Mayor Emanuel points to where the annual budget hearings will go.

Great story by Curtis Black for the Newstips wire service of the Community Media Workshop.

It’s about Mayor Emanuel canceling the age-old tradition of holding annual budget hearings out in the neighborhoods, where he meets the little people and the little people meet him.

Apparently there’s only so much meeting with the little people that Mayor Rahm can take.

Anyway, well done, Curtis! Take a bow and ask your boss—Thom Clark—to give you a raise.

And I say that not just because you quote me in the story, though that may have something to do with it.

As Curtis makes clear—by the way, did I mention that he quotes me?—Mayor Harold Washington started the tradition of annual budget hearings back in the good old days when Chicago had the world’s greatest mayor.