You could not get a library book or see a doctor in a city health clinic Monday in Chicago, but you could pay a parking ticket or fight to un-boot your car, provided you’d wait in a line long enough for an amusement park ride. Cops, firefighters and privatized parking meters were working, however, even if nothing else was.
From a security guard answering phones in the mayor’s office at City Hall to a harried staff collecting payments of fines at one of the few city offices open Monday, confusion and frustration reigned in the City that Works, which by design wasn’t officially working at all.
To save an estimated $8.3 million throughout the year in a tight budget crunch, Chicago picked three days, including Monday, to shut down most city services, leaving only a skeleton crew to handle emergencies and conduct necessary city business, such as collecting revenue.
About 11,000 workers stayed stay home Monday and will again the Friday after Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve. City workers also have been taking furlough days throughout the year to help reduce payroll costs.
Unlike Memorial Day, New Year’s Day or Casimir Pulaski Day, Furlough Day seemed to take city residents by surprise. The result: irritated resignation.
“That’s it. Bad day,” said Molly Gallardo, 58, of Back of the Yards, throwing up her hands after a wasted day bouncing around the city in a failed attempt to contest a $150 parking ticket. “I came all this way. I have no gas money. I’m wasting my cell minutes. I figured I’d get this out of the way.”
But she didn’t. She ended up at the back of a line nearly 40 people deep only to be told by a security guard that what she was trying to do couldn’t be done.
Not Monday.
One of the few places Chicago left open was the Chicago Department of Revenue office at 400 W. Superior St. Nearly 40 people, including Gallardo, peered around the shoulders of the person in front of them as they waited in line for about 45 minutes. A crowd of people tried to make sense of an automated ticket-paying machine, and six beleaguered city workers tried to prevent an upheaval.
Sam Ardito was surprised to find the heavy double doors at the Harold Washington Library locked. The mobile tutor depends on public libraries and coffee shops to serve as his office.
“There’s no resources anywhere else,” Ardito, 27, said as he waited for a 14-year-old student he was supposed to help with a paper about the history of Humboldt Park.
