Good morning.
We'll begin today's hearing with public comment.
We have one commenter on the phone.
Are you here? Natasha Dunn is not on Zoom.
Kamal.
Natasha Dunn is not on Zoom currently.
She is not on.
Okay, if she comes on before we conclude,
please let me know.
We will begin with Bobonti Obadeli.
Mr. Obadeli, you'll have three minutes
to give your comments.
Thank you very much, Chairman.
Chairman, and to the August body here, the city council.
It is kinda shameful in 2023,
in 2003 that I come to announce that sharecropping
by any other name is still sharecropping
and sharecropping is going on in the city as it relates
to contracting from all levels,
but more specifically in the CVI,
and CVI stands for Community Violence Intervention.
You know, I know everyone knows it's no secret.
Unfortunately 80% of the violence is happening
in the African-American community
and I believe that African-American people should be leading
to solve that problem.
And if you look at the contracting
that's coming out of Department of Public Health,
Chicago Department of Public Health,
Black folks are being told the only way that you can work
in this space is that you have to be a sharecropper,
meaning that you have to join under some non-Black entity,
and I'm telling you today,
in this time and day that we have Black folks
with more degrees than a thermometer,
Black folks with a skillset,
Black folks who can lead in these spaces
and are being denied those opportunities
and so we have talked about this
with the previous administration,
so I'm kind of related that there's been some changes
at the Department of Public Health
as it relates to the commissioner,
but I think there's some more changes need to take place.
If you look at the dollar amount that you guys
are appropriating for HIV, AIDS,
for community violence interruption,
violence prevention work,
it is going to largely non-Black organizations
and I'm not talking about Black folks
who are executive directors of organizations
with white boards, I'm talking about African-American led
organizations with boards, with the scholarship,
with the fiduciary capacity to be able to do the work
and I'm saying time out for this.
Time out for this.
I think you have the ability now to correct the wrongs
and the injustices that have taken place
in the Chicago Department of Public Health,
and really within the city of Chicago.
Black folks are still getting less than 7% of the contracts
across the board, so just how it affects Black folks
in the business community,
it's affecting those of us who are doing community work.
And so I commend the mayor and you folks
for putting the dollars into the budget,
but I'm saying now we need to look at it through an equity
and parody lens and since that's been talked about,
Black folks can do this work and they should be allowed
to do it, and listen, like James Brown said,
we ain't asking nobody to give us nothing,
but open up the door and make the process fair.
If it's an RFP, we will compete for the RFPs,
but make it fair.
Make it fair, make it fair.
So I time out for having non-Black entities doing work
in Black communities across the city of Chicago
and I thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Nila Sharma?
Did I pronounce that correctly?
Yes, Nila or Nehi
All right, thank you, thank you much.
You'll have three minutes for your comments.
Esteemed members of the Budget Committee.
My name is Nehi Sharma and I'm a resident of Chicago City.
Could you speak in a mic, please,
ma'am, so we can hear you.
As a tax-paying resident of the city of Chicago
and an avid animal lover, and an independent networker
who believes in the no-kill equation
and human treatment of all animals,
I am here to appeal for a more human approach
to be adopted at CACC.
The stories of Lilabit and the story of Perla
are heart-wrenching when we look at them with the,
I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous.
The story of Lilabit who did not survive,
and the story of Perla, a dog who was taken out recently
but is emancipated beyond belief,
is why I am urging today for you to make CACC safe haven
for these animals that it should be.
The last available report for CACC audit
is from 10 years ago.
The Office of Inspector General conducted this audit
on May 2nd, 2013.
2013 audit found that CACC was significantly understaffed
according to the national standards
and appropriate staff levels were at staffing levels
and did not carry out veterinary examinations
in a timely manner for 38% of neglected and abuse animals.
That audit also noted inconsistencies in animal inventory.
We would like to ask why has a follow-up audit
not happened since 2013?
There were some steps taken in 2014
to remediate these inconsistencies.
However, some of these issues still persist
and have exaggerated and scale based
on our independent observation.
And while this is not a call
for pointing out inconsistencies,
but an urge to request a defined process and of governance
to hold CACC staff accountable for their actions
with more transparency to the public.
Our ask today is for the city council Inspector General
to set up an annual audit and a governance in place
to be able to deliver its mission and for CACC to be able
to deliver its mission and vision,
putting the animal interest first.
We would like to draw your attention
to some of the key asks for the annual audit.
When was the last public education program run by CACC
on animal safety?
Why are behaviorists not a part of the support system
for these animals?
Why are the reports published by CACC
do not highlight the alive rate or rescue rate.
Instead, there is a convoluted equation
to get to those numbers.
How many homeward bound rescues were added to the list
for better outcome and capacity management
within the shelter?
How many volunteers were engaged in the past 10 years
to help the shelter operations?
How many fosters were engaged in the past 10 years
for efficient capacity?
When will the shelter's onsite clinic be functional?
Or what are the plans to make them functional
for general public?
How many low-cost fee vaccine clinics
were conducted every year?
Why aren't there time and attendance reports
with CACC staff not available for transparency for public?
Why are adopters refused?
Why are number of adoption drives,
how many were the number of adoption drives
in the past 10 years?
For operations, how do we maintain the hygiene
and cleanliness of the operations or the city council,
or CACC, I'm sorry.
One last item that I wanna say is while these
are all important, it is also important
to have the wellbeing of the people
who are involved in CACC.
It is a high-stress environment.
If their wellbeing is taken into account,
it will also lead through the wellbeing of the animals
in their care and we would really like it to be more humane.
Thank you.
Next we'll have Mr. George Blakemore.
Advocating for animals.
Is this speaker on? Yes, sir.
Advocating for animals.
Well, man is an animal and a Black man and Black women,
these species are leaving the city of Chicago
in great numbers, gentrified out of the city
because of racism and because of non-Black leadership,
Black faces in high places.
Now I'm watching this clock.
I think it ticks faster for me.
There's something inherently wrong with the job goods,
contracts and service that Mr. Obadeli was speaking about,
but still he's connected with Pat Dowell,
and you tell Pat Dowell to advocate
for job good contracts and service.
You got her ear, so Black people play games on each other.
Some Black people hate Black people.
On the plantation, the white master made an end
and figured that out.
Figured it out!
They say they got some they call Sambo
and your mama house in.
You know there's something inherently wrong here.
The big picture is racism!
And you've never been free, Black men and women.
You never got your 40 acres and a mule
and you're not gonna get your reparation.
Only you can do that.
The white man not gonna free you.
We have to do what we have to do.
Sow good seeds, Black people, and sow those seeds for you.
Be selfish!
Self-preservation is a first law of nature
and anybody that tells you to love your enemy,
stick up that finger because your enemy
is trying to destroy you.
Your enemy cares nothing about you.
You must love you.
You must do what you got to do.
Something is wrong here.
All these Black faces in high places
is not delivering to the Black community.
They hate Black people.
I come down here every day, you don't, and mental health,
you have driven Black people crazy.
Crazy. (alarm beeping)
Now you people need the real people like white players.
You serve him (speaking indistinctly).
Thank you, Mr. Blakemore.
I don't control the clock, I'm just here.
Mark.
Mark Clements.
Hold on, stop, stop.
Use the use this clock please.
Same clock.
Thank you, go ahead, sir.
You have three minutes, please proceed.
Good morning, city council and the Finance Committee.
You know, before some of you were born,
there were tortures in the city of Chicago.
We're talking about the Chicago Police and its budget.
It's out of control.
Anytime that you have a city council who has members,
and guess what, unfortunately they come to me
and they beg for help because they have loved ones
that were affected based off of (indistinct).
The city council was interviewed, paid $25 million.
Ladies and gentlemen, this has been going on
for over 50 years without eliminating
who in their right mind (indistinct).
That is a insult.
A 16-year-old kid (indistinct).
Mr. Clements, could you speak into the mic
so that the people that are listening could hear you?
Thank you.
Being a young kid, railroaded to prison,
sitting there for 28 years of my life.
Yes, I'm mad because, let me tell you,
Eugene Sawyer had one thing to his rescue, it was only him.
Now I look at Black and brown faces and we're acting like
these conditions don't affect us with hundreds,
literally hundreds, if not thousands of people
still stuck behind prison walls
with this city council giving out millions upon millions
for wrongful convictions and police tortures,
with also this committee hearing that well,
with this settlement, it ends.
No, it cannot end until the bad apples are confronted.
We must confront the bad apples.
I'm not against any police officer, but let me tell you,
you are wearing the clothes of, guess what?
The enemy.
And many of you know that.
The code of silence have not changed.
My Black brothers and my Black sisters,
the code of silence have not changed and we must change it.
We must give more money to mental health.
We must give more money to those brothers and sisters
coming out of prisons that are suffering
and I'm gonna end on there.
Officer McDermott- Thank you.
Within our Chicago Police Department.
Thank you, Mr. Clements.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Clements.
Next we'll have Zol Lee.
Yeah, I was gonna say something too.
Y'all didn't tell her to stop.
You didn't say thank you.
You didn't disrupt her, you let her finish her sentence,
so that shows you that you guys can do this.
Now I really do not wanna read the ethics
and the violations book, but if I have to, I will.
People have already asked would I like
to get a civil rights lawyer and they'll pay
because they see all the stuff that I post on social media.
I'm 37 years old.
This a whole new generation.
This ain't the boycott in 1964.
We got social media now, right?
So we can expose a lot of this stuff.
I'm from New York.
I told you, my mother from Chicago,
so me coming back here fighting because the city of Chicago
illegally demolished her building because y'all wanted it
to put the rail to extend the red line to 130th Street
'cause now it's finally out.
But y'all, but my mother kept fighting
and now I'm in it now and I'm gonna be in it
for the long run.
I'm just trying to understand like when,
like what's the point of being an alderperson?
Like it is no way I would want to be an alderperson
and I can't talk to my mayor about the community
that I am in.
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
Like, what is your purpose, Black alderpeople,
because Lincoln Park is fine.
I live in Streeterville.
Only thing we have is that end and me and Mr. Hopkins,
we can figure something out with that.
So my thing is to live in this,
to go on the South Side, to go on the West Side
and see it look like this and then want y'all,
you want us to understand by bringing in
these illegal immigrants and putting them
in our poor communities that already don't have
the resources and we're supposed to be welcoming,
makes no sense.
And then you don't understand why people are upset.
And then you have Mayor Brandon Johnson,
who stages these community meetings
and these city council meetings with people
that support him, the teachers who have no brains, clearly,
so that does not make any sense and it's illegal.
I know the constitution very, very well, very well,
and I know a lot of things that y'all do is like violating
Michael Bay Young's due process yesterday.
I also realized that the Zoom that we did yesterday
is not online.
That's illegal as well.
I don't know who y'all playing with, but I am the wrong one.
I really am and I really can get into this game.
I can really start educating Black people
about why we should be voting Republican.
I also can let them know that we can turn this state red.
It is really easy.
So y'all need to do y'all alderman duties and start asking
this mayor, when are these people getting deported back
and where is the money for the South Side
and the West Side communities?
Thank you, Ms. Lee.
Next, we'll have Maria Phatom.
Maria.
Here I am.
I'm coming.
Oh.
Thank you.
Can you hear me?
Yes, you may proceed.
My name is Maria Phatom.
Esteemed members of the Budget Committee,
my name is Maria Phatom and I have devoted
the last seven years of my life to find responsible,
committed, and loving homes for the dogs
at Chicago Animal Care and Control.
I am here today to plead for the lives
of these innocent souls.
I am here to tell you that Chicago Animal Control
is a train wreck.
There is no conductor.
There is no vision or plan.
I am appealing to you to hire leadership that caress
about the animals and the community it serves.
We deserve leadership that will work hard
and has a passion to save lives.
So far since January of this year,
2,000 dogs have lost their life.
CACC kills adaptable healthy dogs without warning,
and as many as 200 a month.
CACC needs to stop blaming the community
for the animals they kill in the shelter.
Instead, they must take responsibility
and do more to engage the community.
I have written a grassroots petition
that has been circulating and has 10,800 signatures so far.
I've also started a no-kill Chicago group that at present
has 400 members and is growing.
Our goal is to ask you to adopt the no-kill equation,
which actually it's being
used in Detroit shelters,
in Florida shelters,
in Kansas City, Marquette, Michigan,
Polk County, Florida, Reno, Nevada,
and up until a year ago, Austin, Texas.
These communities save money from not killing.
Killing costs money
and the money that you save by saving lives,
I implore you to look into this petition
and into the no-kill equation.
It involves high volume, low cost,
or free spay or neuter, a foster care program
within the shelter, comprehensive adoption program.
We can afford this, Chicago.
Thank you, ma'am. We can do it.
Thank you, your time has expired.
Next we'll have Tracy Sanchez.
If you have something written,
you can have it included in the record
if you have a written statement.
Tracy Sanchez.
Ma'am, you have three minutes.
Good morning.
Good morning, Alderman Ervin and Budget Committee members.
Some of you may recognize me.
