To the disgust of some staff, bodies are piling up at the office of the Cook County Medical Examiner, stacked atop each other in blue plastic tarps against a wall of the storage cooler because of ongoing financial woes, the Sun-Times has learned.

All the storage trays are full, and many have a second body on them, according to sources in the office. Some 400 adults and about 100 babies are currently being kept in the cooler designed for under 300, one source said.

“There are so many bodies in there now, they can’t keep it cool enough. The stench is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” another source in the office said. “I think it’s sacrilegious.”

Medical Examiner Nancy Jones said “yes, we do” have a larger than normal number of bodies at the office.

“What we currently have in our cooler is somewhere around 300 bodies,” she said. “There is not twice that number.”

Jones said there is a backup in burials of babies because of a change in a county ordinance. Last year, critics raised questions about the remains of babies and fetuses — many who had died at birth or as a result of miscarriage — being combined for burial. So county commissioners changed the ordinance requiring the remains of babies and fetuses be placed in separate compartments.

“We haven’t been able to do any infant or fetal burials because we are waiting for some special boxes to be designed and built,” Jones said.

“There are some [adult] bodies stacked on top of boxes right now in the cooler. They’re not going to be there much longer because some of them should be put in burial ‘shells’ [wooden coffins] because there’s [an indigent] burial coming up.”

Typically after examination or autopsy, bodies remain at the office for a few days until funeral directors pick them up for burial or cremation.

But when grieving families can’t afford a burial, the county takes over. Last fall, the medical examiner’s office revealed a controversial plan to donate to science the remains that go unclaimed after only two weeks ­unless families object. Others were still to be buried in the pauper’s graves in Homewood, for which the county previously paid $300 each. But a source said delivery of the “burial boxes” has stopped because the medical examiner’s office hasn’t paid the company that builds the them ­— another reason for the bodies piling up.

While Jones said there is no average for the number of bodies kept in the morgue, she said the increase in the number of bodies is the result, in part, of state aid to help pay for burials of those who die without any assets being slashed.

“That is really the big part of it,” Jones said.

The state last summer cut $13 million from the program. Last week, Jones said, the county received word that the state had reinstated funding.

Source: chicago.cbslocal.com

Architects still call the 45-story skyscraper the Tower of David, after David Brillembourg, the brash financier who built it in the 1990s. The helicopter landing pad on its roof remains intact, a reminder of the airborne limousines that were once supposed to drop bankers off for work.

The office tower, one of Latin America’s tallest skyscrapers, was meant to be an emblem of Venezuela’s entrepreneurial mettle. But that era is gone. Now, with more than 2,500 squatters making it their home, the building symbolizes something else entirely in this city’s center.

The squatters live in the uncompleted high-rise, which lacks several basic amenities like an elevator. The smell of untreated sewage permeates the corridors. Children scale unlit stairways guided by the glow of cellphones. Some recent arrivals sleep in tents and hammocks.

The skyscraper, surrounded by billboards and murals proclaiming the advance of President Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution,” is a symbol of the financial crisis that struck the country in the 1990s, the expanded state control over the economy that came after Mr. Chávez took office in 1999 and the housing shortage that has worsened since then, leading to widespread squatter takeovers in this city.

Few of the building’s terraces have guardrails. Even walls and windows are absent on many floors. Yet dozens of DirecTV satellite dishes dot the balconies. The tower commands some of the most stunning views of Caracas. It contains some of its worst squalor.

“I never let my child out of my sight,” said Yeaida Sosa, 29, who lives with her 1-year-old daughter, Dahasi, on the seventh floor overlooking a bustling artery, Avenida Andrés Bello. Ms. Sosa said residents were horrified after a young girl recently fell to her death from a high floor.

Some families have walled off their terraces with cinder blocks, blotting out the sun to avoid such tragedies. Others, aware of the risks, prefer to let in the breeze flowing off El Ávila, the emerald green mountain looming over Caracas. “God decides when we enter his kingdom,” said Enrique Zambrano, 22, an electrician who lives on the 19th floor.

