To inform voters and to help the baiduhai Editorial Board make endorsements, the board posed a series of questions to the candidates running for alderman. See their answers below. See how other candidates answered here.
Name: Gabriel Piemonte
Ward: 5th
Current job: Self employed – writing coach, editor, communications consultant
Previous political experience: None
Education: B.A.; Some Master’s-level coursework
Spouse’s occupation: None
Sources of outside income: None
The rise in violent crime remains a top priority for City Hall. Homicides, shootings and carjackings are all unacceptably high. Tell us how city government can be innovative in combating crime, and explain what measures you would propose if elected.
There are three critical components to crime: Economics, policing, and the capacity of ordinary citizens to make an impact. We need to create jobs programs to jump start our local economy — there are tremendous needs in the city that could be partially met in this way, including public activities that could deter crime. We need to peg increases in the police budget to performance outcomes, which is to say, we need to measure evidence of both a broad use of tools by police to de-escalate and deter criminal activity and overall efficacy. I believe in the idea of diverting some emergency calls to other professionals better suited to incidents that are related to, for example, a mental health crisis or domestic problems, which I see as a kind of soft policing. Finally, many things that ordinary citizens have interest in developing produce incidental but powerful impact on crime. No one starts a community garden to stop muggings, but a deterrent effect is undeniable. Public events discourage predators from the areas where they take place. If they are frequent and not always predictable, a location becomes undesirable for criminal activity.
The CTA, one of the nation’s largest transit systems, remains a troubled agency grappling with issues ranging from violent crime and ghost buses and trains, to flagging ridership. Give us your thoughts on what specific measures CTA should take to make train and bus service safer, more reliable and more equitable for Chicagoans.
The CTA is not disclosing its current state of staffing or other problems that could impact its funding. We need transparency built so completely into the transit authority that this is not even an option. We have to be more aggressive in recruiting drivers. Conversations with current and former employees make it clear that safety and disregard for concerns of employees are major reasons for people leaving the CTA. This has to be addressed publicly and with real investment. Obviously, we also need a ridership drive in order to make the case for a more robust budget on all levels of government. The distribution of our L system is so unfair that there is no short-term fix. We need a 50-year plan that brings the South and West sides to some percentage of access in comparison to the North Side. It will not be 100% parity – there is too much investment needed – but if we could get to even half that over the next five decades, that would show some real commitment to the ideal.
Ten years ago, enrollment at Chicago Public Schools was 403,000 students. In September, enrollment stood at 322,000 students. Enrollment at CPS has dropped for 11 consecutive years. What specific measures should CPS undertake to reverse the trend of ever-dwindling enrollment?
Poor quality schools have led to people looking for alternatives. The brutal wave of closures also caused many to lose faith in the schools. An outflow of Black Chicagoans cost the school system many of its most devoted families. Talking about fixing the problems at CPS is a conversation about fixing public schools generally, in large part. This is a massive topic, but there are critical elements that can be mentioned. For instance, we should be holding charter schools to their original purpose and requiring that innovations be integrated back into the public school system or, if that is not possible, those schools have to be converted from charter to private. Resources spent on charter schools that do not benefit the system are a drain on CPS — and problematically, often include profits for private companies that never feed back into the system. We need to end the practice of diverting funds from schools to TIFs. We need to craft a vision for a more dynamic and effective school system that will excite the city enough to justify greater investment. We have to use the city’s influence in DC to get more investment from the federal government. And we have to think about the health of the communities around schools as an indicator of the attractiveness and effectiveness of the school itself. Addressing neighborhood problems often has the incidental effect of improving school conditions.
Disinvestment on the South and West sides is a decades-long problem with myriad causes. Give us at least one innovative idea that you believe could play a role in reversing South and West side disinvestment, and explain why the idea is realistic and feasible.
