Chicago summers are sacred. After months of brutal cold, the city comes alive. In my neighborhood, summers are different.
For years, we’ve been trapped inside our own homes by the smells from Pullman Innovations, an oil and fat refining facility at 2701 E. 100th St. The stench permeates our clothes, our cars, our kids’ coats. It pushes through closed windows and keeps neighbors up at night. Residents blocks away wear masks indoors and burn incense just to get through the evening.
City inspectors have described the odor in their reports as “rotting fish/decay of flesh.” One wrote that it “instantly made me nauseous and made me want to vomit.” The inspectors got to leave. My neighbors don’t.
If this happened in Lincoln Park for one afternoon, the facility would be padlocked by sundown. But the plant isn’t in Lincoln Park. It’s on the Southeast Side in the working-class Black and Brown community where I was raised and where I’m raising my sons.
Instead of action, we get statements. Minor citations. Promises about new odor controls the company has been making since 2016, when it took over from a previous owner that racked up hundreds of complaints before going bankrupt, facing a state lawsuit.
This isn’t an inconvenience. It’s canceled birthday parties. Grandparents can’t sit on their porches, and parents have pulled kids off the playground because they’re gagging. Chemicals used there cause nausea, headaches and breathing problems.
It’s getting worse. Last year, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency said Pullman Innovations failed “to timely obtain a construction permit prior to the construction” of a huge industrial boiler. The company is quietly expanding a facility that already can’t control what it emits next door to a public park.
We agree with state officials who have called out the federal rollback of environmental protections. Now show us you mean it. Halt any unpermitted construction. Revoke the operating permits. Shut this facility down. Stop letting an oil refinery for chicken feed make life unlivable for Chicago residents because we live south of 95th Street.
We’re not asking for another meeting. We’re asking for the same protection any North Side neighborhood would get in one afternoon.
Gina Ramirez, Southeast Side resident and director, Midwest Environmental Health, National Resources Defense Council
Road rage
Every part of the brain has distinctive functions. The frontal lobe is in charge of thinking, planning, decision-making and maintaining an attention span.
Did the COVID-19 pandemic erase that function from us whether we suffered from the virus or not?
I took my latest driving test at 80, and the examiner said I was an excellent driver. Thinking back to obtaining my license in high school in 1960, I almost flunked the exam as I “rolled through” a stop sign while making a right turn.
Fast forward to 2026. Why do we have posted speed limits? No one adheres to them. The streets are full of motorists driving over the speed limit, and there are numerous hit-and-runs with people being killed.
What about the expressways? The posted limit is 55 mph in Illinois’ urban areas. Yet if I am going 60 or 65 mph (yes, over the posted limit), I am passed by others going 70 and 80 mph. Every day there are reports of accidents involving two, three or four cars, or a rolled-over semi with injuries and death.
Some “Rules of the Road” infractions I often see: Speeding, failure to yield to a pedestrian, excessive lane changing, turning left where there is a “right turn only” sign and blocking a driveway or intersection where it says “Do not block the driveway or intersection.”
Are these drivers blind? No. If they were, they wouldn’t be able to drive, so I chalk it up to stupidity and recklessness.
City and state traffic personnel need to be more active on our roadways to curb all of these offenses. There have to be consequences for this driving behavior.
This epidemic needs attention immediately!
Dick Nelson, West Ridge
AI policy must be balanced, beneficial for startups
Illinois lawmakers are right to take artificial intelligence seriously. Earlier this month, the state Senate moved forward a new AI policy framework aimed at protecting consumers, improving transparency and addressing the real risks emerging as AI becomes part of daily life.
As someone who works within Chicago’s startup community, I’m glad our lawmakers are prioritizing AI policy. AI presents serious questions, especially around online safety, children, mental health, discrimination and consumer protection. And in the absence of a national framework, states cannot simply wait and see what Washington D.C., will do.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Springfield should recognize the fine line they are walking. Illinois needs AI policy that protects people without accidentally making it impossible for startups to build here.
That balance matters especially in areas like chatbots and liability. Rules governing how AI tools interact with users, what disclosures are required and when companies can be held liable are important. But we can’t govern global tech companies the same as startups. For the former, navigating different rules in every state is an inconvenience. For the latter, one well-intentioned but overreaching policy could cause the doors to shut entirely.
That is why Illinois must be careful not to create a one-off regulatory structure that adds to a growing patchwork of state laws. A much better path would be to work in concert with other leading states, including California and New York, to create more predictability for builders while preserving strong protections for consumers.
California has set an important precedent by focusing its most significant compliance requirements on the largest and most powerful AI developers. New York has followed a similar path by using California’s framework rather than starting from scratch. This approach recognizes the value of aligning policies in our nation’s largest tech hubs. It also recognizes that Big Tech and startups are not the same, and they should not be regulated as if they were.
Illinois can get AI policy right. But if we don’t, we risk becoming a place where only the largest companies can operate.