Mr. Zambrano, like many of the other squatters in the skyscraper, says he is an evangelical Christian. Their pastor is Alexander Daza, 33, a former gang member who found religion in prison. Mr. Daza, commonly known as El Niño, or The Kid, led the occupation of the Tower of David in October 2007.

Back then, the building had already been vacant for more than a decade. Its developer, Mr. Brillembourg, a dashing horse breeder, died of cancer at age 56 in 1993, leaving behind hobbled companies. The government absorbed their assets, including the unfinished skyscraper, during a 1994 banking crisis.

Robert Neuwirth of New York, the author of “Shadow Cities,” a book about squatter settlements on four continents, said the Tower of David may be the world’s highest squatter building.

Once one of Latin America’s most developed cities, Caracas now grapples with an acute housing shortage of about 400,000 units, breeding building invasions. In the area around the Tower of David, squatters have occupied 20 other properties, including the Viasa and Radio Continente towers. White elephants occupying the cityscape, like the Sambil shopping mall close to the Tower of David and seized by the government, now house flood victims.

Private construction of housing here has virtually ground to a halt because of fears of government expropriation. The government, hobbled by inefficiency, has built little housing of its own for the poor. The policies toward squatters are also unclear and in flux, effectively allowing many to stay in once empty properties.

On occasion, Mr. Chávez has called for squatters to be dislodged. But in January, he urged the poor to occupy unused land in well-heeled parts of Caracas. Then he qualified these remarks by asking them to have “patience” as officials tried to build low-income housing.

Many here refuse to wait. The Tower of David stands as a parable of hope for some and of dread for others.

“That building is a symbol of Venezuela’s decline,” said Benedicto Vera, 55, an activist in downtown Caracas. “What’s our future if our people are living like animals in unsafe skyscrapers?”

Yet squatters, who live on 28 stories and plan to go higher, have created a semblance of order within the skyscraper they now call their own. Sentries with walkie-talkies guard entrances. Each inhabited floor has electricity, jury-rigged to the grid, and water is transported up from the ground floor.

Strivers abound in the skyscraper. They chafe at being called “invaders,” the term here for squatters, preferring the less contentious word “neighbor.” A beauty salon operates on one floor. On another, an unlicensed dentist applies the brightly colored braces that are the rage in Caracas street fashion. Almost every floor has a small bodega.

Julieth Tilano, 26, lives inside a small shop on the seventh floor with her husband and in-laws. They sell everything from plantains to Pepsi and Belmont cigarettes. Her husband, Humberto Hidalgo, 23, has a side business in which he charges children from the skyscraper 50 cents per half-hour to play PlayStation games on the four television sets in the family’s living room.

“There’s opportunity in this tower,” said Mr. Hidalgo, who immigrated here last year from Valledupar, Colombia.

Some residents own cars parked in the building’s garage. Others sanguinely point to their trim physiques, a result of going up and down the stairs each day. For others, any roof over one’s head is better than none.

That is the view of Jordon Moore, 37, a squatter on the seventh floor whom everyone simply calls “the American.” Mr. Moore, who speaks English with a hint of the West Indies, regales visitors with tales of the “gang life” in Brooklyn, where he says he lived for years, and of an attempt to break into the Venezuelan hip-hop scene that went awry.

“I ended up living on the street in this city, and this is better than the street,” he said.

A neighbor, José Hernández, 30, agreed. Still, he said he wanted to leave the skyscraper one day. For now, he sleeps with his wife and daughter in one bed under mosquito netting, protection from dengue fever.

In his apartment, once meant to be a banker’s corner office, he showed the view, which included a mosque’s minaret and, in the distance, Petare, the patchwork of hillside slums where he grew up. Now Mr. Hernández dons a tie and jacket each day and goes to work at, of all places, a bank.

“They call me an invader and I work in the credit department of Banco de Venezuela,” said Mr. Hernández, referring to the state-owned institution that he says employs him. “Society hates us, and the government doesn’t know what to do with us. Do they really think we want to be living in the Tower of David?”