I worked for the city for about 23 years
and I'm retired technically,
but one of the things I have done for the last 12 years
is I'm a volunteer at CACC, Chicago Animal Care Control,
so I can be found there most Saturdays walking dogs
and trying to adopt them.
So I'm here to actually support CACC.
I realize it's a difficult place.
They have a difficult job and we have had as high as a 90,
over 90% live release rate from CACC.
But I just wanna say thank you for increasing the budget.
It looks like it's gone up over 600,000 for the 2024.
Please keep that, don't drop that if you can.
Also that you've, I believe, retained all open positions,
all vacant positions.
If you can leave those in the budget,
I appreciate that as well.
If there's a hiring freeze,
please do not put the hiring freeze in place for CACC staff.
We really need those vacant positions filled.
They do help in terms of being able to facilitate
the adoption and rescue of the animals
that come in and out of the shelter,
which at this point is over like 15,000 animals.
Wanna say thank you to the staff and volunteers.
There is a team of people who do everything they can
to help support and save these animals
and they show up there, some daily,
in terms of the volunteers, so thank you.
There's a lot of dedicated people that do this
and an extremely high intake is happening post-covid.
Sometimes we get as many as 30 dogs surrendered in a day,
which is a lot considering that's one pavilion, basically,
full of dogs that's there,
so appreciate anything we can do to do that,
I think we can do better and so some of the things
I think that can help in terms of lowering intake
and potentially helping with the over pet population
here in Chicago, the state passed an ordinance called HB154,
which actually allows people to have at least two cats
or one dog in an apartment that is funded by state funds,
so basically subsidized housing through the trust fund
for the state of Illinois, and without breed restrictions.
Breed restrictions are something that cause a huge problem.
Landlords say you can't bring a dog in
or you can't bring a dog in based on its breed.
Oh no, I have 42 seconds, so I'm gonna keep going.
Post all positions, I think none are posted right now,
even though there's vacant positions,
including the executive director
and I agree we need an executive director
who caress about CACC.
I'm gonna throw you Julie, oh Julie,
Jenny Schuler out there.
She used to work at CACC.
She's now heading, she's executive director
of a not-for-profit called Heartland.
She would be great to come back
and I think she'd love to come back.
One of the things I think it makes sense to do
is to try to help market across departments, DPD, DOH,
whatever city events marketing can be done
to combine those things would be great.
I have some other suggestions.
I can send 'em to the committee.
Thank you very much.
(alarm beeping)
Thank you, Ms. Sanchez, and good to see you again.
Our next speaker will be Stephanie Grohow.
Pronounce that please.
Grohowski, thank you, ma'am.
Ma'am, you'll have three minutes to make your comments.
Thank you all for your time today.
I am also here from Chicago Animal Care and Control.
So clearly a lot of people here really caring about Chicago
animals today and I think that just says a lot.
I'm an active volunteer at CACC.
So yeah, I think we definitely are here to say
like there's tons of problems in Chicago
and I know that people need to be our top priority,
but the shelter is really, really bad right now.
Our live release rate,
which is the number of dogs that make it out alive,
has dropped from 91% in 2019 to 79% in 2023.
So what does that mean?
That means 1,000 dogs this year have been killed for space.
So those are living being animals, those are living animals.
They need a chance, they deserve a chance
and we really need leadership at CACC
that is really passionate about the animals,
so I echo that we need an executive director
that really does share a passion for animal rescue
and is established in the industry.
I think the other thing is, you know, again,
we definitely need funding
so we definitely appreciate the budget increase.
We would take obviously more money at any point,
but you know, there's a ton of animals that,
and their volunteers are responsible
for socializing these animals.
They're only getting out of their cages twice a week.
Can you imagine being in a cage every single day,
24 hours a day and getting 15 minutes
every three or four days of exercise and love?
Like it's actually pretty inhumane, so we need programs.
We need to bring back Doggy Day Out for the public.
We need more funding for marketing.
People don't know what CACC is, they're like what's that?
Oh it's a city shelter on the South Side.
I had no idea that even existed.
So we do, we need funding for that.
We need staff members that are passionate
about animal rescue to lead us.
So I think you can see we've got a lot of people here today.
Things are quite dire.
I don't think we should sugarcoat that, it's bad.
There's a lot of backyard breeding,
there's a lot going on that's quite tragic
in the animal welfare industry right now.
The staff, the volunteers, everyone's stressed.
So as much help as we can get,
as much advertising as we can get there,
I think we would take.
So yeah, we definitely appreciate the budget increase.
We could definitely use it again, we could use more funds.
We need to be keeping those staff positions full
'cause everyone is really worn out and stressed there
and the volunteers, quite frankly,
can't keep up with the amount of dogs and cats
coming in every day, socializing them and making sure
that they're treated humanely, so again,
a lot of passion for Chicago animals and yeah,
we thank you for your time.
Thank you, ma'am.
Did our speaker, public speaker that called in
that was scheduled to call in, did they call in?
No, they did not.
Okay, thank you very much.
Well, this concludes public comment.
We will begin today's hearings in earnest
for beginning with the Mayor's Office
of People with Disabilities.
We'll have a short presentation for COFA,
followed by introductions from Commissioner Arfa
of the people that are here in the dias with us
and those that are also in the box.
Janice.
Chairman Ervin, Vice Chair Lee, members of this body,
I am Daniel Christrom with the Council Office of Financial
Analysis and we will begin today with the Mayor's Office
of People with Disabilities, also known as MOPD.
So for their FY24 budget, it's 16.5 million,
which is 1.8 million more than the revised FY23 budget.
For FY24, they remain level at 41 FTEs.
Of this funding, roughly 21% is derived
from the corporate fund representing a 19.36%
that should say increased,
compared to the revised FY23 budget.
The personnel services category
is set to grow by 517.7 thousand.
This is a 12.78% increase compared to the FY23 budget.
So here we can see a breakdown by fund
with the corporate fund making up roughly 21%
of the total budget and about 42% being made up
of various different grants,
the largest of which being the coronavirus
local fiscal recovery fund for FY24.
And the next slide is just a depiction of, you know,
you can see that the community development block grant,
corporate fund and the coronavirus local fund
making up most of this funding.
And then we look at a breakdown of FTEs.
Of the 41 total, 27 are derived from corporate fund
and 10 are derived from the community development
block grants and the four others from various other grants.
And we look at a breakdown by category,
the largest of which is contractual services
that is set to increase by roughly 1.3 million,
13% increase, so all in all,
the FY24 budget is 16.5 million
with roughly 1.8 million increase compared to FY23.
Thank you.
Alderman La Spata.
I'm confused about a part of the analysis because,
and maybe I'm looking at the wrong part of the budget,
but it says that the personnel budget is 2.3 million
and contractual services is 1.03 million.
Can you help me to understand that against the chart
that we see above us?
It does- Yeah.
So the chart above you is in thousands,
so the change in contractual services is 1,281,700.
That's the change from FY23 to FY24, that increase.
So what we're looking at is just the net numbers,
or are you showing us the funding
across all funding types including grants,
is that more accurate?
So this is just a breakdown by category.
I can go back to the slide that has a breakdown by fund,
but most of it is derived from the corporate fund
or various different grants.
This is just a breakdown by category.
The one that you saw was actually in the corporate fund,
which is page 160, the 2.3 and 1.037,
that's just strictly fund 100.
Oh right, so if you're looking in the big book,
so what you're looking at right now is just a breakdown
of the corporate fund spent,
so that wouldn't include the funding that's derived
from the different grants.
So based on this is another 1.7 plus million
in personnel elsewhere in the budget
outside of the corporate fund?
Yes.
Okay, all right, I'll take a look for that, thank you.
No problem.
Commissioner, you can begin with your introduction
of your staff and then you can give us
an abbreviated opening statement.
Good morning, Aldermen, Chairman Urban, thank you so much.
I am Commissioner Rachel Arfa of the Mayor Office
through People with Disabilities.
Here I am going to be here today to talk to you
about our budget and our priorities for next year.
Before going to the staff introduction,
I just wanted to highlight that there are a couple things
different about my hearing.
First of all, I am profoundly deaf and I talk for myself
and I still think I have an accent.
It may take a few minutes to get used to having talk
when I encourage you to ask me to repeat myself,
it does not hurt maybe and I would rather than you ask me.
Second, today we have modified the setup study.
Thank Chairman Urban to allow
for American Sign Language interpretation
and we need well to have a staff
American Sign Language interpreter team,
meaning staffed American Sign Language interpreters.
This was initiative that keeps approval in the budget
and even more notable to that is have a commitment
to diversity and equity.
First, we have Jen McCalvaway who's my personal interpreter
and she's the first staff American Sign Language interpreter
and she's also the first Black female in this role
in a field that is underrepresented by people of color.
And she's also an avid hip hop fan.
I'm not to versed about that. (laughing)
I am really thrilled to have interpreters with a reach
of experience is good, you know,
licensed and properly certified who can interpret
(indistinct) included right here these champions,
the second sign language interpreter
be happy as the (indistinct) who is works
in our center and helps us make service and accessible.
Esteban is the first Black mayor
sign language interpreter and Esteban is driving growth.
You may have notice first couple of sessions
included the (indistinct) mayor press conference
and Esteban interpreting in American Sign Language,
proper English and Spanish.
So that's the approval.
It's big, finally grown to be able
to make that message effective.
And that we also have Walter Matthews
who is the early certified Black mayor interpreter
in the state of Illinois United World
that we have him working for all of us here at the city.
Then today we are right now you could see Janice Crowl
who is a language interpreter interpreting right now.
When I hear people tell about us,
where are your interpreters?
And then next I will,
so that commitment to meeting your services accessible
is peer amount in every type of disability.
That reason I will now have everybody here introduce
themselves and I'm gonna turn it over to Alexis
who is sitting next to me.
Good morning, can you hear me?
Good morning, my name is Alexis White.
I currently am in the office of Budget and Management,
but I'm assistant to Commissioner Arfa today.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Lori Dittman
and I'm the Senior Policy Analyst for MOPD.
Good morning, everyone, my name is Thomas Gushelsky.
I'm a deputy commissioner at MOPD.
Good morning, everyone, I'm Christina McClean.
I'm a deputy commissioner at MOPD
and I'm joined here today by my service dog, Jade.
Good morning, my name is Lauren Huberman.
I'm the director of the Career Center for MOPD.
Good morning, I'm Mark Nabriga.
I am a program director for MOPD.
Good morning, I'm Nina Campbell.
I'm the Executive Assistant to Commissioner Rachel Arfa.
Good morning, Claire Stanhope, program coordinator.
Matthew Zapanic, I'm an architect
with our Accessibility Compliance Unit.
Pamela Palmenterro,
I'm a program director with the Disability Resource Unit.
Good morning, I'm Frieda Morales, accountant for MOPD.
Thank you so much, everyone.
So now I will do a abbreviated version
of my opening statement.
So the patient for the Mayor's Office
for People with Disabilities is to make this city
of Chicago the most accessible and inclusion city
in the world.
People with disabilities live in every single corner,
77 community areas.
Disability is the early group than anyone
can become a member of at any time.
Disability is both visible and visible.
Many people may acquire disability who are become disabled
at the result of age.
Our data partners at the Chicago Department
of Public Account conducting disability data
in Sterling 2021, their data demonstrates
how prevalent disability is in adversity.
This data allows us to make data-driven decision
so that we meet the verbal communities needs.
Chronic to this data, 28.6% of adults in our city
reported having at least one disability.
And 33 of our 77 community areas,
many adults reported having a higher prevalence
of disability, for example, in some neighborhoods,
more than 50% of residents report living with disability.
The highest percentage of disability is in Burnside at 56%
of residents at that neighborhood.
So Dunning, which has 50.1% of residents have disability.
While Austin has the largest number of residents
with disabilities at nearly 28,000 residents
with disabilities.
21% of people in Chicago who identify and have a disability
over age 65 does not surprise you given the prevalence
of each with a disability.
But what we did not expect to learn
is that the second largest group of people with disability
by age is 18 to 21-year-olds at 39%.
This proves that everyone could become disabled at any age,
both elderly to young adults.
Further, adults living with disabilities in Chicago
were found to experience significantly the ways
of community connection have the perceptions
of neighborhood safety, advance access to resources,
including food, internet, and transportation.
Where I work at the mayor's office where people
with disability focuses on addressing
these critical barriers.
It is experience and they're proud to share with you
the impact that our services have and meaning these barriers
that with our commitment to build out this work in 2024.
Some of the ways that we do that
is through our MOPD Career Center,
which is now about year and a few months old
and in a short time we have seen an impact nationwide.
It takes a month with a disability about six months
to get a job in our career center.
(indistinct) From the time somebody comes to first ask
for assistance to the time they take up updates in a job
is our ED1 these on average.
Then our accessibility compliance unit,
which is the class disciplinary minimum (indistinct)
accessibility spectrum service the city through
accessibility with these pre-permit and permit process.
He provides technical assistance and survey developers,
many of the public and many more as well as evaluating
housing, doing multiple stage then construction.
We also partner with BACP and public agree permit reviews
and also with their department abilities who modification
program is one of our largest programs.
It makes homes across the city accessible
for people with disabilities.
