Now, I've tried to do this before.  You have to understand that people in our community who are active across the spectrum always assume they disagree, often do disagree and some absolutely despise each other (and half of them hate me and half of them love me).  So it's not a simple matter.  You have to get yourself ready. 

The people who really hate me don't want to do this process because they're the ones who always to go the meeting, so they would normally have the full say. This is part of the dynamic that is not unique to our community.  I think this is true in most communities.  People who volunteer get vested in things, and then it's theirs.  That's a good thing, but sometimes they become protective of their role.  It's a weakness, a human weakness, and it happens. 

So this is the struggle to really stretch beyond that.  I think it will be very dynamic, given the personalities it will be dynamic.  And there will be people who don't want it to work but will have to be involved in it because it's happening anyway.  So we'll see.

Meanwhile, there's another TIF that people want to do on this entertainment district, and I can see a million potentials (both good and bad) for these things coming together.  I gave them the same criteria.  They had with them someone who used to work for the Department of Law who used to argue with me in the City Council about these very same issues. The thing about the City's Law Department is that they are, in my view, totally dogmatic and completely inflexible.  Lawyers can argue any position, right?  So once they get the word down, they can't ever change. 

So here I am sitting in a meeting telling the developers what my bottom line is in terms of a community-driven process and where the TIF dollars should go.  I had already been told by other people in the City's Planning department, "Cool.  We'll find a way to do it."  But this attorney is giving me the same argument she was giving me before, so I don't know if it's going to work.  Finally, the developer got frustrated with her and said, "Look, we're just going to get the law, and we're going to give it to the alderman." Okay.  So we'll see.

But in that neighborhood there are concrete issues of affordable housing.  In the city of Chicago if you have a diverse community, it is not what politicians mean when they say they want to create a mixed-income community.  When policy makers talk about creating mixed income communities, they're talking about taking a low-income community, disbursing it or using its land and resources and letting a small percentage remain as low-income along with all those other incomes.