Source: New York Times

In a move rare in the United States and perhaps unprecedented in Idaho, Boise County is filing for federal protection against a multimillion dollar judgment.

“This was not our first option. This was our last option,” said Jamie Anderson, chairwoman of the three-member Boise County Board of Commissioners. “This protects us so we can continue to operate.”

Chapter 9 protection, from a section of federal code expressly for financially distressed municipalities, means that creditors can’t collect while the county is developing a plan for reorganizing its debts.

Dan Chadwick, an attorney and executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties, said he is not aware of any other county, city or taxing district in Idaho ever filing for bankruptcy. He’s been with the association for 20 years and before that was at the Attorney General’s Office for 10 years, he said.

Bill Nichols, McCall’s city attorney, said he is not aware of any other Chapter 9 filings in Idaho, either.

“I don’t think there has been anyone in the Northwest that has used this, other than an irrigation district in the state of Washington,” Nichols said.

Nichols’ firm began representing McCall after a federal jury determined it owed a contractor $6.2 million. McCall officials considered bankruptcy but opted against it, Mayor Don Bailey told the Idaho Statesman in December.

The mayor said city services were not curtailed during the financial ordeal, but residents are paying off the city’s debt over a 20-year period. Their sewer/water fees went up by $5 to $6 a month, Bailey said.

JUST EIGHT CHAPTER 9 FILINGSPER YEAR IN U.S.

James Spiotto, an expert on Chapter 9 bankruptcies, told The Bond Buyer in a Tuesday article that there have been about eight municipal bankruptcies per year in the U.S. for the past four decades. Among the most famous cases: Orange County, Calif., in 1994 and Vallejo, Calif., in 2008.

Spiotto said one reason they are rare is because Chapter 9 provides no financing.

“If you can’t pay for your municipal services because of illiquidity, Chapter 9 doesn’t provide any more money to you,” Spiotto told The Bond Buyer.

Most local governments that have filed bankruptcy have done so because of massive bond debt, of which Anderson said Boise County has none.

BANKRUPTCY COMES ON HEELS OF JUDGMENT

A federal jury in December found that Boise County violated the federal Fair Housing Act in its handling of a developer’s proposal to build a 72-bed residential treatment facility for teens.

The jury awarded the development firm Oaas Laney $4 million, plus attorneys’ fees, which the county says total about $1.4 million. Boise County has an operating budget of about $9.4 million.

In January, the county appealed the decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Anderson and the county attorneys also met several times with Oaas Laney’s attorneys, but were unable to reach an agreement on the payment of the judgment.

Boise County now has several law firms representing it: Brassey Wetherell & Crawford is handling the Alamar Ranch litigation; Moore Smith Buxton & Turcke is counseling commissioners on public financing; and D. Blair Clark is advising the county on Chapter 9.

The county sought, but did not receive, benefits from its insurer, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program. When the county sued, claiming breach of contract and damages in excess of $10,000 for attorneys’ fees, ICRMP won. The county appealed that decision to the Idaho Supreme Court.

PLAINTIFF’S ATTORNEY: FILING IN ‘BAD FAITH’

Anderson declined to discuss the county’s finances in detail, including if there are any reserve, emergency or other funds that could go toward paying the judgment.

“We have dedicated funds to meet statutory requirements,” she said of county services for the indigent, road maintenance, jail and court operations, and solid waste programs.

“We have a duty to the citizens to protect ourselves,” Anderson said.

Wade Woodard, an attorney with the Boise law firm representing Laney, said the firm would be filing a motion to dismiss.

“We believe it was filed in bad faith,” Woodard said. He declined to elaborate.
Source: Idaho Statesman

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.

But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic.

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

The most startling legal realities are handled with lawyerly understatement. It notes that the government has broad power to declare a state of emergency. “Once having done so,” it continues, “local authorities may establish curfews, quarantine wide areas, close businesses, restrict public assemblies and, under certain circumstances, suspend local ordinances.”