At the most common type is through at a vertical room
to be able to leave and enter the home.
And we are on track the company at least 190
room modification by the end of the year.
(indistinct) I guess the cold temperatures
because once the ground vision,
it makes it much more difficult to be try
to work very visually.
In 2023, we about 3 1/2 million dollars
was the cleaner for this program of American investment.
If we are breaking this record by increasing this amount
by 47,000 in 2024 total new macro investment $3,640,000.
These resource included CDPG fund,
Cooper, CHA and the Department of Housing.
We also provide personal assisted servicing to help people
with disabilities in their home.
And due to our fatigue,
we were able to provide over 7,552 hours of services.
And we also worked through multiple strategy to advance
new equality, we launch a new pilot with the foundation,
the Community Safety Coordination Committee
to partner with the Austin community
to have delivery of food to Uber resident with disabilities.
The Austin neighborhood, if this program has been a success,
but we do not expect is,
then is also been a job creator through a people,
through people who name the Austin
and Rodgers Park communities.
We are also experiencing our services to some people
who acquire disability through a community
via through via mark from sending it would very grateful
to sending out for her leadership that this year
we are also working our solution to address other gaps
in public safety servicing at this budget increase
to her and 50,000 for us to increase
accessible transportation option
through a wheelchair power chair
through experience medical in other emergencies
if we will be issued with an RP to identify (indistinct).
If then another big condition of MOPD,
we have $5 million in Chicago recovery
then if we have pandemic with the target agency
to distribute $5 million and $500 advance to students
with disabilities who we experienced the impact of covid.
If we expect an outreach to students with disabilities
in the family who meet the income guideline,
who the first corona 2024
if we know these status will make an impact.
Finally, I think Mayor Johnson and I also think the staff
of the Mayor's Office who are People with Disabilities
for their hard work leadership at security
and I'm so proud of the team that I got to work with.
I also wanna thank our Deputy Mayor Jen Johnson,
the Deputy Mayor of Education
for her services for the search as applicant
of our department and I thank you for being here today.
We thank you.
I thank you all.
Thank you, Commissioner.
I'm gonna open with a couple questions
related to the home mod program.
You stated that you provide approximately 200 home mods
on an annual basis and the most common one
was the vertical lift,
which is generally kinda like at the front of the building.
What is the cost of doing those, number one,
and do you have any level of backlog on individuals
who have requested the service,
however, you don't have the funding to meet the demand
of what's happening.
Yes, Chairman, so our cost for modification program
further through the supply chain issues
and increase labor costs.
So, an average vertical lift is about $23,000 per home.
Then we do have a witness of,
we estimate by the end of the year will be about 440
individuals at the region.
What I forgot to mention is that we partnered
with the Department of Housing to collaborate
on home modification.
So before MOPD only served people up to age 59,
each department of housing through the STEMS program
was also providing further for them,
which result in a duplicate efforts in an effort to be
efficient because that program here in MOPD
which allows to serve any for any age,
so we, that is also additional interns
for the part of the work that we do.
How much money from the other program
is now included in what your department has control over
to service those individuals?
Are you talking about 2023 or 2024?
Yes.
Which?
Both.
Do you want me to talk about 2023?
You mentioned that the department housing had a program.
Now those two programs emerged.
So my question is what are the resources
from the other program that have now been merged
in with you, how much is that and how many more people
will that allow you to service?
I got it.
Both.
Okay, so where we merged the program this year in 2023.
MOPD received a million and a half dollars at one time
which allowed us to do more work
than we've ever done in a year.
If there was time that we have allocated in 2024,
the Department of Housing is at a clinic through to $150,000
from near budget MOPD for the further program.
However, I would also share them,
we have incredible commitment from the budget office
if we increase CDBG dollars throughout this program,
a million dollars so they're still on,
I mean this year in 2023, CDBG fund equal
six million if this year in 2024
it is at two period $6,096,000,
so we are seeing that systemic increase in our program.
Okay, so at the end of 2024, you project
that you will have a backlog of 400 people
waiting for lifts.
Is that correct?
At the end of 2023,
we estimate there will be a backlog of 400 lifts, yes.
You have 400, at the end of this year,
you have a backlog of 400 lifts.
Next year's funding would only allow you
to do approximately 200 lifts, is that correct?
Correct.
But I will continue to advocate every day a partner
with the budget office for additional resources
to meet this critical need may because need does not stop
with this budget, but this is a top priority.
Okay, and we appreciate that.
The other question I'm gonna go into is about
the Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Fund of $4.9 million
and you stated that that was to give $500 grants
to disabled individuals who were impacted by covid,
is that correct?
No, let me explain that we have a $5 million fund
if we are working with (indistinct) agency,
if we will work with them,
if that we will send up an application person for students
with disabilities who meet income levels and have had
experience learning class as the result of covid.
So our criteria will be a student with disability
in any school in Chicago here to meet
specific income guidelines below poverty level.
Okay.
And you project how many individuals for that program?
We estimated about 10 to 11,000.
Okay.
All right.
So I'm gonna ask you a question.
You can get back to me through the Chair.
We do know that we have a significant population
of individuals who have requested vertical lifts.
The funding that is there this year would only allow you
to do half of them.
This covid relief money is a one-time source
and the potential to utilize portions of this funding
to reduce the backlog of lifts that are needed
in various communities.
You don't have to answer this today.
Would you have any objection to shifting funding
from the covid funding for underfund 298
in order to bring forth additional funding
to reduce the backlog of vertical lifts?
No objections, Chairman.
Okay.
The only other questions that I had related to we're at,
you've added approximately $250,000 in your initial,
in the initial amount for delegate agencies
under contractual services.
What did the delegate agencies,
and this is funded out of corporate, do for the department?
Just to clear by you asking about the 250,000.
So in your contractual services in fund 100, line 00135,
you had a $250,000 increase for your delegate agencies.
That's just in a corporate fund
and I'm just trying to get some clarity as to what services
are performed by the delegates and, you know,
what additional services would be performed
with the additional $250,000?
Absolutely, so we would use that money to issue an RMP
to identify a delegate agency that will provide
emergency wheelchair power chair
so that if someone who uses a wheelchair or power chair
has a medical emergency or other type of emergency,
we will be able to, through a transportation provider,
to immediately pick up the power chair or the wheelchair
if this is a gap that we are working
across city department to fill so this is the solution
that we have to develop towards meeting this critical gap.
Okay.
And this question will be
for your assistant commissioner from budget.
And if you need to get back to us with this,
and this is as it relates to the indirect cost
under the federal grant and how that number was determined.
I've seen it a lot in various budgets, but I just,
there's no rhyme or reason to me as to how indirect costs
are calculated against a specific grant
or if it's an overall cost or if it's something that's,
how is it calculated?
Chairman, I definitely work with our grants team
to identify how that number was calculated
so we'll get that through Chair for you.
Okay, very well.
And final questions that I have
around the substance abuse grants,
and again, forgive our ignorance here.
Substance abuse a large problem in,
and this one I think is for individuals who are deaf,
is that a large issue in that respective community?
Yeah, so this is a program that has been funded
through the state of Illinois through decades.
I think we've had this program for about 20 years
and what I was suggest to do is to do outreach in education
and awareness to tap in her PRP but throughout state
about information and substance use a strategy
if what weren't reason why this population
was identifying is because that information
after to the snap or down to people
who are having heard of hearing,
maybe if you can hear you made a (indistinct)
that a strategy will access that information,
but many times that information is not accessible
so we're able to, that this program and do that outreach.
And also with domestic violence,
we see that there's significant funding
for domestic violence support and advocacy as well
and is that a similar situation?
Yes, there is a gap in services for people with disability
who experienced domestic violence.
This is a grant from the Justice Department.
It enacted discussions to around the agreed part the terms
of the groups from this program.
But what I would like to draw your attention to
is the grant from the Justice Department that we received
with incredible leadership allow us to serve another gap,
which in serving people with disabilities who are people
who acquire disability as the facility
called community violence,
which would allow us to be able to help people
navigate the facility services.
We recognize that this is acquiring disability,
possess a new reality if we want to give people the tools
and the access that they need if we were partner
with many of our stakeholders to citywide.
Thank you.
Any questions from the body?
Alderman Riley, followed by Vice Chair Lee.
Thank you Chairman, and good morning, Commissioner.
Chairman actually asked a lot of my questions.
I would like to specifically request through the Chair
just so that every member of the committee receives it.
Congratulations on the $250,000 increase
in your delegate agency budget,
but please provide the delegate agency the amount
going to each and the services they provide
just so we could become more familiar with the services
you're contracting out.
As to the home modification program,
I wanted to piggyback on where Chairman Urban started.
I don't think it needs to be an either/or proposition.
I was disappointed to see that funding for this program
is essentially flat.
Under the new administration,
I had hoped that we would set another record
in a more meaningful way because there is such a backlog
and perhaps the budget office could help us find
other covid monies that could help us erase this backlog
because it is substantial and it's no fault of your own,
so sign me up for that initiative.
I wanted to also ask just a question
about the Diverse Learners Cash Assistance Program.
MOPD will be giving $500 grants to students
with disabilities who meet income guidelines
or are enrolled in school in Chicago
funded through $5 million in CRP.
You selected a delegate agency.
Which delegate agency have you selected
to help administer this program?
Thank you, Alderman.
I'm gonna go through your question.
So is your first question,
after we copy this virtual process,
we will then issue with RMP to identify a delegate agency,
so that has not been identified for the wheelchair
transparent issue, but we will issue an RMP
and circulate that widely
as we find the appropriate delegate agency.
Okay, and how do you plan to promote this program?
How are we gonna make sure students know
that this grant opportunity exists?
Related to cash assistance.
Yes, so we have selected (indistinct).
We had completed our RMP process,
we have selected a delegate agency.
That agencies either as (indistinct),
which is based at the South Side and they provide services
to people with disabilities already
so they have strong relationships with different disability
communities at the South Side and across the city.
And we will also partner with schools,
including Chicago Public Schools.
We will partner with private parochial schools
and help use them the help get the word out
but one thing that I am excited about
is this is another way that we bring long-term relationships
with the schools inner city,
even students with disabilities inner city,
which is a gap that I always wanted
to be the events student, so I see that at the start
of many more relationships
through this one-time class, this program.
If be with your help, ensuring that this program
must be the program in this side as well.
Yeah, no, I think it's an excellent initiative
and you're right, there is a gap there
that needs to be addressed.
I wanted to also congratulate you on your success.
I don't think you take quite enough credit for it.
Increasing job and career opportunities
for job seekers with disabilities.
You know this, this year you've served 209 job seekers
who reside in 47 wards,
providing a variety of career-readiness services.
You've placed 53 individuals in employment,
in food services, hospitality,
tourism and customer service.
Nationwide, the average time a person
with or without a disability
spends looking for a job is six months.
Your career center model has achieved remarkable results
and I gotta say, you know, an 81 day period
is far superior than six months,
so congratulations to you and your staff.
That's a major success for the city.
The last question I have for you, well, I have, sorry,
I lied, I have two questions.
Your vacancies, you have seven that you're carrying
over funded into 2024.
Given the small size of your office, that represents,
you know, getting close to a 20% vacancy rate.
Are those vacancies in the process of being filled?
Could you speak to that?
You know, obviously we wanna make sure
that you're fully staffed if possible.
Absolutely, I thank you for the kinds words.
So we do have several vacancies and at least three of those
will be filled by the, so out of these positions
are in progress is some of them vacancies
that arose doing this year
so they're not carried over,
they're still their new vacancies
and we have one person who will be starting next week.
We have offers out to two additional people
so we expect to have three people before the interim 2023.
And then another position is the position
through the (indistinct) grant.
We need to make sure that we got the money
from the federal government because we can't make an offer
to somebody and not have the money.
Sure.
And then there's a couple of other,
then staff-assisted position via the process of interview,
review those resumes,
then director of administration position.
We are this week, that by interview the process post that
so I take my vacancies very seriously.
In 2022, we hired 19 people. Congratulations.
In one month and so I take,
I do not that a vacancy sit around.
I fill every single one of them.
Thank you, I just wanna make sure
there wasn't some kind of issue related to salary levels.
We've seen that in some of our other departments
where these jobs are very competitive.
Chairman, I only had one last question, thank you.
The last thing, I just wanna make sure I'm reading
your budget submission properly.
And again, I'm a huge fan of your department,
all the work that you do.
Am I reading this right?
Are you eliminating a deputy commissioner position,
a disability specialist officer, and an ESL interpreter?
Am I looking at your books incorrectly?
Are those being reclassified to lower level,
lower paid positions?
So the deputy commissioner position,
once we classified to director of administration
to position at the other position removed from CWG
to (indistinct) and will be classified to title
more appropriate to the duties of those position.
We do not eliminate positions.
I see, so these were reclassified for positions
at a lower salary, is that correct?
That's true for the deputy commissioner position.
I don't think it's true for the others.
Sorry for putting you on the spot and I have to imagine
it probably wasn't your idea.
I wanted to flag that for my colleagues.
