Like so many other things in Chicago politics, it's just a coincidence that the city has terminated its controversial lease with Mayor Daley's controversial nephew.
Perhaps someone should introduce an ordinance changing our motto to City of Coincidences, because we have so many of them around here, it's like being blessed with a rare natural resource.
In fact, the Chicago Coincidence - a subset of the Chicago Way - is even more eerie than those Cubbie Occurences.
In this case, it's the month-to-month lease the city signed with Robert Vanecko for space to park trucks in a warehouse bought with city pension funds.
"We're reducing the number of trucks utilized for the water department construction, and we will no longer need that large indoor facility this winter,'' said Daley's deputy chief of staff, Lisa Schrader. "So, instead of continuing to pay for indoor leased space for the remainder of the summer and fall months, we are moving those trucks to a city-owned outdoor location while we search for other city-owned sites that will allow us to park the trucks indoors.''
So the city is breaking its lease with a place where it parks some of its trucks and will now search for a place where it can park some of its trucks.
Hey, I know a place!
And it can apparently be had on a month-to-month basis, unlike the very coincidental 75-year lease the city signed with our new parking meter overlords.
Of course, the city could have parked its trucks on a city-owned site to begin with, but coincidentally there wasn't one available. Now apparently one will be.
And to think Daley spent two years trying to persuade his nephew to stop doing city business! All he had to do was cancel his lease.
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
