Selected State Reports

State Documents
• Environmental Inventory of the Chain of Lakes and Fox River Region of Illinois. Illinois Chain of Lakes-Fox Commission (June 1977), 183 pp. plus figures.

Although various investigations have been made of the Chain of Lakes-Fox River area in extreme northeastern Illinois, this is the first comprehensive environmental study. Data on physical parameters (climate, geology and soils), land and water resources, and flora and fauna of the area were collected from fall 1975 through fall 1976 to serve as the basis for monitoring ecological changes in the area.

• Simplified Financial Management Manual for Small Municipalities, Illinois Department of Local Government Affairs (May 1977), 346pp.

Directed toward small, non-home rule Illinois municipalities, this comprehensive manual is intended to encourage improved and uniform fiscal management procedures. It covers general financial management, budgeting, accounting, auditing, reporting, centralized purchasing and legal requirements.

Other Reports
• Reviving an Inner City Community, by Ed Marciniak (Chicago: Department of Political Science, Loyola University of Chicago, 1977), 72pp.

This monograph chronicles the efforts of residents of East Humboldt Park, one of Chicago's oldest ethnic working class neighborhoods to reverse urban decay and deterioration. In 1974, residents hired their own planner; by 1976, a three-year neighborhood improvement plan began to be implemented. During these years, residents planning activities "intersected with many of the forces that mold the urban tomorrow: political leadership, the flight to the suburbs, downtown business interests, religious institutions, 'redlining' of older neighborhoods, the upward mobility of in-migrants, racial and ethnic transition, the traffic of new expressways, the city's comprehensive planning and others."

• Update 77: A Research Report of the Dixon Springs Agricultural Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Illinois Natural History Survey (January 1977), 297pp.

The Dixon Springs center is a 4,927-acre agricultural research and demonstration facility of the University of Illinois. This report summarizes preliminary data of current research and programs in such areas as agricultural engineering, forestry and plant pathology. More than 80 projects are discussed.

Items listed under State Documents have been received by the Documents Unit, Illinois State Library, Springfield, and are usually available from public libraries in the state through interlibrary loan./ S.C. 

10/ January 1978/ Illinois Issues