This is some of the stuff that we can miss in the details
of a budget because these line items
can be very difficult to read sometimes
and that's no fault of the department,
but I wanted to put a flag on this one for our friends
upstairs who are listening and OBM.
You need to call out these sorts of changes
and personally I don't think it's fair to MOPD
to be frankly confiscating a useful deputy
in reclassifying that position.
This is a department that is lean and well-run
and produces results with a return on investment
and I think that sort of budget slight of hand is improper.
And so I would like the budget office
to rethink that decision and not penalize you
and your team in any way.
That's coming from the legislative branch of government.
That's all I've got, Chairman, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman.
I'll echo your point as it relates to that
and my program as well.
Vice Chair Lee followed by Alderman La Spata.
Thank you, Chairman.
Good morning, Commissioner.
And just to pick up and echo what my colleagues
have just said.
I feel the same way about your department
and had a similar question about the changes.
I know you didn't have a net change in positions
but I was wondering about the ones that were reclassified.
I wanna talk about how we can improve closed captioning
for those watching these meetings remotely.
This is actually the first,
because we don't see the closed captioning
on our version here,
I'm not sure if we've provided closed captioning throughout,
but today's the first day that we've also had
American Sign Language interpreters here as well.
So I'm wondering if we can get the communication access
real-time translation cart for all city meetings
and hearings given the difficulty of getting accurate
closed captions renderings
and compliance with the ADA mandate.
I thank you, Alderman.
I reached out to the CENIC docs office.
They oversee the captioning and the video stream
so I would love to have you as part of that conversation.
I know that we will be meeting after budget and I agree
that we need to agree to provide absence.
I think these also to mean be mean accessible.
Now we sign with CENIC with totally captioning for that,
still my team find out when the CENIC docs office
to make this space accessible.
So you see sign detection here
so then if someone sign efficiently,
we add more wheelchair accessible CENIC to the public
and additional signage (indistinct) that we add here.
Commissioner.
This is Thomas Gesalsky, Deputy Commissioner.
Yes, this was a project that began through partnership
with AIS in 2021.
I think the first time we came here
to look at the Spaceless Summer of 2021.
There were additional features like
the assistive listening devices have been started
and will be completed here.
There were additional wheelchair spaces
and companion seating as well and we've increased it
to the point where we are exceeding
the minimum ADA requirement for wheelchair spaces.
Thank you.
And I'd be happy to sit with you and the clerk
about looking for budget to make that happen.
This is related to just how MOPD evaluates sort of hiring
and retention policies of the city of Chicago.
Like how are reasonable accommodations being in ensured
for people with disabilities across the city
and what would be needed to increase our efforts
to ensure that we can stay in the workforce?
That they can stay in the workforce, excuse me.
Thank you, Alderman Lee.
The Department of Human DHR oversees support accommodation
and MOPD has the place to everyone with DHR and MOPD
is support in DHR in clinic disability officer
who oversees these support accommodation
and I know that in the 2023 budget,
an additional position to provide approval,
visual accommodations was created.
I would have to check with DHR the status of that,
but I think that is approval providing those additional
visual and we also partner with DHR
in obtaining about asking for visual accommodation,
which used to make (indistinct) to TTY
and just so then everybody knows what the TTY is,
stands for teletype device writer type.
It connects to the phone line and you have to put a line
at the machine to make phone call.
This was the latest technology when I was in fourth grade
and now we have email, we have Zoom,
we have so many other technology,
so I knew that that was outdated.
So we partner to add an email address.
And then MOPD is also so committed to make sure
that the city is a good place for people
with disabilities to work.
If we created an new visual group,
which to date is the city's early (indistinct) group,
focused on supporting people with disabilities and allies
and I serve as executive sponsor and people codified
earlier this year from pioneer to a permanent initiative.
Christina McClean (indistinct).
Chairman, I have a couple more questions
I'm happy to come back around to or I can finish them now.
Do you want me to go ahead and finish 'em now?
How many? Okay.
I just have two more questions.
Go ahead.
Okay, so I've had the opportunity to have outreach
from some constituents regarding accessibility
of my own meetings and my newsletter.
I think I called your office sometime last year
when this was raised for me as I didn't really have
an understanding of those challenges
so I was really been enlightened to the challenges
that people with disabilities have to either coming out
to a community meeting or reading,
for the visually impaired, reading my newsletter.
So we've made some adjustments
to make sure that we have alt text for images,
that we are now recording our community meetings
and we've subscribed to the captioning as well,
but I'm wondering how often does MOPD, or do you play a role
in evaluating how the city is communicating,
including aldermanic offices?
What sort of resources you provide to ensure that we know
all the things that we need to be doing to ensure
accessibility for constituents?
I thank you for this question.
So we, in 2021, I launched the Access Officer Program,
which, and I ask FDC commissioner department head
to name a member of the leadership team as to right person
and accessibility and we provide regular trainings
throughout of the access officer.
It'll be a specific question.
We will work with them to provide technical assistance
to problem solve.
We provide that.
We also take very seriously
the application to evaluate the public basic city
services to make sure that they are accessible for people
with disabilities and we have,
and even people branch this year
so I know that will be able to provide
even more these resources
and I'm always happy to talk to you,
but take a look at what you're doing,
what any other questions and continue to share
that as best practice.
And we also partner up with AIS to hire
a digital accessibility specialist
and we to send him information
to evaluate for accessibility as well.
But we could provide training and any documents.
Great, thank you.
I have one last question, it's just through the Chair.
How many applications do we receive
for the home modification program on an annual basis
for the last three years just by ward?
Because I did that with the Chair.
Thank you, thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Alderman La Spata,
followed by Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Question. Thank you very much, Chair.
And I just wanna speak first to the point
that Alderwoman Lee was making.
Colleagues, if you have not had an opportunity,
I know we're here present,
but I would encourage you to log on to the clerk's website
to actually observe how this meeting
is being closed captioned
because it's not being closed captioned well.
And particularly I have to say, when Commissioner,
when you are speaking 80% of the time,
70% of the time you're not being closed captioned,
and the other 30% of the time it's inaccurate
and I find it both embarrassing and unacceptable,
so we absolutely 100% need to work on that.
Now into some actual questions.
So I did wanna ask about ASL interpretation.
I'm really glad that we have interpretation today.
It strikes me that we save interpretation
for special occasions.
It's striking me now that we seldom, if ever,
have ASL interpretation at city council meetings.
And I wanted to ask if the number of ASL,
how we came to the number of ASL interpreters in your budget
and how we determine when a public meeting
needs ASL interpretation.
Thank you, Alderman.
I appreciate your comments around captioning as well.
Thank you.
So with ASL interpretation,
we build out our team for this year on May 15.
So we just a few months, we've been able to learn about
each is a historical perspective.
For example, the mayor assigned interpreters
for press conference,
the member of that team who spent hours
tried to reach out to sign with interpreter
(indistinct) notice and after charge actual fees
for their time as well.
And we really wanted to build a new model
around language access.
That was my pitch last year about build model
of which we provide language access,
even during the pandemic,
the need for emergency information became much more needed
because every day there was different information
about covid precaution,
so that was a practice that came into place
and it's one of the things that we have meeting
since those early days, but we are able to maintain that
by having staff interpreter ready and able to determined.
Is the question about how to be determined?
So this year we agree but that since
one of them is sort of a priority,
but I welcome your feedback on what we should be including
as a priority, making accessible and then making sure
there is effective, for example,
so that meeting that are streamed,
but you could see the person,
but not any other access be providing
so that takes that extra knowledge to make sure
that whoever is running the meeting
is need of the multiple features
or changing for that so that it is accessible
and available so I welcome any feedback on that.
Thank you very, I really appreciate that context.
My clock's ticking and I'll ask two quick questions,
maybe one quick, two questions.
I note Summary E, this is page 19 of our budget book,
includes 3.4 million in community services dollars
for the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities.
Could you talk to us about how those community services
dollars function, what are we funding
through those through that?
This is page 19.
Which definitely.
Yes, that is page 19.
Community services, line 48 MOPD, 3.49 million.
We will need a budget book to reference.
You said page 19?
This is page 19, budget recommendations, Summary E,
Community Services Funding,
approximately 3.5 million for MOPD.
So then really goes to our program for home modification,
our personal assistance programs,
which provide up to six hours of assistance
for people with disabilities
in their home such as meal prep, cooking and cleaning.
Then our inter pandemic program,
we be provide information of referral services
to people with disabilities.
Okay, those dollars get spread broadly.
My last question was actually related to
the Pedestrian Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines
that were introduced by the Federal Access Board.
More broadly on that,
I'm curious how MOPD works with CDOT
to ensure that when we are developing infrastructure,
whether it's sidewalks, pedestrian signals,
how we're making sure that we're doing that infrastructure
in the most accessible way possible.
So we partner with CDOT and we got any information
or troubleshooting, we'll see that to make sure
that they're accessible.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Vice Chair.
No problem.
Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Thank you, thank you Vice Chair
and thank you, Commissioner, good to see you.
Just got a few follow up questions
and thank you for your advocacy.
In terms of the, and I think the Vice Chair mentioned this,
for us to be able to have proper accommodations
in public meetings, whatever meeting that we are in,
do you think that we have in this,
because I understand we subcontract when it comes to vendors
that provide the translation as well as accommodations
to make sure that our meetings are fully accessible.
So you think as a follow up that the budget will help us,
especially now that the city is seeking
more community feedback in public meetings.
The resources, but also the contractors to make sure
that our meetings are fully accessible
and in that line or in that sense,
how we can make sure that we can advocate with you
to make it happen.
I thank you Alderman, see your questionnaire,
how to work with me to make sure
that the meetings are accessible.
I'm happy to partner with you
and provide, just as shared with Vice Chair Lee
best practices in education awareness.
The number one tip that I always share
is you are information material for the (indistinct),
if you need need any accessibility, let us know.
If that doesn't need a member of your team,
that way we know who's coming to give you
a consider an opportunity to say this is what I need.
If that there are also other types of access
that we could provide proactively to your program
from a physical access perspective,
your communication access, predictable, critical.
Absolutely, thank you, Commissioner.
The other question is around,
I know several colleagues mentioned
the home modification program and I know that
I'm not sure there's a specific number of how many
home modifications are planned or projected for the need,
especially when it comes to seniors
and other disabled constituents
and I'm glad that you mentioned in your report about 27%
of our constituents are in need
of such of this kind of accessibility programs
so we wanna make sure that at least here
from the Housing Committee,
we work with you to ensure that this home modification
program can be accessed by as many constituents as possible.
As you mentioned also in your report,
there are constituencies and especially on the poor areas
of the city of Chicago, that need these programs
more urgently, like you have some communities
said about 50% of our constituents have reported
a disability, so how can we help, you know,
at least on the Housing Committee to make sure
that you have adequate funding?
Thank you for that.
Yes, we want to do what we can to meet the needs.
So the resources that we have through 2020,
we will allow us to serve even more people.
But yes, there is definitely a huge need.
Yeah, thank you, and this maybe takes me
to my final question.
This goes with more of the partner or agencies,
city agencies like CTA and CPS that report and constituents
have reported many issues where with accessibility,
I tell you like some of our schools in the community
that I represent, they do need accessibility infrastructure
just to make sure that our schools or trains or buses
are accessible to all constituents with disabilities,
so what can we do in terms of,
and I know that we would like to see more reporting
from CHA, CTA and other agencies here
to provide reports back to the Council,
but what do you see as far as our role who to make sure
that the CPS, CHA, CTA agencies are fulfilling their goals
and that we can advocate for more urgency
on infrastructure improvements
for our kids and our most vulnerable?
Thank you for the question.
So we do work closely with CPS and CTA, for example.
For example, CTA is they (indistinct)
and we also partner with them
on several advisory committees
where people with disabilities have opportunity
to share their experience.
I know that CTA dodged the program
to put on the personal (indistinct) at the bus stops
in Braille because directly as a result
of their community feedback.
So that is one example of how that community feedback
is taken advantage seriously for me to have academic meeting
with those agencies if they manage their own purchase.
I saw the news report last night too,
so I think then there's some systemic news out there.
Well, thank you.
That's all the planning questioning
and now through the Chairman,
maybe we can get more information
about the delegate agencies too,
that I receive more funding, about $250,000,
so that can go through the Chair.
And again, commissioner, anything that we can do
from more and to advocate, you know,
I think that report, I think and especially
when our constituents are feeling that they're invisible
or that they don't matter,
I think it's a call for us to make these changes
systemically, these systemic changes as quickly as we can
and thanks for your work.
Thank you, Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Alderman Nugent.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, Commissioner,
really nice to see you.
I just wanted take a moment and thank you and your team
for always being great partners to us in the 39th Ward.
And in particular I wanted to thank you for coming out
and joining me at Northside Learning Center recently.
And for my colleagues that aren't aware,
this is a really special school that serves freshmen
to students age 22 and they have a modified curriculum
and they provide transition services for students
with both intellectual disabilities
and adaptive functioning, so thank you for coming.
I know the students were so grateful to meet with you
and in the coming months I'm gonna be advocating
for more funding for Northside Learning Center
as they're facing some real capacity issues,
so I'm looking forward to that,
but as always, wanted to thank you for your partnership.