Read more at: New York Times

CAMDEN, NJ (CBS) – Camden City Council, as expected, voted Thursday to lay off almost 400 workers, half of them police officers and firefighters, to bridge a $26.5 million deficit.

That’s about a quarter of the city’s entire work force.

Five members of City Council voted unanimously to approve the layoff plan — two other members were absent. The cuts take effect in mid-January.

Exactly how many city workers will be affected is still an open question, although nearly half the city’s police and a third of the firefighters are slated to go.

Karl Walco (right) is with the union that represents non-uniformed Camden city workers.

“If we agreed to everything that the city proposed in concessions, it would only have a minor impact on the number of layoffs,” Walco told the council members.

No argument from Council. They sat impassively as workers and residents alike voiced their frustration.

When it was over, Council president Frank Moran suggested they’re not to blame.

“We didn’t put a price tag on public safety. Unfortunately, the governor of the State of New Jersey put that price tag on it,” he said at the packed Council meeting.

That price tag is $69 million, in transitional aid. Moran suggested that Camden residents should vent to Governor Chris Christie.

After the vote, council members and Camden Mayor Dana Redd avoided reporters by going into their offices.

Cities View Homesteads as a Source of Income

Give away land to make money?

It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do.

Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. Back then, the goal was to settle the West. The goal of Beatrice’s “Homestead Act of 2010,” is, in part, to replenish city coffers.

The calculus is simple, if counterintuitive: hand out city land now to ensure property tax revenues in the future.

“There are only so many ball fields a place can build,” Tobias J. Tempelmeyer, the city attorney, said the other day as he stared out at grassy lots, planted with lonely mailboxes, that the city is working to get rid of. “It really hurts having all this stuff off the tax rolls.”

Around the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

In Boca Raton, Fla., which faces a budget gap of more than $7 million, leaders are thinking about expanding the city’s size and annexing neighborhoods as an antidote. Sure, more residents would cost more in services, but officials hope the added tax revenues will more than make up for it.

And leaders in Manchester, N.H., and Concord, Mass., are taking an approach that might have once seemed politically unthinkable. They are re-examining whether their communities’ nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.

“The stress of the past couple years is causing us to look absolutely everywhere,” said Anthony Logalbo, the finance director in Concord, where officials realized that 15 percent of the town’s property value had become tax exempt and sent letters to nonprofit groups asking whether they would consider paying something to the town.

“Private schools and nonprofit museums and community organizations benefit the town in lots of ways,” Mr. Logalbo said, “except that they don’t contribute to the cost of running the town.”

Analysts say that this year and next, city budgets will reach their most dismal points of the recession, largely because of lag time inherent in the way taxes are collected and distributed.

Despite signs of a recovery, if a slow one, in other elements of the economy, it may be years away for many municipalities. Between now and 2012, America’s cities are likely to experience shortfalls totaling $55 billion to $85 billion, according to a survey by the National League of Cities, because of slumping revenues from property taxes and sales taxes and reduced support from state governments.

And even in places like Concord and Beatrice, where officials say budget strains are not severe enough to lead to layoffs or major cuts, a slow chafing has still taken a toll.

Beatrice (pronounced bee-AT-russ), which sits about 40 miles south of Lincoln down a highway called the Homestead Expressway, is recognized as home to the first Homestead Act application nearly 150 years ago. That law ultimately granted 270 million acres of land in 30 states to nearly anyone who could survive on it and pay a minimal fee.

Daniel Freeman, who came from Ohio, is said to have filed his claim for 160 acres near Beatrice just after midnight on Jan. 1, 1863, the day the law took effect. There were others who filed claims in other places on the same day (some say they were actually first), but Mr. Freeman captured a place in history. The government paid to take back his Nebraska homestead decades later to turn it into a national monument that honors the Homestead Act and how it transformed the nation’s population.

Beatrice’s new Homestead Act is not the first to revive the land giveaway. Some tiny towns, particularly in the Great Plains, have made such offers before, mainly as a way to increase dwindling populations. But disappearing is not the fear in Beatrice, which is home to several lawn-mowing equipment manufacturers and where the population has held steady at around 12,000 for decades.

