Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s choice to replace retired City Treasurer Stephanie Neely vowed Tuesday to do his part to help solve Chicago’s $20 billion pension crisis — by improving investment returns and reducing millions of dollars in fees paid to investment managers.

The full City Council is expected to ratify the appointment of Kurt Summers at Wednesday’s meeting, but the incoming treasurer is not waiting for the vote before rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.

He’s already meeting with actuaries and pouring over the books of the four city employee pension funds.

Metra leaders will vote Friday on proposed fare increases, including up to 19 percent for monthly passes in the same year hundreds of employees’ salaries jumped by 15 percent on average.

The pay of more than 320 of Metra’s nonunion staff members, ranging from low-level workers to supervisors, rose as much as 36 percent between 2013 and 2014, data obtained by the Daily Herald indicates.

The changes resulted from Metra’s efforts to professionalize job descriptions, wages and raises after a haphazard approach in the past. They followed a recession-related salary freeze and should staunch a brain drain, Chief Executive Officer Don Orseno said.

Shoppers in Libertyville will soon be able to buy beer and wine at convenience stores, after city leaders on Tuesday approved issuing permits for the shops.

The Libertyville Village Board approval came after John Mubarak, owner of Stop-n-Go convenience store on Milwaukee Avenue, asked to sell beer and wine at his business, according to city officials.

Board members unanimously approved the measure, but only for convenience stores that are not attached to a gas station. The permitted shops will be allowed to sell beer and wine but not hard liquor, according to the license terms.

What do you get when you hire a banker to run the school board of the nation’s third largest school district?

Apparently, if you’re Chicago you get hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away on bad deals with other bankers while failing to provide even the most basic of resources for students who need it most.

That’s the story being told in an extraordinary series of Chicago Tribune reports on Chicago Public Schools’ decision to enter into up to $1 billion in risky bond loans pushed by board president David Vitale, a team of consultants and banks hungry to turn a profit on CPS’ need to refinance debt.

If you’ve ever worked as an accountant, lawyer or paralegal doing corporate work, you already know this: Companies in Illinois and other states send a fortune to Delaware every year in filing fees, registered agent costs and related expenses.

It needn’t be so. Illinois can keep its money here and money from other states could just as well be coming to Illinois instead of Delaware.

The numbers are huge. Delaware is far and away the state of choice in which to incorporate. About 900,000 businesses are incorporated there, about equaling its population. It has had as many as 133,000 new businesses set up there per year. About half of all public companies are incorporated in Delaware. Each new corporation pays at least $104 in fees to start, often much more. Each year thereafter they pay $50 with an annual report plus franchise taxes that range from $175 to $180,000. Corporate franchise fees alone bring in about $600 million to Delaware’s state government.

Jackson Park may be picking up steam in the race to select a site for the Barack Obama Presidential Library.

The University of Chicago, one of four institutions still in the running to get the library, reached out to an official with the Jackson Park Advisory Council to talk about the library.

Louise McCurry, president of the advisory council, said on Monday at the monthly park meeting that Sonya Malunda from the university’s office of civic engagement approached her to come to a regular meeting in December or January to talk about the library.