Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, December 8, 2016.
- Weather: The cold front begins, snow likely
It will get colder Thursday, with a high of 27 and a low of 21—but it will feel like the temperature is in the single digits. It’s supposed to be cloudy and windy, with a good chance of snow during the day. [AccuWeather]
- Rahm on Trump meeting : “very good” and “frank, direct, and honest”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel met with president-elect Donald Trump for 45 minutes in New York City Wednesday morning. Emanuel brought Trump a letter signed by several big-city mayors asking the future president to continue Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows children brought to the U.S. without documentation before they were 16 to stay in the country, study, and work. “All of us fundamentally believe that those are students, those are also people that want to join the armed forces,” the mayor told reporters after the meeting. “They gave their name, their address, their phone number, where they are. They are trying to achieve the American dream—no fault of their own, their parents came here. They are something we should hold up and embrace.” [Tribune] [WBEZ]
- Alderman Beale wants to reform honorary street-sign program
Alderman Anthony Beale is proposing major changes to the city’s honorary street-sign program to prevent his “colleagues from making mistakes.” Under his proposal living Chicagoans would no longer be eligible, recipients would have to have “distinguished themselves by significant contributions to the city, state, nation, world,” and the honor would only last five years unless renewed by the City Council. This week the city finally removed the honorary “Trump Plaza” sign from outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower, several weeks after the City Council voted to do so. [DNAinfo Chicago] [Sun-Times]
- Governor Rauner signs legislation to keep two Illinois nuclear plants open
Governor Bruce Rauner signed legislation Wednesday that will keep two Illinois nuclear plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities open by “providing billions of dollars in subsidies to Exelon,” according to the Associated Press. “I was unwilling to gamble with these communities, gamble with thousands of good-paying jobs, and gamble with our energy future,” the governor said in a statement. “While this legislation isn’t perfect, it allows us to protect jobs, ratepayers and taxpayers.” [Associated Press via Sun-Times]
- ComEd bills will go up starting in January
The annual delivery rate for ComEd utilities will increase by 5 percent in 2017, increasing bills for residential customers by about $2 a month starting in January. The fee increase is expected to generate around $127.5 million in revenue for ComEd next year. [Tribune]
- Englewood toy drive for gunshot victims under ten also hands out college money
Four Englewood children under the age of ten who survived gunshot wounds will each receive $500 trust accounts to be used for college tuition, in addition to toys from the “Christmas Extravaganza Good in the Wood Toy Drive Give Away.” The toy drive, organized by Graham Funeral Directors president and owner Devry S. Graham, will give 1,000 toys away to neighborhood children on December 17. “Over the summer, there was such a bad taste in the city and community’s mouth concerning policing and violent crime, that we just wanted to show that there are some people out here who are not trying to do stuff to be seen, but they really care about what goes on with our children,” he told DNAinfo Chicago. [DNAinfo Chicago]