Thank you, Alderman.
Thank you, Alderman Nugent.
Are there any other questions from Alderman?
Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Hi, thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Commissioner.
I also wanna thank you for coming to the 48th Ward,
Commissioner, to visit our beaches.
We had an event where we
wanted our neighbors to be able to access the water
and we talked about how our field houses can do better
and we talked about how we can have more accessible,
can you speak on, you already touched a little bit about
how you're working with CTA and CPS.
Can you talk about how you're working with parks?
The 48th Ward does have the lakefront
and we want our neighbors to have accessibility
to our beautiful lakefront.
It's hard to believe that we see this summer
just a few months ago.
People there, they be at the beach
which hosted by (indistinct) because it speaks together
so many people with disabilities a phenomenal event
where the provide adaptive equipment, bicycles (indistinct),
so I think that should great to see that happen
(indistinct) beach, so we do meet regularly
with the park district.
The park district representative is one of our access,
so anytime I can feedback,
we try by any experience we do work collaboratively
with them with the calls in the park
that need to be prepared as if we want,
but they are partner and I'm happy
to have further conversations about that beach.
Now the season is over
because they're thinking about next summer.
Yeah, that would be great.
There are just some pathways that we just don't understand.
They lead to a parking lot and then you have to go through
the parking lot and there's no curb cut to get to the rest
of the lakefront, so I'd be interested in learning
about how we can work more with parks
to make all of our sidewalks accessible.
And then related to that,
we, as a new office are surveying our ward
and really the sidewalks are an issue
because we need to prioritize and who gets a priority.
Actually we are supposed to get three immediate fixes
to tripping hazards,
but it's not just tripping hazards.
We have a lot of folks who live on Sheridan Road
that use assisted devices and also wheelchairs
and so how are you working with the department,
well, all departments to find ways that are,
that especially new alders can figure out how can we use
our funds so that all of our streets are safe for everyone
no matter how they move.
Okay, we partner see that which oversee other the sidewalk
at any time I hear about a sidewalk that we need
for repair where is not accessible,
I would communicate that but she that,
but we work together on any,
but if you want those specific sidewalk area that shared,
you see sometimes see CDOT has plans if they sometimes
they have solutions, I will defer to them at that,
but we do have really strong lines of communication
that are constant with CDOT
and I really value the partnership that we have with CDOT.
Thank you, I appreciate that very much.
And then I guess along the lines of what others
were mentioning, Alder Riley about the staffing,
I also noticed those numbers too,
so thank you for that explanation,
but also would love to see more continuity in staffing
so that you can achieve all the goals,
the really important goals that you need to do
in your office and also regarding accessibility
for people who are watching these meetings,
and also for myself, I know during covid,
I was opened to the possibility of having closed captioning
on Zoom and it really changed my life.
I can't even watch TV now without having it on
and so I also want to help in any way that we can find ways
to improve our systems so that our neighbors
can watch these meetings and also so that I as a alder
can participate fully viscerally in all of our meetings.
And then I guess the one last thing is that I just wanted
to thank you for all your work to bring arts to the city
of Chicago in a way that is accessible.
And can you speak a little bit about your work
with accessibility in the arts in Chicago
and why that's important.
Thank you, absolutely.
I believe that the we too helped drive awareness
and social change.
The arts allow us to effectively learn about others
I think must be accessible.
So two things that we have done.
First, we partner with the Department of Cultural Affairs
special event at an (indistinct) resident who was based
in our other location and the Central West Community Center
and her name is Ari Granidose.
And so she turned a year that residency in building
host several programs that were 8:30 to 4:30 hours.
The final program was in the first weekend of July
from the about five to 8:00 PM
and there were 100 young people from the each 18 to 25
there at a Friday night in the city government building.
I don't know how many young people
like to go to government building,
but I'm very proud of the fact that we made it
finally welcoming and accessible space
for everybody who came.
So I did a final project called DC with Utopian,
we she, you know that with other participants
it made dioramas that efficient of world
what in utopia would like with a disability
from each participant disability individuals phenomenon.
That is we also partnered with (indistinct)
and adding a 60-piece move to building
in the Central West Community Center.
We partnered with CM Camp who has done spectacular moves
of the city and we also partnered
with our disability community.
If we did do the five different community engagement
session, whee we asked for feedback
and input from a community made these merge
with the disability community to ensure that we created
a visual narrative of what it means to be a person
with disability in our city
and it is especially important to know
that Central West Community Center is the medical district,
which is to the area where people may be going
to the hospital for medical treatment
where they may acquire disability.
It is even more important to inspire it to share that story
of what it means is the potential than anybody
with, including people with disability have in our city
and so that's just one visual narrative
and I invite you and anybody else here to come visit
2102 West Acton and I'm happy to work with you
at this moment, which is,
and before people would drive by the building,
they didn't know what it was, but now with the community,
I see people stop and look at that building
and see the (indistinct), which tells me they may not ask
what it decide and make the connection
that they are services at the city
that will support people with disabilities in our city
so I'm very proud of those efforts.
Thank you so much.
I mean you're talking about how we are making
all of us safe, including how we are creating a place
that we wanna linger and enjoy
and that that really is about public safety too,
making people slow down and building communities,
so I appreciate all your work, Commissioner,
and thank you to your team.
Thank you, Alderwoman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Just before we go to Alderwomen Hadden,
I just wanted to pick up on something what you
were talking about earlier with the sidewalks with CDOT.
I know that DOH has a construction and compliance section
and they're adding a staffer but it doesn't include
an ADA compliance specialist or an architect
that's well-versed in disability accommodations
to review plans or any staffer inspections.
Is there disability review process being added
to our regulatory agencies for all new housing construction
with any input from your office?
Yeah, so I would have our team
talk about our process in a pre-permit review
and it's rather the work doing and inspect houses
in various stages of construction.
Yes, of course.
Our unit within MOPD,
which is called the Accessibility Compliance Unit,
which I supervise, has several tasks related
to ensuring compliance with accessibility
in multifamily housing and also single family housing
to some degree.
So the first step is our architect on our team
is a plan examiner and participates in two paths
to ensure compliance as much as possible
in the early stages.
That is called pre-permit plan reviews.
And these are voluntary reviews with architects
or the developer teams who are building multifamily housing,
specifically affordable government-funded housing,
so that means we are automatically
in a partnership with DOH.
These programs that are funded through city
or other government money are in partnership with DOH.
So we have an early way to ensure compliance
in the design, so the design review is part one.
We also participate in the standard review of plans
through the Department of Buildings application process
for permits, building permits specifically.
And the second review of these projects and we're talking
about multifamily affordable housing here,
happens during the permit review,
so no sign-off happens until we are satisfied
with the architectural plans
and how they address corrections
that our office issues to the architects
and we apply the requirements of the Chicago Building Code,
which has its own accessibility chapter,
as well as the requirements provisions
in the Illinois Accessibility Code related to housing,
so those are very important tasks that are ongoing at MOPD.
The other side of this is ensuring that the buildings
that were permitted get constructed
according to the approved plans and to be accessible
as required by the regulation.
So we have a team of accessibility inspectors
and we go out to the buildings under construction
and various phases of construction,
typically two or three inspections in partnership
again with the Department of Housing,
we have the ability to write reports
and directly submit the deficiencies to the developer team,
and again, we wait for their response,
we wait for them to issue a compliance plan
to address all those deficiencies, so we feel we have a,
at this point we have a very significant
and valuable service to offer in that respect.
Great, thank you very much, Deputy.
Alderwoman Hadden.
Thank you, Chair, and good morning, Commissioner.
Or, yes, still morning.
It's great to have you here.
Couple straightforward questions.
So, excited to see that some funding for transportation.
of mobility devices is being included on our 2024 budget.
Do you know if this is something included in the MOPD budget
or if it's maybe in the Office of Public Safety?
It is in MOPD'S budget and after the budget process,
after the budget is passed,
we will be issue an RMP identify that (indistinct)
need we are capable a agency that will be able to provide
emergency with per wheelchairs and power chairs
a situation including if the personability disability needs
medical equipment, you know, versus the issue
not be able to trace the power chair to the hospital
or where we not able to do that,
clearly this will solve that problem,
it's not because power chairs expensive
between 30 and $50,000.
If they're not easy to replace,
they have to take months and months to replace.
We wanna make sure that we are able to do everything
we plan to keep the power chair with the person
who will get them, be reunited with their power chair
as quickly and smoothly as possible.
So these will others that I advocate abroad to address
this gap and I'm really pleased that we could be able
to move around with this.
For the RFP, I know you mentioned after the passage
of the budget, you guys will work on it.
Do you have a timetable for how long
it will take you to issue it?
To issue the datas? The RFP?
We would like have the RFP by first or second quarter
as fast as we can.
We will work through the processes to get approved
to post but we would not see like this.
Thank you, and yeah, very excited
that that's moving forward.
Let's see.
I'm wondering, can MOPD, I know you can,
so this is may be a lead-in question.
Are there plans for your office to be able to offer more,
or evaluate different city departments,
especially council or you know,
other public bodies on communications for accessibility?
And I bring this up because here today
it's wonderful that we have visual interpreters.
We don't normally have them here
for even city council meetings,
so I would love to see recommendations from your office
about how the city of Chicago and our public bodies
can be more accessible with our communications.
I know my colleague Alderman Vasquez and others are working
a lot on language access for non-English language
and this is, like this should be kind of hand in hand
with it and in some cases, and this is, you know,
my colleague in the 48th Ward mentioned in some cases
there are just technology included in what we already use
that could help with communications accessibility,
so it would be wonderful if your office could evaluate
how we're doing as a city, make some recommendations,
and I'd love to see some both that might require
budgetary amendments, but also things that we can do
with the tools that we already have.
Thank you for that question.
So we are, if need public visit spaces
here in the city, here I prioritized a team
for us to be able to do that.
So I created, I built a team where we approve time,
our deputy commissioner of accessibility time,
but we added two project coordinators
into accessibility inspector and we also have Matthew,
who's our contact at that program as well.
So we have Matthew who are (indistinct)
so we are in the process evaluating 2021
other public physics space.
So we are now at 137 public spaces
that we have evaluated in proximity
to buildings in multiple departments
or sometimes if city building.
And then in line with that we also work
with our access officer.
If we ask them to put survey work,
if there are species are accessible work program access,
the providing they stand up to providing.
So we working through out of the areas that
if that would allow us to really be able
to develop information and occurred assessment
we using (indistinct) Americans with Disabilities Act
as well as some time to better end.
I think we should add perhaps that we have been helping
the departments and others to understand, for example,
what a hybrid meeting means and how we can use technology
effectively in hybrid meeting settings,
so we're taking steps such as that to communicate
various options and this is still in development
and we're, of course, as commissioner said,
we always welcome feedback.
The other part I would say would be I think as MOPD,
we are able to provide guidance through self-evaluations,
so whether it's the ward office or a department,
we will be assisting with self-evaluation
of the programs themselves,
so communication access is certainly part of that.
And if I can sneak in, in my last 50 seconds,
this could be through the Chair if it's easier.
Is your department working with AIS?
I think about back to the physical accessibility,
we don't really have funds in our ward offices
to make our spaces more physically accessible
and so this could be a thing with those recommendations
from your office to really push on AIS that could help us
in thinking about some of our most public spaces
like ward offices, and then as well as thinking about
the Law Department's role in maybe getting some more support
for this because we should be accessible and I worry,
if we can't get people to wanna proactively make sure
our spaces are accessible and if we can't find
the political will to do it,
maybe our Law Department can help us in thinking about
the liability of not having accessible spaces
because it seems to be the only way the city
makes great leaps forward,
so would love to work with your office on that or talk more
with your deputy chiefs on that.
Sounds great.
We do partner with Commissioner Blakemore and AIS
at this work and we've had a team of series of meetings
about this and then earlier this year in February
of this year, city council passed $10 million
about funding which is allocated to doing assessment
as well as the (indistinct) construction (indistinct)
so those are in the EDEIS budget.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Hadden.
Next we have Alderman Vasquez,
followed by Alderman Taliaferro.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank Alderwoman Hadden.
Definitely, first question I had was about LanguageLine
as a service and wanted to ask about your experience
with that contractor as we're looking to see
what we can do better as far as language access.
So what's that experience been as far as MOPD?
Thank you, Alderman.
The LanguageLine contracts
is with the Public Safety Administration,
so they oversee that contract.
One I have done is build a model,
I received a to higher (indistinct)
and through that I've been able to speak
about best practices.
For example, it's very important to me to make sure
that any interpreter speech prepared that they are,
for example they see press conference
is appropriate for American Sign Language interpreter
address appropriately you to be prepared to prep,
to steer the terminology and not just common
during spontaneously because I
do not think that's affective.
I think that the question is to identify what is effective.
It makes sure that that is built into our process
and I know there are several conversations
about language access,
so I would be happy to talk a bridge to what does effective
language access look like, what does that mean?
I think those of really important question for us to ask
and ask those questions to the people we serve,
even the departments that are using those services
to providing access.
