By Ronda Locke Sadly, the 13th District police station on Wood Street will be closed next week. As a member of an alderman-established working group, we are still working on securing community input into what will happen in the space and will have an update early in January. In the meantime, an open house for the new 12th District police station is Saturday starting at 10:45am. Check it out and show the police officers we support them. Importantly, we have been told that we will retain our beat officers, and that a call for police response is supposed to get a response from our neighborhood. So a beat car is to be hovering in our area waiting for calls, not dispatched from new headquarters located a few miles south of us at 1412 S. Blue Island Ave.

By Zygmunt Dyrkacz, Chopin Theatre Chopin Theatre presents "Galician Party,” a musical, visual and culinary celebration of the life and times of Bruno Schulz. The concert is the closing event of the After Schulz Conference (http://afterschulz.org/) whom, together with the Polish Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago and Fundacja Tygodnika Powszechnego, co-sponsor the event Dec. 12 from 7:30pm to midnight at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.

By Molly Murray Beat meetings will continue even as the 2013 budget restructures Chicago's Alternative Policing Strategy. Wednesday will be our last beat meeting for the year and likely the last meeting prior to merger with the 12th District. The meeting begins at 7pm at the soon-to-close Wood Street station, 937 N. Wood St. The East Village CAPS beat is being split into two new beats. Everyone west of Wood Street will be in beat 1212 and everyone east of Wood will be in 1213. Beat 1212 meets at St. Helen's School, 2437 W. Augusta Blvd., and 1213 meets at Noble Street & Augusta but the day and time of these meetings is still to be determined. I will likely continue as a co-facilitator to Beat 1213, which is Chicago to Ashland and Wood to the Chicago River. The city budget eliminates the CAPS implementation office, which coordinates court advocacy. Its 50 jobs move to the local districts, and district commanders will be responsible for community policing. "The city...

Property taxes too high? East Village homeowners have until Dec. 18 to challenge their assessments, and the process is easier than ever. The Cook County Board of Review now takes complaints online. Property owners can learn more at the East Village Association's Dec. 10 meeting from Aaron Bilton, chief of staff to Commissioner Michael Cabonargi and a former EVA president. Bilton will be the guest speaker at 7pm in the Happy Village, 1059 N. Wolcott Ave. Complaint forms will be available and appeals will be accepted at the meeting.