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: Andy Peters
Ward: 48th
Current job: Restaurateur and Entrepreneur, TrueNorth Cafes
Previous political experience: I am a Commissioner of Special Service Area (SSA) #22 Andersonville, where I am one of seven SSA commissioners responsible for distributing tax dollars to benefit Andersonville’s business district. In 2018, I was appointed to The Chicago Mayoral Business Council to help shape the Mayor’s small business initiatives.
Education: University of Chicago, BA, Economics and Political Science, Department and College Honors. Honors Senior Thesis: “Anbar Awakening: Game Theoretical Implications” supervised by Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson. Courses taken at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business: Financial Accounting, Economics and Demographics of Marketing, Business Ethics
Spouse’s occupation: N/A
Sources of outside income: N/A
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.
The first and most important thing the City needs to do is hire more police officers to address its massive staffing shortage. It’s important CPD recruits more officers from historically under-represented groups that look like the communities they serve. As we expand the force we must ensure quality mental health support for officers and update officer training to decrease the probability of negative outcomes.
To bring down the murder rate, we need to get shooters off the streets. But Chicago currently solves a shockingly low number of murders, leaving the perpetrators of violence free to kill again. Solving more cases will involve hiring more detectives and improving the Gang Crime Witness Protection Program.
To fight carjackings and armed robberies we need to provide modern technology such as helicopters with better night vision capabilities that can remain in the air during inclement weather. It might be worth exploring using drones instead, as I suspect they are cheaper to purchase and maintain, and would be less visible to fleeing suspects.
We also need to expand the “Vehicular Hijacking Task Force” that consists of City, County, State, and Federal Police law enforcement dedicated to the carjacking incidents in Chicago, and purchase more remote-controlled and viewable cameras called Police Observation Devices (PODs) to view and record potential crime, especially those with license plate reading technology.
We should focus on Mental Health by expanding use of “co-responder models” to allow mental health professionals to respond to mental health emergencies instead of or with police officers. A special focus should be given to addressing crime on CTA property by encouraging interagency agreements between CPD, CTA, and Family & Support Services to provide outreach and support services for riders who are unsheltered, as well as those grappling with mental health and substance abuse issues.
Making more arrests won’t make much of a difference if we don’t rehabilitate people convicted of crimes. I support robust re-entry after incarceration programs to help with housing, job placement, education support, case management, restorative justice, substance abuse and mental health services. Preventative crime fighting strategies should include expanding early childhood education & quality after school programs, along with promoting universal, school-based violence prevention, de-escalation, and interruption programs.
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 problems with the CTA can be broadly divided into two categories: reliability of service and safety. The efforts the CTA has made to increase safety on our transit system would be funny if the wasted money and resources weren’t so angering. The CTA signed two security contracts last year, the first one being a three-year $71 million contract for 200-300 unarmed guards. It’s clear this contract was put together in haste. The contract says the security guards shall make a minimum wage of $13.50-$14.30/hr, which is curious since Chicago’s minimum wage is currently $15.40/hr. The unarmed guards do not intervene to prevent crime, but are instead to report all crimes to police, which of course raises the question of what makes this a better use of money than simply installing more security cameras and panic buttons. In August, The CTA signed a $30.9 million contract for “up to 100? unarmed guards and 50 canines daily. According to the CTA, the canines will be “stationed near turnstiles to deter fare evasion and increase security presence.” Leaving aside the efficacy of this plan, one can’t help but wonder if turn style jumping is what people are thinking of when they refer to crime on the CTA.
All jokes aside, the CTA has made some positive steps to address crime including signing interagency agreements with the Department of Family Services to provide outreach and support services for riders who are unsheltered, as well as those grappling with mental health and substance abuse issues. This is a great start, and more of it needs to be done.
Addressing the second major issue the CTA is facing requires examining CTA’s current leadership and organizational chart. Current leaders keep blaming the pandemic for service issues, but the pandemic started 3 years ago and if they cannot adapt to the new reality, they must be replaced by new leaders who can. The CTA blames much of this on needing to recruit more drivers, but the time for excuses is over.
The CTA puts a lot of the blame for ghost buses and trains on technology, which I am suspicious of since ghost buses and trains were never such a problem in the past. If technology is indeed to blame, the CTA must get better technology or fix what they already have. It’s of paramount importance that riders know when to expect their bus or train to arrive. Supervisors must be held responsible for the service provided to customers. I suspect current CTA leadership doesn’t focus enough on the customer experience and how frustrating and hurtful it is to depend on such a non-reliable mode of transportation. We must do better.
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?
A 20% decrease in enrollment is shocking in light of the fact the overall population of Chicago has barely decreased at all. Charter school enrollment only increased by roughly 15,000-25,000 students over that time period so the 80,000 students CPS lost cannot be explained by losing students to charter school.