Yeah, no, I appreciate you saying that,
especially the press conference piece
'cause I think even for me, like after getting elected,
I've been speaking a lot more Spanish than I did prior,
and then talking about political terms and definitions
and figuring out what that is does require
prep time beforehand.
So we're working on establishing a bit of a language access
working group in advance of any contracts
and to set expectations on what could be necessary.
Would you be willing to have somebody from your team
be a part of that working group to make sure
that we have that as input as we're moving forward?
Yes, I'm happy to and I think that what we talk about
equal access, we should also not separate
from disability access because after times
those two mix where, mix people together, for example,
to see my office, we see the people
who are from Spanish speaking countries,
so be I use American Sign Language.
I do not know other sign language
that's used in Mexico so we wanna make sure
that we're able to meet people where they are
and provide effective communication
so I really think that language access
and disability access need to be together.
Yeah, no, absolutely and I appreciate you adding even more
context and color to that.
So separately, when we talk about different issues,
some of it being like ADA accessibility for traffic signals
for folks who are blind,
do you have a liaison that lets the council know
how we're doing on that and where we can improve
because it's like between different departments
and maybe we don't have an idea up until the point
that we meet once a year to ask these questions.
Yes, I'm happy to refer to aldermen
who has been our contact person
and he has sat in many committee meetings
and provided much representation on behalf
of our disability community.
Do you want to add anything?
Hi, thank you for that question.
The thing I would just add is,
you know, we work very closely with CDOT
and any other departments
that deal with that infrastructure
and one thing we do is also bring in the input
from the disability community
and so we're not recommending something
that turns out to not be usable or doesn't make sense,
so we do work closely in that way.
We'll form committees and really make sure
that what we're paying for,
what we're recommending works and it makes sense
and it's long-lasting.
I mean, one thing we found out with the APS
in the early days is that they
just couldn't survive Chicago weather.
So I mean, it's those kinds of things that we need
to find out and listen to what people have to say about it.
Got it, if I could just ask one more question.
So one I would say thank you for that,
what would be helpful for us
maybe it's some sort of like a progress report,
whether it's quarterly or two times a year so we would know,
and the last question I have is currently we have
a working group with Candace Moore on gender identity
and City of Chicago and something that's come up
is the City of Chicago Employee Disability Survey,
so that we know, how would you rate Chicago as an employer
as it relates to the amount of disabled folks
that we're hiring and being the best employer
for those who wanna apply for jobs?
So the question that how we make Chicago?
So, to clarify, so we have a gender identity survey,
or we've been developing to see are we having representation
and reflection here in city government that we have
in the city at large, and the question is,
how are we doing as it relates to our disabled community?
Are we hiring at levels that we should be?
What are initiatives and how can we be better
as an employer?
Yes, so we first, the first, what are the things we did
runs to the visual group and disability to help foster
the positive identity of our disability in the workplace.
And we also did a survey about a year ago,
and it was anonymous.
We had about 1,200 responses.
It was anonymous because we wanted people
to feel free to talk about disability.
Disability certain times a different identity
than gender identity mean there's a lot of commonality,
but if then people may not about disclose their disability,
and once you disclose your disability
to your employer, it has to become confidential.
With Disabilities Act, including keeping medical information
in a separate file and confidential, for example,
so we need to know what we can do to first pass
the identity about disability,
we put those steps into place, we for example,
require everybody to disclose their disability.
One opportunity that we didn't identify is adding
to new our employees any paperwork they put out
asking them to disclose their disability,
that's much easier to go back to people that staff too,
so that was what agreed on to,
but those are two separate strategies,
but I think that we need to make sure people feel
that their information is good what first plan
so that conversation should be covered to THR
or should be covered to MOPD for example.
Have do we build that first so wherever they go,
people need to feel that first because disability
identity is so personal.
It is up to each individual person what they wanna disclose,
whether they wanna disclose,
and I am working hard towards that vision.
And then everybody should be able to pick
the whole identities to work.
And I matter that I have staff who helped matter that,
but we need to do a little bit more work
I think towards that getting there.
Sure, no, I appreciate the work and the thoughtfulness
behind it, so anything that we can do to help,
please let us know.
Thank you so much for all the work you all do for all of us.
I think something that I learned in my first term
was that disability isn't like a cat.
We all get there as we all age.
We're all gonna have things where our bodies change
and we have to work, so the fact that you all think ahead
about how to make the city more accommodating for all of us
is something that should be heralded,
so thank you all so much and thank you, Chairman.
Thank you Alderman Villegas, Alderman Taliaferro to close.
Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Commissioner.
I wanna thank you for your team as well.
They have been very accessible to my office
in answering questions and so I certainly appreciate
all the help they've given me and your leadership as well.
I just have one question.
As a city, do we have resources that are provided
to our residents in teaching American Sign Language?
I know that there are private resources and courses
that residents can take that has a cost associated
and some that are probably free as well,
but is that a resource that the Mayor's Office
with People with Disabilities also provide?
Thank you for that question
and I'm gonna teach you aside, but thank you.
So we working as in new hires
who maybe through in American Sign Language,
which if that's something that I am looking to figure out
how I could use our existing visual experience.
We have tools from that, not only from our department,
but from across the city too, so I am,
once I have a better sense of what our staff resources are,
I will be able to figure out if I could use our,
if our existing visual, it will be a match.
So I am looking at that,
but I appreciate the question and I think that teaching
people language is another way of further
accessibility awareness in education
in addition to many other steps that we can take.
Let me thank you for that because I would certainly think
it would really benefit the residents of the city
and a lot of my colleagues already know that
I've lost complete hearing in my right ear,
because of my time in the military
and I'm also losing in my left ear,
so I would be your first student.
So thank you so much.
Thank you, Commissioner, and thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, quickly.
Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Commissioner,
for all the important work that you do.
I just wanna give a shout out to Lori Ditman,
who is in the box who is retiring,
I believe next week after how many years, Lori?
After 30 years of city service.
Let's give her a round of applause.
Many people don't know, or we may not know,
Lori was one of the Gang of Four that in the late '80s
passed the first human rights ordinance
in the city of Chicago guaranteeing equal rights
for lesbian, gay, bisexual, eventually transgender
members of the city enabling me to be here
and my eight other colleagues in the LGBT caucus,
so wanted to give a shout out to Lori as she leaves
a very long and distinguished career, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Lawson,
thank you for bringing that up and congratulations
and we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Commissioner, thank you.
You were here a little longer than I anticipated,
but again, you all provide a vital service to many members
of our community and you really don't think about this stuff
until you're actually in that position,
and as you are correct,
you are the only community that you can start off
not a member of and anybody can become a member
of the disabled community, so again,
thank you and we appreciate your service and we look forward
to seeing you in our amendment process in a positive way,
so, very well, you all are excused.
Very well.
Next we're gonna have CCPSA,
so we'll transition with CCPSA.
Thank you.
(no audio)
Good afternoon, we're going to start our next session
with the Community commission for Public Safety
and Accountability, CCPSA.
We'll start with a brief overview from COFA,
followed by introductions from the commission,
our president and the executive director of COFA.
Daniel Christrom, Council Office of Financial Analysis.
So next up we have the Community commission
for Public Safety and Accountability
and what we will see increases,
I just wanted to note that the FY24 budget
will be the first full year budget since the swearing in
of the inaugural class of the 66 District
Council members last spring,
so this includes three members for each of the city's
22 police districts.
So the FY24 budget is roughly a little over $4 million.
This is $819,291 more than the revised FY23 budget.
The proposal there are allocations for 29 FTEs.
This is five FTEs more compared to the FY23 budget.
All funding is derived from the corporate fund
representing a 25.73% increase
compared to the revised FY23 budget.
The personal services category is set to grow
by a little over 827,000,
representing the 34% increase, in the personnel expenses.
While personnel expenses are on the rise,
the contractual services are budgeted to decrease by 29,500,
equivalent to about 4% reduction.
As we look at a breakdown by funding type,
as you can see, it is 100% derived from the corporate fund.
And so that would be all 29 FTEs derived
from the corporate fund.
And then when you look at a breakdown by category,
you could see the largest of which is the personnel,
which has the increase of about 827,000.
And you can see the decrease in contractual services.
And that is it for COFA.
Thank you, Dan.
Mr. Driver.
Good morning or good afternoon, Chairman Ervin,
and members of the committee.
My name is Anthony Driver Jr.
and I'm the president of the Community Commission
for Public Safety and Accountability.
When we came before you this time last year,
the Community Commission was less than two months old.
The commission's first public meeting was just over a week
before our first budget hearing
and district council members had not been sworn in yet.
One year later, we're in a very different place.
Since the last time we came before you,
the commission led the search
for a new police superintendent.
We nominated people to fill five vacancies
on the police board.
We set set annual goals for the police department,
COPA and the police board,
and we're working now to assess the progress they've made
towards reaching those goals.
We've reviewed and issued a report on CPDs proposed
2023 budget before the city council voted on it
and we have worked with CPD on important
police department policies,
including the association's order,
which will set clear rules about the kinds of organizations
police officers can associate with
and what kinds of activities are prohibited.
We also enacted a new CPD policy,
which requires that CPDs handling of gang data be governed
by general orders and says that those general orders
need to be approved by the commission first.
Since our first budget hearing,
district council members have been created in all 22,
district councils have been created
in all 22 police districts.
District council members were sworn in in May.
They are working to improve policing and public safety
in their districts and they are beginning a process
to come together to identify shared interests
and shared concerns, which could lead them
to take on issues across the districts and citywide.
The primary purposes of this commission
and district councils are to increase public safety
and to strengthen accountability.
The commission's work on the superintendent selection
process shows how that process can work.
The process involve more public input
and community engagement than any superintendent selection
process on this city's history.
The commission conducted seven community listening sessions
in neighborhoods across the city.
We held targeted listening sessions with a wide range
of organizations, more than 175 business groups,
community-based organizations, faith-based organizations,
labor groups, social service providers,
and other organizations were invited to participate
in these listening sessions,
and more than 65 organizations joined at least one session.
We met with the major police unions,
including participating in an open forum at the FOP Lodge.
We also developed several online surveys
and received more than 600 responses,
including 270 from sworn police officers.
We interviewed 34 subject matter experts
then we took the information we gathered and incorporated it
into a selection process.
Many of the questions that we asked in interviews
with finalists came directly from community members
and from police officers who participated in the process.
And when we evaluated the candidates,
we placed a high value on the qualities and characteristics
that people had emphasized repeatedly
throughout that process.
That process led to the selection of a superintendent
who I believe will be a great leader
of the Chicago Police Department.
It's not just because Superintendent Snelling
brings great skills and knowledge to the job,
just as importantly, it's because the process
I just described and the way that both accountability
and collaboration are built into the selection process
and built into our oversight system now.
Superintendent Snelling was nominated because of answers
he gave to questions that we received directly
from civilians and police officers across the city
and the criteria that they highlighted.
The commission also has additional tools to make sure
that the policies and practices Superintendent Snelling
advances our aligned with what we hold the commission
to throughout the process.
The superintendent is also in a stronger position to succeed
because the commission is required by law to collaborate
with the superintendent and the department to incorporate
broad community input in key areas
like policymaking and goal-setting.
Because of the selection process,
the powers that the commission and district councils have,
and the work that they're required to do together
with the residents across the city,
Superintendent Snelling will be accountable to the people
of Chicago, unlike any superintendent before him
and he will have more opportunities to collaborate
and partner with community
than any other police superintendent before him.
That level of engagement and those efforts to strengthen
accountability all require a lot of work.
The commission and district councils are required by law
to hold 276 public meetings every year.
With additional special meetings in a typical year,
the commission and district councils will probably hold
more than 300 public meetings.
There's also an extensive work that goes into carrying out
other responsibilities like reviewing and drafting policy,
reviewing the budget, setting goals and measuring progress
on those goals.
District council members also take on many responsibilities
outside of their monthly meetings.
We rely on a very small staff to support all that work.
This time last year we had two people on staff.
Today we have 19, and in a few weeks we'll have 23.
The 2024 budget includes five new staff positions.
Most of the new positions will focus primarily
on supporting the district councils,
for example, an additional community outreach coordinator
and a staff person to support the community engagement
and public affairs work that helps to ensure
broad participation in the work of the district councils.
The budget will support broad participation
in other ways too.
For example, the budget includes money for language access
at commission meetings and district council meetings.
Our goal is to provide translation services for anyone
who needs them at any public meeting
of the commission and district councils.
When the city of Chicago voted to create the community
commission and the district councils,
you gave us an incredibly difficult job.
The ordinance says that the purpose of this commission
and district councils include increasing public safety,
strengthening accountability,
and building trust in improving interactions
between the police department and the people it serves.
Encouraging community-based and evidence-based approaches
to public safety, increasing efficiency in the use
of public safety resources
and helping to bring the city into compliance
with the consent decree, that's an ambitious agenda.
This budget will help us to advance it.
Thank you and we look forward to your questions.
Thank you, President Driver.
If you could introduce the staff
and if you want the director to introduce everyone
that's in the box, I would appreciate that.
Thank you, Chairman.
