Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 1

Chicagoland Section 2 icago losing war against poverty, study says Sunday, July 10, 1988 Ch United Way tells of need for jobs, health care, housing for minorities 0 I f- il 4 1 1 i suggests it will be increasingly difficult for the poor to gain access to mainstream social and economic activities." Racial discrimination, both subtle and overt, is a major contributor to the problem, according to the study. "Chicago has made little progress toward desegregation," the authors state, and "and by 1980 was the most segregated metropolitan area in the country." "Systematic barriers to opportunity," they conclude, "underlie every human care problem in the city." The report cites cutbacks in federal spending on social programs as one cause for worsening conditions, but United Way officials predict a change in the White House will have little impact on the root causes of poverty here. "This is a cumulative problem, a long-term problem born of many factors," said Virgil Carr, president of the United Way of Chicago. "And those factors won't go away with the next presidential election, no matter who is elected." Carr conceded that the survey of local conditions, called an Environmental Analysis Report, "is a real downer." "But it gives us a base line," he said, "and it suggests how we can change what we're doing in order to make a difference." The report was prepared by the charity's 26-member Environmental By John McCarron Urban affairs writer The quality of life in Chicago has "deteriorated significantly" over the last two decades, mainly due to "an alarming concentration of poverty" in minority neighborhoods where basic human needs for jobs, housing and health care are going unmet. That grim conclusion was reached by a committee of experts who were asked recently by the United Way of Chicago to gauge social conditions here.

United Way commissioned the study to determine how best to allocate its share of funds from the annual Crusade of Mercy charity drive. Last year, the drive raised $52 million for 136 social service agencies in the city. But the new study indicates that Chicago, despite the efforts of its government and of charitable agencies like United Way, is losing its war on poverty and losing it badly. That's because the nature of poverty is changing, the experts say, as it becomes ever more concentrated in inner-city ghettos that have all but lost social and economic contact with the rest of the metropolitan area. "Chicago is facing significant new kinds of unemployment and poverty," the report states.

"Increased spatial concentration of poverty uumm Trlbune photo by Gerald West ing and health care are going unmet, according to a study commissioned by United Way Of Chicago. A group of men spend their time chatting on East 63d Street, one of several neighborhoods where basic human needs for jobs, hous- are several of the report's key findings: Population trends: The population in the city is now 43 percent white and Oriental, 41 percent black, and 16 percent Hispanic. Despite all the talk about a back-to-the-city movement and "gentrifi-cation," more whites still leave the city each year than arrive, though the loss has slowed to a trickle from the mass exodus of the '60s and '70s, when 50,000 to 60,000 whites left in an average year. Within racial groups, whites are disproportionately old, and blacks and Hispanics disproportionately young. Three quarters of city residents over the age of 75 are white, See Poverty, pg.

4 Analysis Committee, chaired by Kirsten Gronbjerg, professor of sociology at Loyola University. Its findings are to be presented Wednesday at a meeting of United Way's board of directors. Here, arranged by subject area, No vacation from school bus trouble 5 1 fi By Patrick Reardon James Hammock, a 9-year-old Northwest Side boy with severe learning disabilities, had to wait more than two hours Thursday for the bus to take him to summer school. But he was lucky. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the bus never picked him up at all.

James, who likes school and gets frustrated when he can't keep up with his classmates, sat on the bus for an hour and a half, sapped by temperatures that rose into the 90s, as the driver finished his route to Schubert School which is less than two miles from James' home, or about five minutes by car. But, again, James was lucky. Other children some as young as 6, all with severe learning disabilities had to ride that sweltering bus for as much as 3Vi hours before arriving at school. The nine children on the bus arrived drained, dazed and wilted one was crying and they all faced another long bus ride back home just 90 minutes later. Last week, throughout Chicago, thousands of public school children trying to attend special education classes during a 19-day summer school session were instead spending hours on buses or being left at the curbside because of foulups in bus service.

"It just tears your heart out," said James Maloney, the superintendent of two North Side elementary school districts. "It's such a disservice to the kids. "We cannot teach them on the buses." The school system's $66-miIlon-a-year transportation system, already hampered by an inability to adequately monitor bus service provided by private companies during the regular school year, has been further crippled this summer by a shortage of money, said Tessa Gaines, the head of the system's transportation bureau. "Kids are staying on the buses longer than usual. It's happening everywhere," Gaines said.

"We have a limited budget this year for summer transportation." Last year, the school system paid private bus firms more than $1 mil-See Buses, pg. 4 Ml 3, lr JO GOP slowly healing from its judge fight 1 DAVID 7," i It 3 1mm ilii or 4 LSI By John Schmeltzer The cause of a schism among Du Page County Republican Party members, who split in the March GOP primary election over a vacant Circuit Court seat, may be resolved by December through appointments by the Illinois Supreme Court. The first of those appointments occurred recently when, in a game of musical chairs, Judge Michael Galasso, the chief of the Du Page circuit's Domestic Relations Division, was named to fill a Circuit CohH vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Robert A. Nolan. The appointment extends Galasso's term by two years.