To increase enrollment at CPS you must make parents feel that CPS is providing their child a good education. I grew up attending public school in Berwyn and attended Berwyn-Cicero (Morton) High School, the least adequately funded public high school in suburban Cook County. My mom was always talking about moving to a better school district, but she was a single mother and didn’t have the resources. I suspect many parents in Chicago feel the same way and move their family to places they believe have better schools. One of my employees moved to Indiana where she could afford a bigger apartment and send her daughters to what she thought were better and safer schools.
We should also evaluate our curriculums and courses to make sure parents and students feel that they are getting the skills they need for their future. We should try to bring more job training opportunities and trade schools to secondary education. It’s also important to build bridges from high school to City Colleges of Chicago for students.
Decreasing enrollment is also surely the result of things other than underperforming schools. Parents are moving to places with less crime where they feel their children will be safer. Chicago also does not have enough large-unit affordable housing. We need more subsidized housing that is big enough for a family with kids. We won’t see CPS enrollment anywhere near its previous numbers until we make our schools better, our neighborhoods safer, and can offer housing that works for families.
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.
TIFs should prioritize development of businesses that have a synergy with the Career and Technical Education Programs CPS offers to students. This would be a win/win: The company would have a skilled workforce, and the neighborhoods would have extra jobs.
As a business owner in Hyde Park, it’s discouraging to see how different economic conditions are between the Hyde Park neighborhood and its surrounding communities. I am sure many would argue lowering taxes and regulations is necessary, but Chicago will never be able to compete with the suburbs or Indiana on those fronts so focusing our efforts there is a lost cause.
We should focus on creating a highly skilled workforce that is trained to work in the fields such as healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, transportation, information technology, construction, and care. We should introduce more trade programs into our high schools and make college career programs as accessible as possible. Simeon is the only school with a welding program in the City, and Prosser High School is the only high school with an HVAC program. Both of those High Schools offer an Electricity Program, the only such programs in the City. The number of High School Programs CPS offers in fields such as culinary, information technology, and health sciences is only slightly greater.
Students who complete these programs have a range of options from apprenticeships and two-year college programs to four-year college and graduate programs after High School. Yet we clearly do not invest enough in them. The City should do more to promote these programs and incentivize companies to hire these students after graduation. Perhaps this could be a precondition of accepting TIF funds.
Similar programs should be offered to adults and formerly incarcerated individuals for free. A range of online classes should be available for people on electronic monitoring so that they can develop skills instead of doing nothing during that time. Incentive programs for business owners who hire individuals re-entering the workforce after a period spent in incarceration would also be beneficial.
Do you support giving Chicagoans property tax relief? If yes, please explain how you would accomplish it. If no, please explain why not.
I am against raising property taxes, and think property taxes should be kept at the minimum level necessary to stabilize the City’s finances and payoff its crushing pension debts.
I favor finding ways to expand the tax base by attracting more people to live in the City and increasing economic development to bring up property values and thus total tax revenue. Increasing job opportunities, fixing public transportation, decreasing crime, improving Chicago Public Schools would all drive more families to the City and add revenue to the City’s coffers. We can’t fix our financial problems by simply raising taxes on a shrinking pool of people.
In my opinion to provide property tax relief, it would be ideal for the State to allow Chicago to institute a progressive sales tax on services to raise revenue, especially since that could help neutralize the sales tax on goods. But without that happening, the City is quite limited in ways to raise revenue other than increase the tax base.
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 am skeptical of many TIFs because they have become too abundant and have been run under shrouds of secrecy to fund pet projects and line the pockets of wealthy developers instead of helping neighborhoods improve or residents find jobs.
However, it is clear that TIFs, when used for their original intent, are good for neighborhoods that have trouble generating their own private investment. TIFs have also been used well in recent years as a creative way to fund important infrastructure improve in the City. As a commissioner of SSA #22 Andersonville, I studied the Red-Purple Modernization (RPM) Phase One Project TIF in detail and think it was a creative and necessary way for the City to fund a long overdue project that will create jobs and greatly benefit the economic conditions and lives of residents. The TIF funding also opened up federal funding for roughly half the project’s cost. Without the TIF, the city might not have been able to show it could match that money and thus not have qualified for such funds.
This project is extremely important to the City of Chicago as a whole and the 48th Ward specifically. As someone who often uses the Bryn Mawr Station, with its dangerously narrow wooden platform, I can tell you the improvements are long overdue. The track improvements will improve service for the entire city. Efforts to protect the environment and help the economy depend on reliable and efficient public transportation and this TIF helped make that possible.
This case doesn’t justify all TIFs however, and the City should clarify the rules for creating a TIF and increase transparency and oversight to curb abuses. It’s also important that TIFs only fund developments and projects that improve the lives of Chicagoans and, importantly, wouldn’t otherwise be built.
TIFs were intended to help blighted areas but are commonly used downtown and in some of the most economically successful neighborhoods in the City. I applaud recent efforts to increase transparency, but its undeniable that too often TIFs are used for pet projects that lack any economic development rationale. That is deplorable since the squandered incremental tax revenue doesn’t go toward what it otherwise would, improving neighborhood schools, parks, and libraries.