I'm Adam Gross, the Executive Director
of the Community Commission for Public Safety
and Accountability and I am joined here from left to right
by Cody Stevens, who is our Director of Research Policy
and planning, Damon Smith, who's the Deputy Director
for the District Councils,
Brian Kenner, who's the Deputy Director for the Commission,
Maggie Mendenhall Casey, who is our General Counsel,
Charlie Isaacs, who's our Associate General Counsel,
Carissa Boatman,
who's our Director of Administrative Services,
and Nikki Garcia, who's our Director of Public Affairs.
Thank you.
We'll start with Chairman Taliaferro for Police and Fire.
Thank you, Chairman.
Let me first thank you guys for the great job you did
in the selection process for superintendent.
This was a new process for many of us, the city
and you guys handled that transition from the old style
to the new style with ease and so you guys did a great job.
President Driver, I can't thank you enough for the time
and effort that you put in and did a wonderful job.
Thank you.
The one question I had is regarding policy
and this is probably meant for both of you,
Executive Director as well.
We have empowered
the organization or your department, rather,
with the ability to make policy.
That was one of the things that was fought for
and with the last administration came into fruition
and I certainly agree that you guys should have that ability
to make policy.
One of the things that I would love to see
is taking some of the suggestions or recommendations
from our Inspector General and the Deputy Inspecter General
of Public Safety and creating those policies
and one of the things that she's recommended,
which I believe is very important,
she's recommended that the Chicago Police Department
implement a policy on whether or not an officer
can be a member of a hate group.
And that policy to this date has not been implemented
that I'm aware of.
And so if we are going to tell our officers
that you cannot be a Proud Boy or you
cannot be a part of any other organization
that our department deems to be adverse to their mission
and their goal, but we don't have a policy in place
that tells them that,
then we can't discipline them if they are a member
and so I think the Inspector General has recommended
long ago that CPD finally step up and create a policy
that says you cannot be a member of a hate organization
or one that's deemed to be a hate organization
or one that goes adverse to what our department
and our city's missions are in caring
for the wellbeing of our residents.
So CBD has been slow to do it,
but since you've been empowered with that ability to do it
as well, what's your thoughts on that?
And have you guys actually started creating the policy
with regard to organization in hate crime,
or not hate crimes, but in hate organizations
or organizations that are deemed adverse
to Police Department's mission?
And fire department.
Yeah, thank you for that question.
The answer to that question is we've been working on that
since January, so I know that it's been a lot of renewed
media attention with the recent,
I believe Sun-Times and WBEZ article,
but that is actually an item that was originally scheduled
to be voted on this October,
but we didn't feel like we had done an adequate job.
There's two commissioners who are over that,
so I'm paraphrasing and speaking for them right now,
who are over that policy committee
and they have been working on that.
We didn't feel like, they didn't feel like they
had done enough community engagement,
so this Monday there's a virtual public forum on it,
and then at our November meeting,
we've been working hand in hand
with the Chicago Police Department at least since January
on this specific thing.
We had no idea that article was coming out,
but I do think it lends a hand
to what we have been working on.
Some of the stuff that came out of that is that if you just
focus on an organization specifically, it's easy to say
that this is the Proud Boys today and they name change,
and then now they're no longer on the prohibited list,
so what has sort of come out of that
and behind-the-scenes negotiations is more of like
let's focus on behaviors of organizations
and not just what the name of an organization is.
I can't speak to where that'll end up,
but what I can say is that November 13th,
we plan to have voted on this policy and completed
our community engagement process
and providing clear direction for what that looks like
and that's something that we have been working
very extensively with the policy folks at CPD,
as well as the Bureau of Internal Affairs on.
Okay, and I appreciate that,
and I wouldn't expect the policy to be so narrow
that it only discusses one organization
or to name any organization
because there are several organizations out there
that you would have to amend that policy literally
every time someone joined one, and so I would hope
it would be broad enough to say that
you can't be a member of these types of organizations,
and so I appreciate your work on that policy.
I would've liked to known that you were working on it.
I hope the and Deputy Inspector General Public Safety
is involved and the Inspector General's involved as well.
Yeah, thank you, and if I can still answer.
And please feel free to let us know
you're doing stuff as well.
Yeah, and I think that's, I mean that really speaks
to some of our needs in this budget,
which I'm hopeful that this addresses,
but we have one person at Director of Public Affairs
who's dealing with 22 district councils
and a seven-person citywide commission,
and we have to do a better job of informing alderman.
When I saw, when I watched Superintendent Snelling
yesterday, I saw the question
that Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez raised,
and I asked our staff to drive a memo and send it to her.
I'm gonna ask them now to forward that to you as well,
but we need to do a better job of communicating
with the city council as we're working on these things
so that you know what we're up to
and what we're trying to tackle.
Right, and I am Chairman of Police and Fire,
so it would've been good to say,
Alderman, these are the policies that we are working on
with regard to our police department or fire department.
I don't know whether you guys have that ability
to affect policy with the fire department,
but I do know for sure you do with the police department
so I'd like to at least have some input and knowledge
about what you're working on with regard to policies
with the police department, thank you.
We will do a better job of that.
Again, thanks for your hard work over there
and the superintendent process.
Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Chair Taliaferro.
Vice Chair Lee, followed by Alderman Scott.
Thank you, Chairman, and good morning,
and thank you for being here, gentlemen,
and everybody in the box.
Really appreciate all of the work that you've done
in a short amount of time and really congratulate you
on these big accomplishments.
Most of my questions are gonna be around
the district councilors.
You know, we've got three district councilors,
and most of the districts,
I know that there are still some vacancies.
Can you talk about how many vacancies there are currently
on the district councils across the districts?
There's one district that currently has a vacancy.
It's the first district where only two people ran.
The ordinance lays out a process for filling vacancies
that involves the members of the district council
who are serving to nominate people to the commission,
for the commission to select from the people
who the district council members have recommended,
and then for that, for the commission selection
then to go to the mayor to fill the vacancy
using the authority that the mayor has to fill vacancies
under state law, so the District Council has done its part,
the commission has done its part,
and the recommendations are now before the mayor.
Did you mean staff vacancies or-
No, just councilor vacancies.
And thank you for that answer.
You know, I think as new things come out,
we work out the kinks as we go along.
You know, one of the things that I've noticed
and is that our district councilors can't actually talk
to each other without violating the Open Meetings Act,
which I feel is very problematic for any real work
to get done between those three councilors.
Has there been any conversation about proposing amendments
to the Open Meetings Act to free them up to not violate
this act in trying to do some good work for the community?
So we have had conversations with state lawmakers,
as well as other state officials.
My take on it, and Adam may wanna correct me,
is that if you start fidgeting with it,
there are a lot of municipalities downstate
who actually have like three-person small city councils
the County Board of Review is a three-person body as well
and in that situation,
if the County Board of Review, you know,
they could potentially be doing public business
in a way that is not transparent,
and I'm not singling them out,
I'm just pointing out that there are other smaller
government bodies that if you start tinkering with the law,
it affects them as well, so I would welcome your help.
Our General Counsel and our policy folks
have been trying to find a workaround.
In the meantime, that's why we are so relying on staff
because every message has to be passed through staff
because we can't,
I can't meet with more than two commissioners,
I can only meet with one commissioner,
so I have to pass messages through staff,
which makes their job harder
and creates a bigger need for us.
And how many current vacancies do you have in staff?
On the staff?
There are currently five vacancies.
For three of those vacancies,
we've completed the interview process, extended offers,
and those offers have been accepted,
so it's a matter of getting people
through the paperwork process and into the job,
so we will very soon be at 22 of the 24 budgeted positions.
Another of the positions is now posted
and will be filled as quick as we can fill it.
You guys have a big job, I get this, and to understand,
and thank you for giving me a better understanding
of how you're managing this whole situation.
To have the pass messages around is very taxing
and I know not a great effective use of everyone's time.
So can you tell me where in this budget there are resources
for the district councilors to do their own outreach,
like copying, making photocopies, if there's an office
that they can go to within the district?
I'm concerned about the amount of work
that these district councilors have.
They were elected, they get paid a stipend.
The stipend is frankly not very much for some of the work
I know some councilors are doing at the end of the day,
so I'm wondering how this budget that's been submitted
addresses some of those needs
at the district councilor level.
Thank you for the question.
There are a bunch of different line items
where budget resources could be used to provide
the kind of support that you're talking about
for district council members, so for example,
there's a line item that's basically
just for office supplies
and district council members are able to draw on that.
There are line items for meeting space,
so if district council members need to rent space
for a public meeting, they have access to those resources.
So there are a range of things that can come out
of different line items in the budget to meet those needs.
District Council members have also identified
very specifically that they would like
some more permanent meeting space for themselves
and we're in the process now of working with AIS
to try to identify permanent space
in a number of locations across the city
where District Council members would be meet.
So, I'm sure everything Adam said is correct.
I will also note that District Council members,
as well as our commission, are really struggling.
Most of us are in the hole every single month.
The District Council members are using that $500 stipend
to pay for things, printing material to pay for having
a tray of cookies at their district council meetings.
Some of them are even paying interpreters out of pocket.
And so, while everything Adam is saying I'm sure is correct,
I just wanna be on record noting that we
are in a very tough situation right now
and frankly it's draining a lot of people
who are trying to do good work and frankly do not have
the resources to be able to do that.
There also are staff members who are sometimes
paying out of pocket to help out with some of these things
as well, which we really need some help with.
Right, no, and I appreciate that
and that was sort of the whole line of my questioning
is that I don't believe that your budget's sufficient
to do the kind of job that you wanna be able to be doing.
That stipend is intended to compensate the elected,
these are duly elected officials who get no other benefits
and as you said, are using these resources
that they're getting for the purpose of doing this job
and that's not what that's intended to do,
so I believe we're doing a very big disservice
to all of our district councilors by not providing
sufficient budget to fulfill the job that they have
so I'd be happy to work with you to try to make
some adjustments to this so that you're not donating
all of these funds in your time to the city
for what you're trying to do, so thank you.
Thank you, I would just add to the points that you made
that both District Council members and commissioners
are spending many, many, many more hours doing this work
than that they anticipated.
For some, it is very close to a full-time job
and they have other full-time jobs.
I have no doubt, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
So,
let's just ask, what is it that you need?
That's why we're here.
Is there a dollar amount you need some time
to formulate that, that we could get that,
that you think would be sufficient to meet the needs
of the District Councils and the commission
for incidental costs?
If you could get something to us sooner rather than later,
we would appreciate that, so, okay.
Be happy to, thank you.
Okay, very well.
I had Scott followed by Sigcho-Lopez.
Good morning, oh, afternoon.
I wanna say again, thank you, as Taliaferro said,
I think that your selection process
for the new superintendent was very transparent
and collectively done throughout the city,
so thank you guys again for that.
I have a couple of questions around the district councils.
First question,
how much training did they get
before they were put onto the streets
for a new position like this?
Adam or maybe Reverend Damon, if you wanna speak to that.
There was about 25 hours of training that they did
over a series of weeks between the time
that they were elected and the time they took office.
What kind of training?
Training about what their specific obligations are
under the ordinance, training about the Open Meetings Act,
about the city's ethics ordinance,
about running meetings,
Roberts Rules of Order, a range of things,
and frankly, 25 hours is not enough for people
who are, in most cases, stepping up for the first time into-
So do you have it in your budget where additional training
would be for the district councils?
It's in the budget in the sense that we see training
as something that should be happening all the time
and so we'll be using existing staff resources
to provide ongoing training to district council members.
When was the last time that you had a training
for the district councils?
Before they were inaugurated,
they're required to meet quarterly
to do a number of things under the ordinance.
Their quarterly meeting is scheduled for November
and one of the issues that's gonna be discussed
at that quarterly meeting is training needs.
Also, just to respond to that,
also note that at least from a staff perspective,
they can provide those resources,
but there's nothing that we have that can force
elected officials to show up to these
or to take time off work.
A lot of those folks do have full-time jobs,
so they're like, no matter how many opportunities
we provide, if they choose,
I'm not saying they do choose that,
but if they choose not to, they're elected officials,
we can't do anything about that.
So when we decided to, so again,
so as an elected official,
when you talk about resources and things that they need,
they can also fundraise
because they are an elected official, correct?
Well, no.
My answer to that would be that like you all as alderman,
you have a separate political committee
that's supposed to be used for political things
and then they, as elected officials,
they don't fundraise for public business.
That is paid for by taxpayer dollars,
so they actually can't.
So again, we do have to think of a real number
and a real dollar sign for them to have, whether it be
offices that they have in different district,
district offices so that they have a office
that they can come to that may be a good idea,
and also building a relationship with the alderperson
to get some help, and right now there's no relationship
with the Alderman's Office, not with all, but with some,
and so you said when they were newly elected,
so maybe in March they had a training, a 20-hour training?
They were sworn in in May.
I don't know when the training was.
I think training started in March and ran through May.
And I say this because there's a disconnect.
Many of the district councils don't know their role.
Their role is to increase public safety
and to strengthen accountability and so what
does that look like coming from your end for them?
When you say increase public safety,
what does that look like?
So that's for them to determine.
And so this is me.
