HS News Network

Mayor-Elect Emanuel expressed his commitment to the diverse communities of Chicago in his responses to a mayoral candidate questionnaire, completed at the request of the Illinois Latino Agenda, an alliance of 49 Latino-serving organizations co-convened by the Latino Policy Forum and MALDEF.

Governance
• How will you ensure the City budget remains solvent over the short and long term?  

My fiscal sustainability agenda is based on a simple premise – I will look to every line item and ask two simple questions: is this something that city government should be doing and, if so, can we be doing it more effectively?

The first city service ripe for reform is Chicago’s trash collection system. My plan starts by reporting the cost to pick up a ton of garbage and benchmarking performance to those numbers. Then, Streets and Sanitation will be tasked with finding efficiencies that reduce costs to the agreed benchmarks. Costs will have to be reduced without negatively impacting service, and worker safety will have to improve. If benchmarks aren’t met, I will introduce managed competition to improve performance and reduce costs. The plan is estimated to save $40 million to $65 million a year while improving services.

Second, I have called for a comprehensive wellness program for city employees. In 2011, taxpayers will spend nearly $500 million on health care costs for city employees, their families and retirees. My plan gives employees access to an initial screening that emphasizes preventing and managing chronic conditions that drive the majority of health care costs. Participants will receive early and ongoing support to manage their health, and significant incentives to stay healthy. The plan will get health care costs under control by implementing a comprehensive wellness and disease management strategy, saving between $40 - $60 million dollars annually.

Third, fixing Chicago’s procurement process will create opportunities for Chicago businesses, encourage competition and save money. I will order a review of every contract to prioritize savings opportunities. Procurement professionals will be brought in to evaluate the need for each contract and assess if the city has gotten a fair deal. Contracts will be renegotiated and, when appropriate, cancelled. 

• How will you provide for inclusion of diverse Latino interests, e.g. ethnic and ideological, in city leadership positions?

If given the honor of serving as Mayor, my administration will reflect the diversity of Chicago and its neighborhoods. My campaign has drawn a broad array of supporters that cuts across the ethnic lines that used to define the city. Latino voices will be a strong force in Chicago’s future. 

Education

• What will you do to increase the number of highly-effective teachers in low-income, Latinoserving schools to increase and improve K-8 educational attainment and high school graduation rates for Latino children?

Our children deserve nothing less than an effective teacher. We need to retain the best and attract the brightest. That’s why I will push to create a new salary scale for teachers so that the best of the best can reach top compensation in eight years. The most effective teachers, based on student
performance, will qualify for bonuses if they transfer to a low-performing school. 

To help teachers improve, I want to double the number of slots in our urban teacher residency programs to create an expanding corps of 160 top-flight teachers each year – all committed to spending five years in Chicago’s public schools.

• English language learners (ELLs) are being outperformed by their peers. What strategies will you use to improve educational outcomes for all Latinos and in particular those of ELLs?

I am committed to providing adequate funding for ESL programs. It is essential that Latinos, one of Chicago’s fastest growing groups, gain fluency in English in addition to Spanish. A large bilingual population provides a strong asset in bolstering Chicago’s global competitiveness. 

• How will you ensure that culturally appropriate parent engagement strategies and programs are put in place at each school?

I have built my plan on the premise that we must do more to engage parents and give them the information they need to play an effective role in their child’s education. As mayor, I will ensure that schools provide culturally appropriate parent engagement strategies such as parent-teacher conferences available in the language of the student’s parents. I also want to make Chicago the first city in the nation to institute parent-teacher contracts at the beginning of the school year. Those contracts will commit each parent to help in their child’s education by limiting the hours spent on TV and video games and by reading together every night. We will start with the parents of children in preK and kindergarten, and then look to expand it. If parents find their children stuck in a school that simply isn’t doing the job, we should empower them to force changes by allowing a majority of parents to legally force a failing school’s transformation – through administrative changes, bringing in a new operator, or by shutting it down and starting over.  Giving parents this power would encourage them to play a larger role in their children’s education, and with greater power would come greater responsibility.

• How will you reform city community colleges to increase completion rates and enhance transitions to four-year universities or careers in high-growth industries?

