With so much public attention on the ever-higher taxes that state and municipal governments impose on us all, it can be easy to overlook yet another unavoidable cost that is becoming increasingly unbearable in the Chicago area. We’re referring to the price of keeping the lights on and staying warm in winter.
We’ve written more than once about the absurdly high heating bills in Chicago tied to Peoples Gas’ decades-long multi-billion-dollar project to rework the gas-pipe system under the city’s streets. But households and businesses outside Chicago are getting similar treatment from Nicor Gas, the utility serving most of the suburbs.
Nicor on Tuesday filed for a $309 million increase
in the rates it charges to deliver natural gas to its 2.3 million customers. If approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission, which has 11 months to decide, the hike will be the largest increase in state history by a gas utility.
The average monthly residential gas bill would increase by $7.50, or $90 per year. Nicor said the residential bill for the average customer last year was $901, so this increase alone would raise the price of keeping warm by 10%. We see homeowners get angry when their property taxes go up by that much. This is just a single utility bill.
Making matters worse, this rate-hike request is only the latest in a barrage of increases over the past several years. From 2018 to 2024, Nicor won repeated rate hikes from state regulators that increased delivery charges by a total of 101%, or an average of 16.8% annually, according to Illinois PIRG, a consumer advocacy group. Needless to say, that’s not simply keeping up with inflation.
Nicor’s rate hikes aren’t sustainable and by themselves are exacerbating the cost-of-living issues keeping the Chicago-area economy stuck in neutral.
Here’s an even scarier thought: That $901 average annual residential gas bill last year was lower than it had been in recent years because the price of natural gas itself — Nicor, like all utilities, passes its fuel costs along to customers at no markup — was the lowest it had been since 2020, when the pandemic reduced prices for commodities of all kinds.
If natural gas prices had equaled what they did in 2023, the average residential customer would have paid about another $125 over the year. We’ve seen gas costs far higher than 2023 before as well.
As is the case with Peoples, Nicor’s exorbitant price spikes are due to historically high capital spending on projects updating the pipes and other infrastructure that distribute the fuel keeping the chill away. The way that utility regulation works, companies recover their spending from ratepayers and earn a substantial profit on that investment through their rates. The more the companies spend, the more they make. The only barrier to that foolproof profit machine are the regulators who must determine that the utilities’ projects are needed.
Illinois’ utility regulators at the Commerce Commission are engaged as we write on a “Future of Gas” analysis that contemplates eventually phasing out carbon-emitting natural gas for alternative sources of heat, like electricity. That report, originally set to be delivered in the summer, has been delayed until February 2026. In the meantime, Nicor and Peoples keep investing like gas will heat Chicago-area homes for the next century.
Nicor is owned by Southern Co., an Atlanta-based corporation that owns utilities all over the Southeast. Northern Illinois is a remote outpost for Southern. Its corporate decision-makers don’t live here and we suspect they don’t spend much time fretting about the political fallout from ever-increasing rates.
So, as we’ve said in regard to Peoples’ outrageous rate-hike proposals for Chicagoans, it’s up to the five members of the Commerce Commission, all of whom were appointed by Gov. JB Pritzker, to send the message to Atlanta that delivery rate hikes at more than five times the rate of inflation for years on end aren’t acceptable anymore.
When a youngster at Lincoln Elementary School in Blue Island had a meltdown right before a holiday pageant in December, two social workers came to the rescue and calmed the lad so he could continue in the festivities.
That might not have been possible were it not for a large grant to help boost the mental health and well-being of K-8 students in Cook County School District 130, which serves about 3,000 students at 13 school sites in Alsip, Blue Island, Crestwood and Robbins.
The district was able to hire more mental health staff thanks to a nearly $10.8 million Project COOK (Creating Opportunities and Outcomes is Key) grant awarded by the U.S. Dept. of Education that began in 2023. The funds are awarded in five annual installments through 2027.
Since receiving the grant, the district has been able to add 18 mental health workers to its existing staff of 15, and there is now a team of one lead clinician, two social workers and a counselor at every school.
Recalling the holiday pageant meltdown, Violeta Salgado, a longtime social worker at Lincoln Elementary, said “we had a little person who was very upset.”
“Two of us were able to work with him to get him to a better place so he could enjoy our holiday show,” she said.
It’s not just helping one student. Salgado said the grant is helping improve the comfort level and academic ability of all the school’s 336 students.
“One of our kindergarten classrooms had a couple of little people who really had a hard time verbalizing their emotions and would get really upset,” said Salgado. “Now they’re able to verbalize how they’re feeling and ask for that help.”
The district this year also added two new programs funded by the grant: Peekapak Social Emotional Learning Curriculum for K-12 and Second StepR for bilingual (Spanish) classes.
The need for such programs was accentuated by the pandemic, and its effects still are being felt in the educational community, Salgado said.
She said she has seen emotional challenges peak in the last few years.
“COVID was a very hard thing for the whole world but I think specifically for our students,” Salgado said, pointing to the isolation and inability to socialize with peers. “We really saw an increase in anxiety.”
The Peekapak program offers a place for students to “check-in” with their feelings, she said, while empowering staff to help students be successful.
“It’s giving our students that emotional language and teaching them it’s okay to have an array of feelings,” said Salgado.
Other help from the grant includes curricular resources, such as a guide on how teachers can help students monitor their social-emotional and mental health skills.
“A student might become increasingly angry over small experiences in the classroom or something might trigger a student and then they have this emotional release that might be considered a little out of alignment with what we would normally expect,” said Stephanie Delgrosso, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, who oversaw the grant with the support of Superintendent Colleen M. McKay. “We obviously came back post-pandemic, like a lot of school systems, and were faced with this increase in behavioral occurrences.”
That’s changed with the grant help and the proof is in the falling number of office discipline referrals and “school avoidance” issues, said Delgrosso.
“They can build emotional intelligence, positive relationships and handle social challenges,” she said.
The district has also been able to team up with outside agencies, such as Solid Ground Behavioral Services in Blue Island, which provides behavioral help.
Staff are analyzing data on improvements, such as fewer disciplinary actions and absences, she said.
“One of the major changes is we’re able to provide more foundational support to our students with regard to mental health … like basic levels of support so they don’t escalate into mental issues,” said Delgrosso. “We are very grateful to have this opportunity.”
Salgado said the additional support means a lot to her, beyond just her role as a social worker. She has had four children who attend school in the district.
“It’s a wonderful thing,” she said. “It’s more overall support and it’s needed, it’s greatly needed.”
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Donald Trump pulled out of another mainstream interview Thursday–this time nixing a sit-down with NBC News.
The interview, CNN reported, would be in Philadelphia with NBC News’ senior business correspondent, Christine Romans. CNN’s Brian Stelter said one source suggested that it had only been “postponed.”
It was the second time in a week that he had canceled a scheduled appearance outside the conservative news sphere, CNN’s Reliable Sources reported Thursday. He had canceled an in-studio appearance on the CNBC flagship show, Squawk Box, which was due on Friday.
