Calling for a summit conference of metropolitan-area mayors before year’s end, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on Tuesday made his most spirited pitch yet in his campaign to secure greater cooperation between the suburbs and city.
In a rare suburban appearance, Daley told a luncheon gathering of more than 500 suburban business leaders and government officials in Elk Grove Village that cooperation is the only way to solve regional problems and beat back competition from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan for industry and jobs.
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“Our futures are linked together. . . . We cannot compete with each other . . . we must think of our region as one,” said Daley, who described the region’s economic future as one increasingly linked to global trade.
He singled out work-force development; tourism; use of tax increment financing districts to draw industry; pollution cleanup; energy deregulation; and transportation as among the issues where regional approaches would be most effective.
Applause followed his call for greater cooperation.
“I’m happy to hear Daley say what I hoped he’d say–that we have to build bridges between the city and the suburbs,” said Mayor Rita Mullins of Palatine, a member of the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission formed by Daley last year.
She sees an increasing blurring of the demographic lines between city and suburb as young adults and empty nesters from the suburbs move back to the city.
“The boundaries are getting fuzzy,” she said.
Questions remain about just what form Daley’s “summit” will take. He sees the gathering as an extension of what he did as head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said mayoral spokesman Daniel Conley.
“If you can get mayors from across the country working together on common problems, there’s no reason you can’t get every mayor in the Chicago metropolitan region to do the same,” Conley said.
Daley would lead the initial summit. It would be followed by a series of working-group meetings.
“One of the things we’re going to have to grapple with is how do you make this a workable group,” said Rita Athas, the mayor’s suburban liaison officer. She suggested they would work through existing regional councils of suburban officials, such as the one she formerly directed, the Northwest Municipal Conference of Mayors.
In his Elk Grove speech, Daley said the “explosion” of festivals and the growing presence of cultural attractions in the suburban area as well as in Chicago signals the need for “cross-fertilization” of promotional efforts.
He noted that most of those who attended the lakefront Taste of Chicago festival earlier this summer were suburbanites.
“We need to get the word out and make sure tourists are taking advantage of the entire region,” he said.
But it was the issue of transportation that Daley touched on most often. He pointed to congestion on the region’s expressways and tollways, along with high energy costs, as major factors for industries considering a move into, or out of, the area.
“We’re finding that most businesses that leave Chicago are not going to suburban areas. They are flipping over to Wisconsin or Indiana,” he said.
Daley called for more investment in public transportation and regional approaches to solving congestion.
He stressed that while other economically powerful metropolitan areas have the advantage of seaports, Chicago has airports that provide access to international markets.
“When we think of economic development in the region, we must look to the airports as the engines that fuel our local economy,” he said, calling for an increase in international service–especially to Asia.
He said a $722 million project soon to get under way at Midway Airport on the city’s Southwest Side was “a huge commitment to the Chicago region,” creating 94,000 jobs and $3.6 billion in economic benefits by 2010.
Daley also spoke of a capital improvements plan at O’Hare International Airport that will include renovation of Terminals 2 and 3 and the development of land made available by the relocation of Air National Guard facilities that were there.
He grew testy, however, when asked if any future expansion of air traffic capacity at O’Hare would cause water and ground pollution problems that could affect the health of residents living in the area.
“The economic engine we have is transportation. How do we slow it down? Do we move planes to Indianapolis? Maybe some people like that. Do we send more planes to St. Louis or to Milwaukee? That will be the debate.”
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Elk Grove Village President Craig Johnson met with Daley before the Chicago mayor’s speech in an effort to gain assurances that no new airport runways pointing toward his village were on the city’s drawing board.
Daley’s office is hoping to win Elk Grove’s support for its Noise Compatibility Commission. Trustees of the village, a founding member of a rival commission that opposes expansion at O’Hare, plan to vote Aug. 26 on whether to join Daley’s group.
“Did I get the answer I wanted? No,” Johnson said. “But I don’t think he got the answer from me he wanted either.”