Instead, city officials are hoping to return some of the many lots the city has accumulated, because of unpaid taxes or flooding risks from the Big Blue River, and return them to the tax rolls. The city has not suffered gaping budget shortfalls or the property tax declines seen in some larger cities, but some large purchases and road reconstruction have been delayed, waiting for a return to flusher times.

If the city were to give away just a few lots — and if people were to, as required by the law, build homes on them and stay for at least three years — Beatrice would secure annual real estate taxes on them, collect money for water, electric and sewer use, and no longer pay to mow the lawns.

The arrival of new, improved homes might also have an infectious effect on existing neighborhoods, said Neal Neidfeldt, the city administrator. The plan has its critics; at least one candidate for mayor here wonders what right the city has to give out public land to any non-taxpaying outsider who asks.

Officials acknowledge that the benefits sound modest, in the thousands of dollars annually, but say the revenue is needed.

“What is the value of a lot to us if it’s empty?” said Tom Thompson, the mayor of Grafton, where an offer of 32 city-owned lots, promoted with a television advertising campaign, has quickly led to eight takers so far. “This is strictly financial — a way to go upstream from the trend.”

In Dayton, officials are offering thousands of vacant, foreclosed or abandoned properties under certain conditions for nominal fees — $500, in many cases, to cover the cost of recording fees or $1,200 if the city must initiate tax foreclosure proceedings. The prospect of city savings on mowing fees alone is enormous: each year, Dayton spends $2 million to cut grass on the properties.

Back in Beatrice, though, the effort is only creeping along. Since the Homestead Act took effect in May, many people have called with inquiries, but no one has moved onto the lots along a gravel-covered road called Grace. Two families filled out an application — which seeks only a name, address and telephone number — but both have since put off plans.

One applicant, William Hendrix, 47, said the city’s law requiring him to secure permits for a new home on the property within six months, then build within a year after that, was too daunting. What if he could not get loans? What if he could not pay for the construction? What if he built a home but could never sell it?

“Right now, giving away the land isn’t going to be doing anybody favors,” Mr. Hendrix said. “I realized that Beatrice will get the taxes they want, but it won’t do me any good in this market.”

For their part, people in Beatrice sound patient. The peak of homesteading acres claimed under the federal act, they point out, came in 1913, some 50 years after the act’s passage.

Source: NY Times

Wrecking crews are preparing to tear down a landmark 5,000-square-foot house in the posh neighborhood of Palmer Woods in the coming weeks, a sign that Detroit is finally getting serious about razing thousands of vacant and abandoned structures across the city.

In leveling 1860 Balmoral Drive, the boyhood home of one-time presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Detroit is losing a small piece of its history. But the project is part of a demolition effort that is just now gaining momentum and could help define the city’s future.

Detroit is finally chipping away at a glut of abandoned homes that has been piling up for decades, and intends to take advantage of warm weather and new federal funding to demolish some 3,000 buildings by the end of September.

Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term as part of a nascent plan to “right-size” Detroit, or reconfigure the city to reflect its shrinking population.

When it’s all over, said Karla Henderson, director of the Detroit Building Department, “There’s going to be a lot of empty space.”

Mr. Bing hasn’t yet fully articulated his ultimate vision for what comes after demolition, but he has said entire areas will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. For now, his plan calls for the tracts to be converted to other uses, such as parks or farms.

Even when the demolitions are complete, Detroit will still have a huge problem on its hands. The city has roughly 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots, according to Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that tracks demographic data for the city.

After a stuttering start, caused by a dispute over the disposal of asbestos from demolished homes, the program is just now gaining pace.

City officials say they aren’t sure how many structures ultimately need to be torn down. The mortgage crisis compounded Detroit’s economic decline, leaving nearly 30% of the city’s housing stock vacant, according to Data Driven Detroit.

“Neighborhoods that are considered stable are now at 20% vacancy,” said Deborah Younger, a development consultant involved in the demolition effort.

