What Chicagoans want — fix city, forget Olympics.

As the IOC deadline for picking the 2016 Olympics winner approaches, the dialogue over whether the Olympics will be gladly welcomed or accepted begrudgingly by Chicagoans is getting heated.

Last week, ten Chicagoans were killed in a string of violent attacks — all of them young victims ranging from 17 to 29 years old. Tyrone Williams, 19, and Percy Day, 17, both college students, were shot and killed outside of their family’s home on the city’s South Side.

Derrion Albert was just 16 years old when he was beaten to death outside the high school he attended on the city’s South Side, where he was an honor roll student.

Yesterday, I was watching the local news, saddened and disheartened by these stories, when the reporter focused on a grieving woman, who suggested that the city needs to stop focusing on the Olympics and start fixing its communities.

In some ways, the debate is that simple. Simultaneously, there are a whole other host of concerns with the city’s bid. First, there is unease about the corruption just waiting to happen by bringing the Olympics to a state where three former governors have gone to prison in the last thirty-five years with a fourth well on his way. Then, there’s the fear that Chicagoans will be forced to bear staggering costs. Many believe that with the city facing a deficit between $200 and $250 million, and the state drowning in an $11.5 billion deficit, building $366 million stadiums and forcing citizens to subsidize an overall price tag in the billions is the height of irresponsibility and that any money spent should be used in ways that benefit the city, state and its communities for more than just a few weeks.

While the President and First Lady travel to Copenhagen to appeal to the IOC on behalf of their hometown, their full-fledged support for staging the Olympics in Chicago may put them in the minority. A local station, WGNTV News, points out that Chicagoans are already on the hook for $250 million, and 84% of Chicagoans are against financing any part of the Olympics. Mayor Daley, the biggest proponent of Chicago’s bid, “is rocking a 35% approval rating”. Tomorrow, organizations are coming together to hold a rally voicing their opposition to the Olympics.

Tom Tresser, Communications Director for No Games Chicago, said:

“We think the Games will go over budget and it would potentially lead to the city’s bankruptcy. The entire financial system in America and the planet is fragile and Chicago and Illinois are broke right now, running billions of dollars of deficit. So, this is not a risk we can afford to take.”

Holly Krig, lead organizer for the Northside Action for Justice, a non-profit organization that protests the Olympics, said, “We really want to let as many people who are going to make this decision, in particularly politicians, [know] that the people of Chicago do not want the Olympics, that Mayor [Richard] Daley does not represent the people of Chicago, particularly low income people and struggling families. We have much better uses for public money, and it seems very clear that public money will be used for this project.”

Tresser said there are four major reasons why Chicago shouldn’t host the games including: financial ruin, disruption in transportation, displacement of people and the construction in local parks that could endanger the environment.

“The estimates for construction in the bid book are just that, they’re estimates, we don’t have any working plans,” Tresser said. “Chicago, typically, has a terrible record in managing its construction projects.” Krig said many other cities that have hosted the Olympics in the past have surpassed their proposed budgets by doubling and even tripling the initial numbers.

“Within Chicago itself, we know from experience that where Mayor Daley falls short of private funding, he reaches into public coffers and we saw that happen with Millennium Park,” Krig said. “So there is no reason to think that that’s going to be any different in Chicago, given that we have a history of that here.”

A City Council vote on Sept. 9 proved that is exactly what would happen, after aldermen voted unanimously for public funding to be used if there are any cost overruns.

Jay Stone, a community activist and Civil Rights Award winner, said, “It was 85 percent against the public funding the Olympics, and yet the vote in city council was 49 to 0. What does that tell you? That the politicians can ignore the will and the opinion of the people.”

Tresser said taxpayers in Chicago have been abandoned because no one is listening to their opinion.”

Under the contract Mayor Daley will sign if Chicago is picked to host the Olympics, Chicagoans would backstop any Olympic losses the city faces. Mayor Daley has insisted that the risks taxpayers face is small. He points to the surpluses other cities have enjoyed after hosting the Olympics. He chooses not to highlight the fact that it took Montreal twenty years to pay off its debts after the 1976 Olympics. Or the fact that there are already accusations of Daley insiders with schemes in place to pad their pockets with sweet real estate deals and other financial interests in bringing the Olympics to home sweet home Chicago.

On the other side of the debate, those who advocate the city’s bid look to this as an opportunity for Chicago to rebrand itself, not just as the city of Al Capone and Michael Jordan, but as a world-class city with much to offer — a unique, diverse culture and history as well as a town full of top-notch restaurants, shows and other events. The Obamas fall into this group, wanting to showcase their city.

At first glance, this seems like a lovely idea, to give a city its time in the limelight. As a city-dweller myself, I agree wholeheartedly that this uniquely Midwestern city has much to offer visitors.

But, this reasoning falls short of overcoming the very formidable arguments against bringing the Olympics here. This brings me back to the woman grieving over Derrion Albert’s death. Her overwhelming emotions over Derrion’s tragic, violent death caused her to speak very candidly, incisively recognizing that a city so troubled, facing a myriad of problems, needs to look inward and fix its own problems before embarking on new, expensive adventures — no matter how enticing or historic they may be.

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