In turn, Nolan was appointed to fill the remaining five months of a term to which Galasso was appointed last January. And by December, Associate Judge John Nelligan is expected to be elevated to a full judgeship when Judge John McClarcn takes a scat on the appellate court. "That takes care of the two guys who are the most qualified and had wanted it," says Patrick Durante, chairman of the Addison Township Republican organization. But members of the party's hierarchy say the appointments do nothing to smooth over the bad blood that developed when Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moran surprised party regulars in December by naming Galasso instead of Nelligan to a Circuit Court seat formerly held by Judge Helen Kinney. Tribune photo by Carl Wagnar Seven-year-old Greg Stanek joins other youngsters last week in intently stalking the elusive firefly at the Wil-lowbrook Wildlife Haven Forest Preserve in Glen Ellyn.

In dark of night, flasher may be told to bug off A nominating committee named by Moran had rated Nelligan ahead of Galasso for the appointment. Both Nelligan and Galasso refused to withdraw from the March primary for nomination to the Circuit Court, forcing a three-way race that saw the organization's vote split. The split allowed former Chicago Bears placekicker Bob Thomas to win the GOP nomination by a few hundred votes. Thomas is expected to be easily elected in November. The primary campaign among the three turned out to be one of the most expensive elections in the county's history, with the candidates spending more than $300,000.

Galasso campaigned for the party nomination on the basis that he was the Supreme Court's choice; Nelligan said he was the choice of the court's nominating committee; Thomas campaigned against both, charging that court scats shouldn't be divvied up among the county's politicians. Durante said he and other party leaders weren't surprised that Moran named Galasso to a vacancy before Nelligan, who received the support of most of the party's hierarchy in the March primary. "He Moran had to save face," Durante said. "Galasso was a Supreme Court appointment. This says 'We were comfortable then and we're comfortable again.

We made See Judges, pg. 4 tf 'wi www, it b-. flb Hometowns Eric Zorn sr If Trlbun photo by MIchMl Frytr Focusing on AIDS The traveling Names project with more than 3,000 quilt panels, each panel representing a person who died from AIDS, is on display through Monday at Navy Pier to focus, attention on AIDS. Gties make architects sing for their suppers Larry Stcfanski, a female-firefly impersonator from War-rcnvillc, almost scored big in the mating game Thursday at a happening Glen Ellyn nightspot. "I've gotten a few," he said, kneeling seductively in the grass and attempting to get a few more by flicking the beam of his flashlight upward in a feminine fashion.

"They come close, about six inches away. Then the kids scare them Over his head, a winking constellation of male fireflies hovered, love on their tiny minds. They would flash, carving a white curl through the darkness, and Stcfanski would flash back by sliding the beam of his light across a hole poked in a square of black cardboard. The male fireflies thought this was terribly romantic. They would move in for a closer look, as gentlemen of many species are wont to do, and then, just as they were clearing their throats to deliver their opening lines "My dear, you arc positively luminescent this evening," or whatever some little human childrcn( would shriek past, chasing other fireflies, and the insect Lotharios would retreat to a safe distance.

It was a mad, merry courtship scene in the glade at the Willowbrook Wildlife Haven Forest Preserve. Stcfanski, like most of the adults present, had brought his children along to the firefly lecture and impersonation session, sharing with them the timeless mystery and wonder of the bright bugs of summer. "They fascinate people." he said, looking rather fascinated himself. The party was BYO flashlight. A group of 50 people assembled at six picnic tables just before dusk in a grassy area of the preserve to near an introductory talk by See Bug, pg.

3 By Blair Kamin The main public library is bursting at the scams. The city plans to construct a new building to replace it, and the library board wants to ask architects from around the country to compete to design the new structure. If it sounds like Chicago is about to flick the instant-replay switch on the architectural competition for the Harold Washington Library Center, guess again. This competition is being contemplated by Evanston officials, and it is one example of how Chicago and its suburbs arc beginning to follow a controversial practice that has altered the way municipalities across America spend millions of dollars for public buildings. By offering a wide range of design options, proponents say, competitions allow officials to tell which architect can give the public the most bang for its buck.

But some experts acknowledge that, if poorly run, competitions can blow up in the face of officials who hope to reap publicity and votes from them. "They have an enormous amount of justifiable anxiety that someone will come into town and design a Walt Disney building and leave them stuck with it," says Jeff Ollswang, a principal of Design Competition Advisory Services in Milwaukee and a consultant to Evanston officials. Traditionally, municipalities have selected architects by virtue of their political connections or by seeking out designers with good track records in municipal buildings, then asking them to present their qualifications and examples of past pro jects. In contrast, competitions of the kind being considered by Evanston are open to national and international fields of architects, and often draw hundreds of designs. Instead of being selected by city officials, the winner is chosen by a jury of architectural experts and community representatives.

This practice of selecting architects increased nationwide during the 1970s and 1980s. But it has been slow to catch on in the Chicago See pg. 4.