We need to radically expand the South Side Community Federal Credit Union and establish a similar institution on the West Side. The impact of unbanked people and the use of payday lenders is devastating to communities. Many loans that people with limited incomes need in order to build toward greater prosperity are not possible to obtain from traditional banks. The city should work closely with these financial institutions and build capacity, then deposit funds used by the city in the credit unions instead of traditional banks. A large percentage of the vast capital required to operate a city the size of Chicago would turbocharge the credit unions, which could in turn provide micro-loans and financial education to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of South and West siders.
Do you support giving Chicagoans property tax relief? If yes, please explain how you would accomplish it. If no, please explain why not.
I believe that we can build a plan toward relief that begins with reform of our police system and elimination of TIFs. We simply cannot afford the diversion of resources both of these systems represent, one in terms of the cost of police abuse in settlements and the other in terms of diverted funds. We can also make more creative use of transaction fees to build up revenue and identify similar sources of revenue based on the day-to-day commerce of our wealthier citizens. Everyone can get tax relief if we work harder to make the whole city attractive to new residents, and that should be a focal point of our city government.
Give us your take on the city’s use of tax increment financing districts. Do you feel they have been useful, or do you feel that the problems associated with them outweigh their usefulness? What if any reforms would you want to apply to the city’s usage of TIFs?
I think TIFs have had some success, but it has been as a crippling cost to the city as a whole. TIFs should be phased out over time, with the TIFs in the most impoverished areas phased out more slowly.
Lead in drinking water is a major health concern for the city. It is estimated that in Chicago there are roughly 400,000 homes and small apartment buildings with lead service lines. So far, the city has replaced less than 300 lead service lines. Do you feel the pace of lead service line replacement should be expedited, and if yes, what is the best, most feasible way to accomplish that?
The lead crisis in our city is an excellent example of pennywise, pound foolish public policy. It is hard to quantify the effect on so many children of sustaining lead poisoning over the course of their childhoods, but we do know that we end up bearing the burden of many of the outcomes associated with sustained lead poisoning. This should be a top priority of the next administration, with serious consideration of the municipal bond market as a funding source for a major replacement project which should also be integrated into a plan to increase employment in the city. Training Chicagoans to be part of a huge infrastructure undertaking could make progress in two important directions at once.
If you are an incumbent, please explain what is it about your service on the City Council that makes you most qualified for the job. If you have never served on the council, please explain what is it about your background that makes you most qualified.
Over the course of the last 20 years, I have been developing micro-institutions and developing community-based solutions to problems that the city government has simply failed to address in my ward and in the city at large. These include co-founding a financial institution, a preservation organization, a summer program and curriculum for high school students, and a civic organization. Through this work, in addition to the experience gained in working with civic groups, candidates, and elected officials as a communications consultant, I have developed an in-depth knowledge of the capacity of Chicago government and its limits. As the former editor of a newspaper, I have also developed expertise in collecting and disseminating information, a critical role of ward offices.
What is the most pressing issue facing the people of your ward, and how would you address it?
Housing insecurity is a massive problem in our ward and it has led directly to spikes in crime and attracted speculators who are further destabilizing our communities. We need a housing advocate as a full-time position in the alderman’s office, as well as some citywide relief, which I will pursue as part of a coalition. We need to raise funds to offset the wave of residents in arrears in their rent or mortgage. We have a whole category of people who are living in high-rises with astronomical assessments who did not qualify for relief during the pandemic because they were overlooked for whom I will lobby for relief from the city and state. There is an obvious economic component to this which is related to employment, and I will work assiduously to develop job opportunities in the ward, including tapping into my private network of civc-minded friends and colleagues and the philanthropic community.
Sum up why should voters elect you and not your opponent(s)? (Please limit this to policy and approach, not a biography recitation.)
Truly understanding the relationship between conceiving of policy and implementing it requires direct experience in what I call civic entrepreneurship. Unless you have tried and failed and learned, and tried again and succeeded in a series of civic ventures, you are guessing at what will work in times of change. Now is such a time in our ward: We have unusually high rates of crime and unemployment, and recent increases in property values have not translated into increased prosperity for most long-time residents. Getting our crime rate under control, stabilizing our housing conditions, and increasing employment will require creative problem solving of the sort I have been involved in in my ward for the past two decades.