Erika Knierim, partner, Founders Law
Homelessness isn’t throwaway issue
When asked about a list of potential cuts in next year’s budget, columnist Rich Miller recently noted the governor’s office said funding to address homelessness had been cut due to “lower demand.” This statement defies logic at a time when hundreds of thousands of low-income Illinoisans are being destabilized through losing access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is threatening to defund many permanent supportive housing units throughout the state.
In fact, the state’s Home Illinois Plan to prevent and end homelessness has identified a shortage of 4,236 shelter beds, 10,428 rapid rehousing units and 10,972 permanent supportive housing units in Illinois.
Although the state’s point-in-time count (a one night count of people experiencing homelessness required by HUD) showed a 44% decrease from 2024 to 2025, the number can be entirely accounted for by the decrease in newly arrived migrants to Chicago. If you remove newcomers from the count, homelessness in Illinois increased from around 10,000 in 2023 to nearly 15,000 in 2025.
Homelessness is a serious and growing problem in Illinois, and funding to address it should not be on the chopping block. Rather, budget increases are needed for prevention, shelter, housing and other needs. There are proposals on the table in Springfield to tax the wealthy and corporations to generate new revenue for the state. We don’t need to take away services from our state’s most vulnerable residents. We call on the Legislature to pass the progressive revenue bills and increase, rather than decrease, funding to end homelessness.
Julie Dworkin, co-executive director, Institute for the Public Good
Bob Palmer, policy director, Housing Action Illinois
Doug Schenkelberg, executive director, Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness
Plea and proposal to keep Bears in Chicago
Following the Chicago Bears’ recent declaration that they have exhausted all viable options within city limits, leadership must look beyond the lakefront. While the northern 31 acres of the former Lincoln Yards site have been successfully reallocated for the approved Foundry Park residential project, the remaining uncommitted acreage presents an opportunity for a public-private partnership to keep the franchise in Chicago.
A stadium within this tech and entertainment corridor solves many logistical and financial problem currently stalling the team’s suburban and out-of-state proposals:
- Existing transit infrastructure: Unlike Arlington Heights or Hammond, which rely on single-highway routes prone to gridlock, this site features built-in multimodal transit. It offers direct access to the Clybourn Metra station, the Kennedy Expressway, the CTA Red, Brown and Blue lines and major arterial roads (Ashland, Western and Elston avenues), alongside Chicago River water taxi capabilities.
- A sustainable 52-week economic engine: Hosting eight regular-season home games and using the venue for massive concert and entertainment events during the remaining 44 weekends would generate year-round tax revenue. It seamlessly anchors the ongoing redevelopment of the Clybourn Avenue corridor.
- True franchise autonomy: Partnering to develop this footprint satisfies the NFL’s mandate for team-owned stadium control and an adjacent, highly profitable entertainment district.
Before the city surrenders a multibillion dollar economic engine to the suburbs or Indiana, our elected officials and media must shift the conversation toward this highly accessible, infrastructure-ready destination.
Ryan Miller, lifelong Bears fan and concerned Chicagoan, Lincoln Square
Perks for Bears fans
If the Bears end up in Arlington Heights, there should be an incentive for fans. I suggest a $1 price freeze for a box of popcorn, soda, ice cream bar or hot chocolate and $2 for nachos with cheese. With all the tax breaks the team receives, the reasonable pricing of these items for fans is a small way the team can give back. Let’s add in a $5 rebate on every parked vehicle at all events to benefit the school districts within Arlington Heights. The initiative can be called “The Bears Care.”
Mark S. Renz, Oak Lawn
Ineffective use of Chicago police resources
Rounding up street vendors in the Loop or stopping teen takeovers?
Compare the negative safety of officers and the public and financial effects of teen street takeovers vs. street vendors in the Loop.
Is the same Chicago police official who came up with the new policy limiting options for residents to bring abandoned animals to police stations the same one who decided that ridding the Loop of street vendors — as reported last week by CBS News Chicago — was a good use of police resources?
Charles Carlson, Belmont-Cragin
Crowd not in control
Some people are all worked up over these teen takeovers. People are out here just having fun — just like the masses were on Jan. 6, 2021.
William Brown, Little Italy
CTA acting president no different than previous leaders
Nora Leerhsen should be appointed as permanent president of the CTA now. She has acted long enough. She is doing a fine job of letting her mismanagers punish Chicago Transit Authority workers for getting sick and reporting deadly hazards. Give her an Oscar award too!
Eric Basir, Local 308 union steward and Local 308 Vehicle Maintenance Executive Board Elect
Fighting for freedom
I think it’s fitting that Memorial Day comes before we celebrate July Fourth. Let’s be real: Our nation was founded on fighting for liberty. The words on the Declaration of Independence are beautiful and inspiring, but that’s not what created our country. It wasn’t given to us. We had to fight for it. That’s the way it’s been from day one, and that’s the way it will always be.
William Choslovsky, Sheffield Neighbors