Bears One Step Closer

To leaving for Arlington Heights:

• The Bears say they want to stay in Chicago, but their potential drive to the northwest suburbs just got easier.

  Team officials announced Monday they’ve reached a tentative agreement with the village of Arlington Heights and local school district leaders who’ve sparred with the Bears over the property tax valuation on the shuttered Arlington International Racecourse, the 326-acre plot the team closed on early last year as a potential new stadium site.

  After about a year of wrangling over the size of the team’s property tax bill — and a year of political roadblocks to the Bears’ hopes for funding a new stadium in Chicago — the team says it has a memorandum of understanding that opens the runway for them to land in Arlington Heights.

We said before, all the posing and talk about a lakefront stadium (generously assisted by politicians giving away taxpayer dollars) is just leverage to use in negotiations with Arlington Heights.

It sure looks that way even more so.