For many Chicagoans, like Americans across the country, the opportunity to attend community college represents the best chance to obtain a steady income that can support a family. The recent reforms announced for the City Colleges are a big step in the right direction – it will refocus our community colleges and make them more attentive to students’ needs, give them the skills they need to find a job when they graduate, and ensure Chicago has a trained talent pool to draw from. This is a major priority of mine and I will ensure that the CCC has the leadership and resources it needs to continue its overhaul. While working for President Obama, I helped craft his community colleges initiative, which calls for 5 million additional graduates from community colleges by 2020 and invests $2 billion in communitycolleges over the next four years, while expanding Pell grants and eliminating student loan fees.

Workforce and Economic Development

• How do you plan to promote economic development in low-income, Latino neighborhoods? 

We cannot limit economic development to certain neighborhoods while neglecting others. To address stymied development, I look to the role I played in moving the Old Town School of Music to a space on Lincoln Avenue that had little economic vitality. By creating a strong anchor in the community and pushing small businesses to fill in around it, we created a vibrant local economy that creates jobs and produces revenue for the city. We need to do this in more communities by creating strong anchors, whether they be a cultural institution, a grocery store, a school or a transportation hub. 

• How will you increase the participation rate of Latino-owned businesses among minority and women owned businesses with regard to the distribution of contracts awarded by the city?

I am committed to the City’s minority-owned business enterprises (MBE) and women-owned business enterprises (WBE) program. Unfortunately, less than 2,000 businesses in Chicago are certified. This ispartly because of the complex certification process, which requires each business to complete a lengthy and detailed application, and re-certify on an annual basis. Businesses must also complete separate, yet similar processes if they wish to be certified by Cook County, the State of Illinois, or some of Chicago’s sister agencies. This process winds up costing the City about $2 million each year to implement. I will require the new procurement chief to draft a plan that would decrease the burden on minority- and women-owned businesses and increase program participation. These changes should include the principles outlined by the independent 21st Century Commission – a move toward universal certification, the elimination of ineffective policies, the study of other ways to improve the success of the program, and the analysis of detailed performance information on the program. Abuse of this process is well documented and severely hurts the upstart businesses it is supposed to help. There should be zero tolerance for companies that commit fraud and use “front” companies to
achieve women- or minority-owned status under the program. I will go after these abusers and bar them from receiving any city business for ten years.

Community Safety

• In order to promote community safety and economic development, what is your plan to invest in Chicago’s Latino youth?

To tackle the issues of community safety and economic development among Chicago’s Latino youth, we need to insure that students spend more time in the classroom than on the street corner. I have put forward a plan that calls for comprehensive after-school programs, ensuring safe passage to and from schools, integrating child intervention programs across departments, and tackling Chicago’s school dropout crisis.Access to after-school programming is a win-win for our children: it is shown to both increase academic progress and reduce violence. I will task the incoming Chicago Public Schools CEO with finalizing a system-wide afterschool program to be implemented at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. A successful program must meet several basic requirements including offering opportunities in academics, the arts, and athletics, having the flexibility to meet local needs, and providing a snack after school.  Funding for these programs would come from current sources, like the Supplemental Education Services, and through school partnerships with local businesses and non-profit organizations that wantto target specific schools. Additional revenue will be drawn from advertisements on garbage trucks and other public venues. 

• How will you improve the relationship between Latino communities and the Chicago Police? 

My work on the 1994 Crime Bill taught me an important lesson – the best way to reduce crime is to integrate police into communities so that they get to know local residents, see problems before they emerge, and forge relationships that build trust. I will apply that lesson to Chicago’s streets if I am mayor, with a focus on areas around schools.

Immigration

• In 1985, Harold Washington issued an executive order barring city employees from helping enforce federal immigration laws; in 2006 the city council reinforced it with a city ordinance declaring Chicago a ‘sanctuary city’. How will you reaffirm the city’s commitment to remain a ‘sanctuary city’?

Chicago’s vitality has been built on the strength of immigrant populations that have come to enjoy new freedoms and access new opportunities. Just as my father came to Chicago six decades ago and my grandparents a generation before that, millions have come to Chicago and helped to build it into the great city it is today. As Mayor, I will sign an executive order continuing current policy that prohibits city agencies from inquiring or disclosing immigration status of Chicagoans who come into contact with city government. 

