain 2,300 jobs and invest $600 million at its Belvidere assembly plant.
• The engine maker Navistar in December 2010 accepted a $64.7 million package to move its headquarters and 2,200 jobs to Lisle from Warrenville — about 3 miles away — rather than Alabama, Texas or South Carolina.
• In June 2010, U.S. Cellular and the state agreed to a $7.2 million deal in exchange for the company keeping 1,075 jobs at its Chicago headquarters and another site in Bensenville. The company had interest from other states.
• And in October, the food processor Tate & Lyle, based in the United Kingdom, signed a deal to take $15 million in incentives to move about 140 jobs from Decatur to a new complex in Hoffman Estates, and add 20 new positions. The state said it was competing with offers from Indiana and Tennessee.
Decatur was happy the company agreed to preserve another 140 jobs it had considered moving, said Craig Coil, president of the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur and Macon County. “The reality of it is that companies around the world have become used to the incentives game and they play that game well,” he said.
Brian Glowiak, Chrysler’s director of state and local government relations, said Chrysler had offers from other states but also Mexico, where it has two plants. Money, like the $600 million Chrysler promises to spend in Belvidere, could be spent anywhere else, he said, referring to the “portability of capital.”
“It’s not just Belvidere competing against Detroit,” Glowiak said.
Earlier this month Sears Holdings Corp. said it’s considering moving its headquarters and 6,200 jobs out of state when its current incentives package with the state expires. The state and town are trying to negotiate a new deal with the retailer.
METRA
Pay daily fee parking by phone at Naperville, Route 59 stations
From submitted reports May 22, 2011 02:37AM
About to miss your train? Forget your Smart Card, cash or credit card to pay for your daily fee parking space? Commuters now can pay-by-phone for the daily fee parking spaces at the Naperville and Route 59 Metra stations.
Need a reason to pay-by-phone? Here are four:
No need to pay at the daily fee machine.
Pay for parking from the comfort of your car or the train.
Reduce your chances of missing the train when you are running behind schedule.
View and print parking receipts online.
You must sign up ahead of time by calling 1-888-450-7275 or visiting www.paybyphone.com. Provide the following information to register: mobile phone number and a credit card (Visa or MasterCard). Registration is free.
Rates for daily fee parking, which is on a first-come, first-serve basis, stay the same, which are: normal daily parking fees $2 or marked spaces at the DuPage Children’s Museum $5. If you pay-by-phone, a 35-cent convenience fee per transaction will be charged to your credit card.
Once you have an account, here’s how to pay-by-phone:
Call 1-888-450-7275 or visit www.paybyphone.com
Enter location number: Route 59 station — 3441; Naperville station — 3442
Enter parking space number
Remember to pay when you park and pay for the correct parking space — or you could get a ticket.
NICTD eyes boost in non-peak train ridership
By Chelsea Schneider Kirk cschneider@post-trib.com May 21, 2011 02:01AM
Fare increase
A 2 percent annual fare increase approved by the NICTD Board will take effect June 1. Under the new fare structure, a monthly train pass from the Hammond and East Chicago stations will cost
$147.85.
Fares from the Hegewisch station are unaffected because those rates are controlled by Metra.
The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District is launching a campaign in hopes of attracting riders during nonpeak service hours.
Ridership numbers during those hours on the South Shore Line are
9 percent behind those posted from January through April of last year.
NICTD officials contend the February blizzard plus the President’s Day holiday falling outside the Chicago Auto Show contributed to the loss of 18,000 passengers. Total ridership is down 2.4 percent this year, but NICTD is seeing an uptick in weekend and holiday rides.
The $75,000 campaign aims to lure passengers to take the South Shore as an easy way to visit Chicago.
Later phases of the plan will attract riders to Indiana destinations such
as South Bend and the Indiana dunes.
“We’ll judge how effective this gets us westbound, then target eastbound,” NICTD General Manager Gerald Hanas said.
A new website will launch in June explaining to potential riders how to ride the South Shore and highlights Chicago-area hot spots. Along with the website, NICTD will start an advertising campaign.
NICTD spokesman John Parsons said the campaign aims to alleviate the intimidation factor among some people of riding the train.