Reading the words of the motion "Should the City of Chicago act to ensure that all the City's community areas have access to broadband Internet?" Says nothing about the local government running the service
"community areas" so that means just libraries council buildings or does it mean FTC or FTP for all homes?
You right that allowing the executive to cherry pick motions is not democratic.
The one "in creating its City-wide plan for continued growth and sustainability, should the City of Chicago place equal focus on the goals of resiliency, equity, and diversity?" is arguably pious and also does not propose any action.
This is incorrect. Community areas and wards are two very separate things. The "History" section of your link even explains the history of why community areas are used in place of wards.
You'd think it's precisely that: the poorer areas only have shitty DSL. The vote was over if Comcast gets the cable concession for the wealthy areas are they also required to build out the poorer ones.
I voted against that proposal re: "resiliency, equity, and diversity", largely because of how pious and hilariously vague it was. Assuming they actually did anything at all, it take the form of Chicago hiring some expensive diversity consulting agency to do nothing and get paid a couple million a year.
When I read it on the ballot when I voted I immediately assumed it meant "libraries, etc", but now that you say that I'm worried "community areas" is bureaucrat-speak for "neighborhoods". Much different implications.
It's useful for city planners and the like because "neighborhoods" have fuzzy boundaries that people disagree on, but Chicago's community areas are well-defined.
> "community areas" is bureaucrat-speak for neighborhoods.
Not exactly. "Community areas", in Chicago, represent a relatively stable division of the city, with the map drawn up by the government, in order to support city planning and suchlike. Many of them are named for the most prominent neighborhood that falls within their borders, but that's not always the case.
Neighborhoods are a popular division, and is socially constructed by people as a whole. The boundaries are amorphous and constantly shifting. At my last apartment, my own neighbors described our block as falling within about 3 different neighborhoods. (This never resulted in any argument, because everyone understands that the definition of neighborhood is fuzzy at best.) Even where you have a community area and a neighborhood that share the same name, they don't necessarily coincide all that well. For example, just about nobody who lives in the area would recognize the boundaries of "Lincoln Square" as being those of the Lincoln Square community area. To them "Lincoln Square" means the the Lincoln Square neighborhood, which, even by the most generous of standards, is still maybe 1/5 the size of the community area by land mass.
Aldermanic wards are yet another thing, and their boundaries really don't have much to do with neighborhoods or community areas. For starters, there are officially 50 aldermanic wards and 77 community areas.
"community areas" so that means just libraries council buildings or does it mean FTC or FTP for all homes?
You right that allowing the executive to cherry pick motions is not democratic.
The one "in creating its City-wide plan for continued growth and sustainability, should the City of Chicago place equal focus on the goals of resiliency, equity, and diversity?" is arguably pious and also does not propose any action.