• Immigrants are particularly vulnerable to fraud due to language, culture and immigration status, what is your plan to enhance consumer protections for this population?

Chicago offers many resources for immigrant residents, but the information is often difficult to find and the benefits are often difficult to access. I want to consolidate programs for immigrants into one office with an easy-to-use website available in multiple languages. The office will help immigrants identify city services they can access and find non-profit organization that provide useful resources. This office can also marshal the resources of sister agencies and departments – the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Public Library, City Colleges, and others – as places to apply for American citizenship, take English and government classes, and coordinate with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide access to information on naturalization application process.

• How will you use your influence, as the leader of a major U.S. city, to affirm and support efforts for immigration reform on a national level? 

I believe that we should lead by example. In addition to joining Mayor Bloomberg’s immigration reform advocacy group, I have proposed creating the first local DREAM Status. Law-abiding children of parentswho brought them to this country illegally would be eligible for low-interest students loans. To qualify, students must be between 12 and 15, have moved to Chicago by 16, have been raised in Chicago for at least 5 years prior to application, and be in good standing at an elementary or high school in Chicago.  For these children, the most significant impediment to attending college and becoming productive members of our economy is their inability to access federal loan funds. Engaging business and civic leaders, I will launch a new “DREAM of College Fund” that offers loan opportunities to children with DREAM Status – the very same opportunities that are available to children of U.S. citizens who reside in Chicago. 
 
Housing

• Given that Latinos have a larger average household size than their counterparts and sometimes live in overcrowded housing conditions, what will you do to ensure that the city’s housing plan provides affordable housing for Latino working class families?

A strong local economy and the long-term health of our city depends on our ability to offer our citizens safe and affordable homes in communities that bring together businesses, quality education, recreation and access to transportation. I will work to ensure that new housing developments continue to require a set-aside for affordable units, and will work to ensure the rental stock remains strong from those who are not in a position to purchase a home.

• Foreclosures and vacant proprieties are distressing Latino communities throughout the city; what neighborhood specific plans and/or ordinances and programs will you pursue/enact to mitigate these challenges?

Chicago has to do more to address vacant properties due to foreclosure. The City’s commitment to initiatives like the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) are important, but we need to accelerateand expand those efforts, one way to do that is through improved coordination and efficiency in all of the City’s grant programs. Currently, too many of those grant resources are allocated to overhead and bureaucracy, I’ll streamline them freeing up more dollars for community investments including acquiring and fixing up vacant homes.  I have already announced a $10 million program that will leverage an additional $100 million in outside resources to triple the number of homes that receive efficiency upgrades cutting energy costs and improving affordability. 

Health

• Given the percentage of low-income and uninsured Latinos and poor data collection on the impact of health conditions among Latinos, how will the city ensure access to appropriate health care and prevention services as well as continued support for local community health clinics?

The health care reform bill I helped President Obama pass included a record expansion of community health clinics. These facilities are critical in providing care to those who can least afford care. I am committed to maintaining adequate funding levels for community health clinics and improving service delivery so that all citizens have access to local health care.

• National data finds a significant number of Latinas suffer from chronic depression, highlighting the significant mental health burden among Latinos. What is your plan to increase culturally and linguistically competent counseling and treatment for mental health programs in the Latino community despite continued funding cuts?

Chicago’s mental health services should be accessible and welcoming to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity or race. If elected mayor, I will mandate that the city provide culturally and linguistically competent treatment for all Chicagoans. 

• Health care reform has resulted in an immediate escalation in insurance pricing. What is your plan to work with the appropriate public and private entities to ensure affordable pricing for the less affluent and permanently unemployed?

One of my proudest accomplishments during my time of Chief-of-Staff was helping President Obama pass health care reform. We fought a hard battle against the special interests that sought to maintain the status quo: spiraling health care costs and millions of Americans without coverage. There remains work to be done and I will continue to fight against escalating health insurance rates. I will also bring the same tenacity to tacking health care in the city of Chicago. It will be the responsibility of the Mayor to bring together public and private groups with the shared vision of providing a more equitable health care system for all Chicagoans.