After almost a year of debates, negotiations and ideas, the DeKalb City Council will vote on a second reading of the landlord-tenant ordinance at its meeting Tuesday night.

A meeting of the fact-finding committee will take place at 5 p.m., two hours before the council meeting, to give a final fine-tuning to the ordinance before it is presented to the council. The council will convene at 7 p.m. at the DeKalb Municipal Building, 200 S. 4th St.

The ordinance includes an amendment requiring landlords to give one-hour notice to tenants before entering an apartment, unless in an emergency situation, as well as an amendment that would allow the tenants to hire outside repair work for their rental unit in emergency situations after an attempt had been made to notify their landlords. It also includes references to security deposits and tenants' handbooks.

The ordinance was introduced late last year by 5th Ward Ald. Patrick Conboy, and former 6th Ward Ald. Aaron Raffel, with help from Don Henderson, director of NIU Students' Legal Assistance.

The ordinance was met with considerable resistance at first from the landlord community, who felt that they were left out of the initial process regarding the proposal's drafting. Former DeKalb Mayor Bessie Chronopoulos then commissioned a fact-finding committee including landlords, tenants and NIU law students who participated in drafting the original ordinance.

The committee introduced its findings to the council earlier this fall. The findings were drafted into an ordinance, which passed first reading in front of the city council in a near unanimous vote. First Ward Ald. Andy Small cast the sole vote against the ordinance.

The proposal originally was thought to be passed at the Oct. 22 city council meeting, but was ruled as not legally passed when DeKalb Mayor Greg Sparrow thought that an absentation vote by 7th Ward Ald. Joe Sosnowski was a vote for the majority on an issue.

Nobody left Soldier Field early this week, and area football fans didn't leave their seats in local bars either.

The Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Bears 20-12 Sunday, much to the dismay of hundreds of Bears fans and a few Packers fans, who came out to witness the battle at their favorite watering holes around DeKalb.

"They can't win if they can't score a touchdown," said Karl Moose, a junior computer science major, in reference to the Bears' performance, after watching the game at Molly's Eatery and Drinkery, 1022 W. Lincoln Highway.

DeKalb resident Ryan Schaefer also watched the game with his wife, Sarah, at Molly's. Ryan sported the classic yellow cheese hat, while his wife wore an Abercrombie & Fitch Bears sweatshirt.

"This is the only thing that we disagree about, and it makes for an interesting Sunday," Sarah said. "I don't have any real reactions to the game, it's the cheddar-heads I have reactions to."

Both maintained a sense of humor about their football loyalties.

"This is the best game that ever happened," Ryan said. "The Bears gave it a gallant effort, but their luck had to run out."

Sarah laughed, but fired back, "I still love the Bears."

Ryan said he grew up in Wisconsin, but recently moved to Illinois.

"I came down to Illinois to convert everybody," he said. "Everybody's seeing the light, and they're heading toward the cheese."

During their traditional afternoon out whenever the Bears and Packers play, DeKalb residents Chuck and Audrey Herrmann used the halftime lull to discuss the game at Starbusters Bar and Grill, 930 Pappas Drive.

The score was 10-9 in favor of the Packers at the half.

"We are right there," Chuck said. "The defense is still making the game. That's what happened in '85, half of the points were scored by the defense."

The Herrmanns said they get a babysitter to watch their kids and go out for some fun every time the Bears and the Packers line up.

"We're bar-hoppers," Audrey said, referring to where the couple prefers to go when the two teams compete.

DeKalb resident John Porter and his friend from Chicago, Kris Ororke, watched the game at Fatty's, 1312 W. Lincoln Highway.

Porter proclaims himself to be a Dolphins fan, but admits he went to Fatty's to watch the rivalry.

"The Packers got ‘em," he said, as the Packers took a 17-9 lead in the third quarter.

Ororke agreed.

"The Bears have a sense of urgency in them, they know they're down," Ororke said.

Chicago resident Mike Conway was in town to watch his nephew compete in a football tournament Sunday at Huskie Stadium, and had a different opinion after the Bears made the score 17-12 as he watched the game at Molly's.

"They pushed the start time of my nephew's game back from 1:30 p.m., so I came here to watch the Bears game," he said. "It's been a pretty good game so far, I'm surprised it's so close."

His 10-year old nephew was playing with the Downers Grove Panthers.

The Bears ultimately lost the game, frustrating Bears fans and elating Packers fans.

"The true team was going to prevail, definitely," Ryan Schaefer said.

Moos said he felt let down by the Bears' performance.

"I really expected the Bears to win," he said.

To try and combat the recent wave of anthrax fear that currently is gripping the nation, both NIU and the DeKalb County Health Department will host a free public forum on bioterrorism Wednesday.

The forum, which will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Heritage Room of the Holmes Student Center, will feature guest speakers such as Roman Golash of the special bacteriology and bioterrorism unit of the Illinois Department of Public Health, DeKalb Fire Chief Pete Polarek and Karen Grush, an administrator of the DeKalb County Health Department.

Organizers of the forum hope to provide the public with information about various forms of bioterrorism, and at the same time calm some of fears the public has expressed since the wave of anthrax attacks began. Speakers will address the scientific facts regarding the various agents of bioterrorism, and local and state programs trying to combat it.

Public concern over bioterrorism began Sept. 18, when envelopes containing a suspicious substance, later ruled to be anthrax, were delivered to the New York Post and NBC News, both in New York City.

Since that time, three people have died from anthrax exposure, and among those being treated for the bacteria are various postal workers and 28 people in the offices of senators Tom Daschle and Russ Feingold. Employees at NBC and CBS also have been diagnosed with various forms of anthrax. Attacks have been primarily limited to the East Coast.

Confiscated letters, including those addressed to NBC and Daschle's office, reveal crudely written letters with statements such as "Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great." The FBI announced Friday that it was all but certain that the contaminated letters were written by an adult male with laboratory experience.

A similar public health scare occurred in the Chicagoland area in 1982, when seven people died after taking extra strength Tylenol that had been tainted with potassium cyanide.