ILLINOIS HUMANITIES COUNCIL NAMES DEKALB PUBLIC LIBRARY AS RECIPIENT OF 2007 LAWRENCE W. TOWNER AWARD
Launched "Heroes at Your Library" teen reading discussion group
CHICAGO - The DeKalb Public Library has been named the winner of the 2007 Lawrence W. Towner Award for their project "Heroes At Your Local Library." Steven Torres-Roman, a librarian at the DPL, is the project director.
"Heroes at Your Library" is a year-long reading and discussion group for teens. Not a typical reading series, "Heroes" will feature an important graphic novel each month, as well as promote discussion. The novels will consider the theme of the meaning of heroes in society and culture. A library staff person with an expertise in graphic novels will facilitate the reading and discussion.
The Towner Award was created in 1985 by the Illinois Humanities Council Board of Directors in memory of a past chairman, Lawrence W. Towner. It was instituted to encourage "risk-taking in the development and execution of a public humanities project." It is more appropriate to recognize such qualities at the beginning of the project when the risk was undertaken, rather than after its completion.
Got Quarters? Putting public services in private hands
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7:00pm - 8:00pm
Parking a car in Chicago is going to get even more expensive with Mayor Daley's plan to privatize the city's 36,000 parking meters. Under the plan, meter rates would increase to $1 an hour. By 2013, drivers will pay $6.50 an hour to park at downtown meters.
When the City Council Finance Committee met last week to debate the plan, aldermen complained about everything from soaring rates to end of parking-meter holidays, "to allowing the private operator to write parking tickets as frequently as every two hours at two-hour meters," the Chicago Tribune reported. Ald. Danny Solis (25th) said: "I could see people having to carry big bags of quarters - big bags of money - to deal with" these rate hikes.
Under the plan, Chicago pockets $1.2 billion to allow the partnership of Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and LAZ Parking to lease and manage the city's meter operations for 75 years. By leasing the meters, Chicago sought to fill a $150 million budget hole. The city's Chief Financial Officer Paul Volpe, said there were two choices:"cutting $150 million in expenses or raising $150 million worth of taxes."
Oral History of Union County Hispanic Farmworkers
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