Good morning.

As we near Christmas week, regular contributor Willie Wilson already is diving into the spirit of the season. His seasonal observations will be familiar to many of you, but such offerings always are welcome at this time of year.

On the editorial board, we applaud the introduction — or shall we say, reintroduction — of bison here in Illinois. A herd is getting used to its new digs in a Kane County forest preserve.

Meanwhile, the board of School District 65 in Evanston and Skokie has fallen down on the job of deciding on a needed school closure (or closures) in the face of declining enrollment and to help plug a yawning budget deficit. We'll surely be interested in reader feedback on this one from those of you in those suburbs.

Back in Chicago, Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, has an op-ed warning the city's revenue-desperate budgeteers against adding a city tax on sports betting to the substantial state taxes already in place.

And an executive at S&C Electric in Chicago, which does a lot of work for Commonwealth Edison and other utilities, warns of the dangers of underinvesting in the power grid, a temptation for utility regulators as electricity rates rise.

Please read letters we've published from readers such as yourself and have a great Thursday. We'll be back tomorrow.

— Steve Daniels, editorial board member

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