Thus, TIFs that are no longer serving their original purpose effectively should be phased out and the money returned to their original taxing bodies. More oversight for determining how TIF money is spent and whether it is meeting its goals is still opaque and needs more reform.
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?
Chicago has more toxic pipes than any other American city and is moving at a snail’s pace to replace them. We need a much more aggressive strategy. In the short term, the City should offer lead filters that provide some protection to residents with high levels of lead in their water. It should also provide such systems to any apartment building, school, childcare facility, or restaurant that needs one.
The most obvious impediment to replacing lead pipes is the giant price tag. The City received money from the Federal and State government, but not nearly enough. The City doesn’t have the money necessary, nor a way of raising that money quickly through traditional means. The City should investigate the possibility of using TIF surpluses or tax increment financing “Revenue Anticipation Bonds” that can be financed with a portion of future revenues from expiring TIFs. The City must also work with vendors and contractors that can replace the pipes at the lowest cost. The Tribune showed last year that Chicago spends much more than other cities such as Denver and Detroit replacing lead service lines. This is unacceptable.
The City must also do a better job educating residents about the lead problem. I don’t think many residents are aware of the problem or of how to protect themselves. Lead testing services should be promoted so that every Chicago knows the risks and how easy it is to get their water tested.
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.
I believe I possess a unique perspective how the City can foster a pro-small business atmosphere due to my experience opening 3 businesses in the City as well as having worked in the Mayor’s Office and in government affairs for the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA). At the IRA I gained first-hand experience writing and passing laws, providing me the experience to turn ideas into realities as a member of the City Council. I helped write the City’s food truck ordinance that legalized this emerging industry for entrepreneurs all over the City. On the State level, I worked hard to help pass a law that created drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants so that they could get to work legally and safely.
In 2018, Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed me to The Chicago Mayoral Business Council, where I worked collaboratively with other small business owners to shape the mayor’s initiatives and improve supports for Chicago business operators. Locally, I serve on the Andersonville Special Service Area (SSA) group, which uses funds from a nominal tax levy to maintain the commercial district’s cleanliness and competitivity.
What is the most pressing issue facing the people of your ward, and how would you address it?
Residents of the 48th Ward bring up rising crime and vacant storefronts more than anything else. Residents of the 48th Ward take pride in the unique small business atmosphere in Edgewater and Andersonville. But these small, independent businesses that once thrived here are hurting. National chains opening up in the neighborhood, such as Jeni’s Ice Cream and Taco Bell, are salt in the wound.
The 48th Ward needs a plan to encourage entrepreneurship, build small businesses, and create jobs. As Alderperson, I will act as an advocate, concierge, booster, and cheerleader for attracting small businesses and responsible development to the neighborhood. I will employ a small business liaison in the Ward office to help prospective and current small businesses get the attention and resources they need. I will engage the local community to posit potential tenants and business types that are wanted. I will also use my unique perspective as an entrepreneur who has worked in government to streamline licensing, zoning, and permitting. We must cut red tape and make sure information on opening a business is easily available, updated, and accurate.
We also need a plan to address vacant storefronts. We must limit tax breaks property owners get for not having a tenant. We must cap the frequency a property can receive the vacancy tax break and allow the City and other taxing bodies to file complaints if a property owner who receives vacancy tax relief isn’t actively trying to lease, sell or renovate the property. When necessary, fines should be given to absentee landlords who cannot provide proof they are trying to lease their space in good faith. It’s also important to continue to support storefront improvement programs.
Sum up why should voters elect you and not your opponent(s)? (Please limit this to policy and approach, not a biography recitation.)
My approach to being Alderperson is grounded in being a young, nerdy, small business owner with experience working in City government. As a small business owner, I have created dozens of jobs and understand how to help businesses open and grow in Chicago. As a huge nerd, I attended The University of Chicago on an Odyssey Scholarship for lower-income students and graduated with honors in Economics and was fortunate to take classes with some great teachers who gave fundamentally changed my world view and how I think. Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, taught me how to analyze statistics in a way that can produce non-intuitive results, to avoid confusing correlation with causality, and to always be cognizant of confounding variables that are not being accounted for but might be very important. Nobel Prize winner Professor Roger Myerson was my senior thesis advisor which I wrote on game theory, and he taught me that the rules of a game matter, and that changes to the rules, even a little bit, can have huge effects because they change everyone’s incentive structure and strategies. These lessons make me more likely than most to question well intentioned policy changes that might produce outcomes at variance with their intuitive outcomes. For example, it makes me more likely than others to think that raising property taxes will close businesses and lower property values, thus leading to less tax revenue then if the taxes hadn’t been raised in the first place. Its why when people talk about rent control as if it is the solution to all our affordable housing needs, I tend to think of the likely consequences it would create by driving landlords to convert their rentable apartments into Airbnb’s or condos, this limiting supply and increasing the rents on apartments that aren’t rent controlled. I think all of my opponents in this race are intelligent and good people, but I think I will bring a unique perspective to the City Council that Chicago could really use.