Until recently, the city didn’t have the funds to tackle its growing list of houses slated for demolition. But $20 million in federal funds, primarily stimulus dollars has helped to kick-start the effort.

Demolition, particularly of historic buildings, is a sensitive issue in Detroit, often leading to wrenching battles between developers, residents, city officials and preservationists. But many residents are now pleading with the city to tear down decaying structures that are attracting crime and repelling home buyers. However, some still worry that the sort of large-scale bulldozing that the city is now talking about will forcibly dislocate longtime homeowners and preclude any chance of a comeback for Detroit.

“The city has never done this before,” says Ms. Henderson, the Building Department chief. “We had to make a culture change.”

The demolition of the Romney family home is the first of its kind in Palmer Woods, a high-end enclave in northwest Detroit that was developed at the dawn of the U.S. auto industry and housed many of its pioneers. Palmer Woods has just a handful of vacant properties among its 292 homes, according to residents. It’s one of the anchor neighborhoods that is critical to the success of Mayor Bing’s right-sizing effort.

The house was owned by Mr. Romney’s parents, George and Lenore Romney, from 1941 until 1953, when the family moved to the northern suburbs. The elder Mr. Romney would go on to become head of American Motors Corp., then governor of Michigan and U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

As recently as 2002, the house sold for $645,000. But it has had a troubled history since then, lapsing into foreclosure more than once, bouncing between lenders and falling into disrepair. Last year, following years of complaints from neighbors, Wayne County declared it “a public nuisance and blight” and ordered it demolished.

The younger Mr. Romney, who is considered a leading GOP presidential candidate for 2012, said “it’s sad” that his childhood home is being razed, “but sadder still to consider what has happened to the city of Detroit, which has been left hollow by fleeing jobs and liberal social policies.”

Residents of Palmer Woods take pride in their tradition of historic preservation. But they’re happy to see this house go. “This is an eyesore, and it makes no economic sense to fix it,” said Joel Pitcoff, a retiree who lives around the block. “Who wants to spend $1 million on a house so it will be worth $400,000?”

Source: Wall St. Journal

See more photos and read more at: webecoist.com

U.S. Postal Service pushes to cut Saturday mail delivery early next year

The proposal, which would save $5.1 billion annually by 2020, would eliminate the equivalent of 49,000 full- and part-time jobs.

The U.S. Postal Service said Monday it wants to end Saturday mail delivery by early next year as part of a wide-ranging plan to slash jobs, save billions of dollars and cope with the impact of declining mail volume in the Internet age.

“Given the fact that we’re facing such a huge deficit, we’d like to move as quickly as possible,” Postmaster General John E. Potter told a news conference.

Faced with a projected $238-billion deficit over the next decade, the Postal Service board of governors approved the cuts last week and ordered Potter to submit the proposal to the Postal Regulatory Commission on Tuesday. In addition to cutting one day a week from the delivery schedule, the proposal would eliminate the equivalent of 49,000 full- and part-time jobs.

Officials said the changes would save the Postal Service a forecasted $3.3 billion in the first year and about $5.1 billion annually by 2020.

Under the plan, letter carriers would stop street deliveries to U.S. homes and businesses and pickups from blue collection boxes on Saturdays. Mail would continue to be accepted at post offices Saturday, to be processed Monday. Express mail and remittance mail services would continue seven days a week.

If approved by the Congress and the regulatory commission, officials said they hoped to implement this plan by the first half of 2011. Congress currently mandates delivery to all U.S. addresses six days a week.

Potter said the Postal Service would eliminate about 26,000 positions through employee attrition and lay off 13,000 part-time workers, most of whom carry the mail once a week as substitutes. He said the high attrition rates are only possible because the average age of letter carriers is 53 and most have pension arrangements that would allow them to retire at 55. About 10,000 carriers retire each year, Potter said.

Potters said the changes were made necessary by citing continuing drops in mail volume. American mailboxes currently receive an average of four pieces of mail each day, but this is projected to be reduced to three pieces by 2020. Current daily revenue generated by each delivery is $1.40 but will slide to about $1 per delivery in 2020.

Source: LA Times