After the city's government cut funding to mental health services, closing many of the city's clinics, residents of Chicago's West Side voted overwhelmingly to tax their properties to reverse that trend.
Since the start of Rahm Emanuel's first term as mayor of Chicago, mental health facilities have been a hot-button issue. When the mayor's office and the City Council voted to close a number of facilities around the city, setting off protests and think pieces.
Some funds for those facilities will be back in the budget after West Side residents voted to tax themselves. "By a vote of 86 percent to 14 percent, residents on the West Side voted for an additional levy on their properties," Paris Schutz writes for Chicago Tonight.
"The initiative was led by the nonprofit Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers and a collection of clergy and community activists on the West Side. They spent the summer gathering petitions to get the binding referendum on the ballot, and then urging people to vote yes," Schutz explains. The new mental health center is scheduled to open in 2018.
Read the full story: West Side Residents Approve Higher Taxes for Mental Health
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