I'll say what Adam probably can't say,
but they're technically Adam's boss.
They're technically the boss of everybody
that's in that box, they're elected officials,
no different than you having your aldermanic staff.
It's a big difference.
It's a big difference from them and myself.
Oh, I'm saying the staff,
they can't show the staff what to do.
So, and with that being said,
that's why they need a training
because they're a lot different from me
as an elected official, as the alderman,
and them as a district council.
So that is a many of them
and if you talk to them that way,
there's a total disconnect and we do have an issue
and I know that you know that we have an issue and you know,
and this is open forum and it's important that we talk
openly so that we can come to a resolution
because there is an issue and I can't,
like I'm not gonna disclose that it's not a issue.
I have a huge issue in my District 10.
It's a huge issue and so we don't,
I need another round.
Well, what it sounds like is that you probably need
to have a offline conversation with the president
and the ED about specific situations.
If I may, Chairman, the only thing that I'm saying
is I'm an appointed official.
I'm an interim appointed official.
I was appointed by the city council and the mayor
and confirmed by the city council.
These people are elected officials.
I have no right, no authority,
neither does anybody on this staff to tell them what to do.
Like there's nothing that we can do as far as forcing
them to do anything.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
But it's not telling them what to do.
It's not giving them a clear and concise direction.
They don't know the direction of, some of them, not all.
I can't speak to all, but some of them don't know
the direction of the position of what this entails.
So when you talk about public safety and accountability,
that's over the top of their head
and so that's what I mean,
not trying to tell them what to do,
but to know the role of what their existing position is
and that's a disconnect.
I'll be happy to talk more with you about
and learn more about it and see how we can help.
Okay.
Alderman Sigcho-Lopez,
I'm gonna ask Alderman Yancy as a constituent
waiting for him and then he wanted to go
'cause we'll probably be ending before he comes back,
so Alderman Yancy, please proceed.
Good afternoon, thank you, Chairman.
First I wanted to say hello to Adam and Anthony
and Reverend Damon.
We worked together as community folks,
passed this ordinance about two years ago and never thought
that the four of us would be in this space
on a day like today, talking about the budget
for this new commission.
A couple questions.
First, one of the things that we talked about
as we built this out was it wasn't just the framework
of the work to be done, but it was also a question of how we
were gonna make sure we had the right people
to do the job effectively.
Can you talk a little bit about what staffing has been like
and some thoughts around what staffing looks like
in this new budget?
Yeah, so a lot of, early on it was pretty hard for us
to hire, and I'll let Adam speak to this as well.
For our commission, we've recently increased our staffing,
but one of the things that I can say has been
sort of an ongoing issue is to have the affect,
like this is a first time thing that we're all doing
and we're all learning as we're going.
We're doing the best that we can.
But because this has never existed, we can't rely
on what typical city department blueprints have, right?
We have a director of public affairs
who is completely stretched in, one person,
like while I can say to Chairman Taliaferro
that we have to do a better job of communicating with him,
I'm also intimately aware that we have one director
of public affairs who has to respond
to 22 district council members who have a meeting a month.
They need flyers, they need strategic help,
they need press conference help,
and then she also has to deal with our commission,
and it's completely not reasonable for one person
to do all of that work, so having the flexibility,
not even necessarily trying to increase the line item,
but the flexibility to move dollars around within our budget
to hire the people that we need
is very, very, very critical.
Also, when we look at the staffing that we have,
if now that we know that, you know,
that's the job of four people that she's doing,
essentially 60, 70 hours a week,
not only being able to get her some help,
but also you're doing a job that is bigger than what we knew
when we first started this.
So in my personal opinion, she's also vastly,
drastically underpaid for the type of work
and the skillset that she has
and so I would say that the budget office has been helpful,
but at the same time,
we can't rely on other blueprints from other departments
because this is a first-time thing, and again,
not necessarily trying to increase the line item,
can we use that money to hire the staffing that we need?
Right now, the biggest need is district councils.
The commission is going okay right now,
but district council members need a lot of support
and we need to be able to push resources and staff resources
to them so I hope that answered, I think Adam might.
But let me, I'm gonna push back a little bit on that
because you all do have four new positions
in your district council area, along with the the director,
so there should be some that one individual
that's your director of public affairs
should not be the end all be all
for any type of communication.
I mean, you guys do have additional resources.
Now, I know that,
I don't know what your vacancy looks like today.
I didn't look in the book on that,
but there are additional resources being added
from the district council perspective,
which hopefully should alleviate that one individual
from all of this work for managing
the public affairs-related work for each of,
for both the councils, the commission,
and communicating with the city council.
Before you answer that, Chairman,
that's actually the way I was gonna go
with this next question is,
do you feel like the staffing plan that you submitted
in your budget adequately meets the need
that you just spoke about?
So, that's essentially what I'm trying to get at
is that this, if we were able to have the flexibility
to have some of those positions be other things
that we need, that's what I mean,
if that makes sense to you.
So right now I think it's, what, project managers, right?
If we were able to use that to create the positions
that we need for our current,
to fill our current staffing needs
is what I mean by flexibility.
That's not necessarily what we wanted to happen,
what you see reflected in this budget.
Well, that's a different conversation and I would suggest
that you all make a submission back to the committee if you
want to make some adjustments in your FTE count.
Now, I won't say adjustments in count,
but adjustments in title positions and title codes,
that is totally fair for you all to do and for us
to consider so I would suggest that you all
make that request through the Chair and we
can evaluate that along with the budget department.
And then one last question.
People before me spoke about the great job that was done
during the superintendent search.
I want to go ahead and echo that.
Outside of that really significant matter
that you had to deal with in your first term,
how else are you measuring success
for the community commission?
Are we measuring it? Yeah.
I'll say for me, it's the level of engagement
and it's our metrics, right?
So for me, the way that I'm measuring success
is how many people are actually engaged with our commission
on a day-to-day basis.
How many people are we bringing into the process?
When I first started, the biggest complaint that we heard
was issues around the gang database.
People would come to our commission and they
would essentially raise hell about this particular issue.
Now they've moved on and they're raising hell
about other issues, but for me,
that's a box check of like, okay, they moved on.
When I first went to the FOP for the first time
at their lodge, every single, it was about 40 people
that came up to the microphone and spoke.
80% of them were really upset about council days off.
During our superintendent search,
that was like one of the top things we were dealing with
in that search process was how are you giving officers
adequate time with their families on the front end
so that they don't have as many mental health issues
on the back end?
I went to the FOP Lodge two weeks ago.
A lot of people were still very upset and yelling and angry
and rightfully so, but they were no longer yelling
about council days off because that was something
that Superintendent Snelling addressed,
so those are some of the metrics that I'm looking at
to see that it, although it's still in a tough environment,
but the ball is moving forward in situations like that.
Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, alderman.
Yes, Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Thank you, thank you, Chairman,
and thank you, Commissioner, for being here with us.
It's great to have more participation from our communities
when it comes to public safety.
That is a welcoming change.
I have a few and echo my colleague about the importance
of this effort and what it took.
A few questions in terms of the newly-formed commission.
This is in line of the different entities that we have
around public safety.
So what is your plan to breach the overlapping authority
between neighborhood policing initiatives,
the district council, district councils, advisory councils,
and the Chicago Police Department?
What is your vision in general of how to make sure
that we are complementing each other and also making sure
that the voices of our community are heard.
Today we have public comment about the disconnection, right?
Or having huge needs in our community for mental health,
education, job opportunities, you name it,
and a budget that does not reflect those priorities.
So what are those things that you're now finding now,
mind you, I know that you're just starting in this job,
but how do you see this collaboration happening
given the frustration that we hear from more communities
of not being heard?
Yeah, I think that's what makes
our community engagement process so important.
It was the reason why this association's order
that we're dealing with,
that we're gonna vote on in November,
there's a lot of community members who are upset
about the allegations of members of the Oath Keepers
and Proud Boys being on the Chicago Police Department.
We were about to vote on that in October
and I think that's a good example of how we were able
to press pause, realize that this is an issue
of great importance to the city of Chicago
and actually start doing more community engagement
before we actually vote on it,
and also utilizing district council members
to bring up issues from the ground up.
I'll also say that that has been,
what you're pointing out has been very difficult.
We've had four superintendents
since our commission was created,
and those are four people with completely different visions.
My hope now is that now that we have a permanent person
who has a vision and we have a vision, we can work together.
There's also been a lot of tension between,
what's it called, dax?
The CAPS program and the district council members.
Now that we have an actual person that's in place
that we can do goal-setting and evaluation
and work with that person to have regular monthly meetings
with the department and sort of stabilize,
we're now more able to actually hear residents,
so that's some of the things that I think will help
to bridge that gap, but I think you're completely correct
that it's been very difficult
to reach as many people as possible.
I also say there's a lot of communities
that don't feel heard.
We, by law, now have to do four more meetings
with Superintendent Snelling.
One of those I'm proposing that we do
in the Chinatown community because I
went to a district council meeting and I saw
that they have live translation and it was packed
and I'm like this is a community that I feel like
don't get heard enough.
And so I wanna bring the superintendent to their community
and you hear from them and give them a chance to engage.
I wanna do one with the disability community,
and I also wanna do one
with the violence interruption community.
It's a slow process,
but we're trying to reach as many Chicagoans
who have been marginalized
and pushed out to the fringes as possible.
Thank you, and the thing is, you know,
this is a critical time to do so
as we see clear agendas coming to instigate,
to instigate violence and to instigate fear
in our communities.
That's what I think one of the things that I
would like to bring to the attention of the commission,
this issue with white supremacists in the police department.
It is an issue that requires the participation
and understanding of the risks, as well as the implications
of having such elements in public institutions.
So, we did, you know, we call on a hearing on the matter
under the last administration.
I personally sent an invitation to the 66 commissioners
to join a conversation,
not only with the Southern Public Law Center,
that is a national policy group.
I understand that the commissioner wants to do policy work,
as well as understanding the issue.
I was a little bit concerned about the low turnout
that we got from the commissioners.
I think only maybe 12 out of the 66 showed up.
And this is in a meeting where we have
the Inspector General, COPA,
and the Southern Public Law Center to provide briefings.
I do think that as people who were elected for this job,
I do think that we ought to be present
in those conversations, not only for budgets,
but also to talk about policies like this.
If we are not there, I don't know how
we're going to understand the implications of that.
I didn't get a real good explanation as to why
we should not gotten all 66 members of the commission
if they truly care about the safety of our communities.
I would furthermore would like to add
that the disconnections between our policies on the ground
and the policies that we see in trainings are grotesque.
I think that, you know, in 2015 there was a Guardian article
that showed that we even have former superintendents
of the Chicago Police Department that received training
from reactionary groups in Israel.
So there were 3,500 Black residents who mainly
have gone to Homan Square and have been mistreated
in occupation style strategies and policies.
That's what we're hearing today.
So when I hear that commissioners care about this issue,
but they don't show up, I got a problem with that
because it's the same apathy that we have seen
from previous administrations
and I do hope that if this is a commission
elected by the community and there are thousands of people
that want that participation,
I do hope that that has to start by just being present
and I just be very kind and very candid with this comment
because we hearing that we care in this commission
about this issue, I would like to see more participation
from the commissioners, as well as other issues of course,
you know, that requires to participate,
but that one is in particularly pressing.
Thank you, Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
I'll just add to that.
Is there a dashboard or anything that shows
district councilor participation in meetings?
Just from a transparency perspective,
we can always check attendance for as elected alders,
but I'm wondering that, you don't have to answer that now.
Yeah, we have a calendar on our website
of district council meetings,
but I don't think we have a dashboard,
but that's a really good idea.
Just a suggestion then just to address
some of what Alderman Sigcho-Lopez was saying
from a transparency perspective.
Next, we're gonna have Alderman La Spada
followed by Alderman Villegas.
Thank you so much, Anthony, Adam.
I cannot overstay how proud and privileged I am
to know you both, both personally and professionally,
but also to see the work that this commission is doing.
I will second the comments earlier
about the Open Meetings Act, what a challenge that is.
I know it's challenging for the downstate,
to that I might say we have so many laws in Illinois
that only apply to cities of two million people or more
and what's one more law that applies to cities
of two million people or more?
Just we'll say that point.
I don't know that I have many comments
directly on the budget.
I will say I'm glad to see your turnover number decreasing.
Any department that has a turnover figure of 20%
of its total budget is not a department
that we are allowing to hire effectively.
So to see that number be cut by, looks like almost 70%,
I'm really glad for that because it allows you
to have a much more realistic hiring plan.
I did wanna ask if you are at liberty,
or at all to talk about
the Policy, Research and Development Team,
if there are any particular topics
that they're looking at that alders could potentially be
giving input on those conversations.
Yeah, so the way that we have been doing policy
is that for it to originate from the ground,
so as residents, as alderman, as folks bring stuff to us,
that's what we've tried to address first,
because those are at the top of the minds of most folks,
but also, the association's order, if I'm not mistaken,
was actually something that was brought to us
by the police department themselves,
but I can tell you our November meeting
will be mostly focused on officer wellness,
then we'll go into our goal-setting and evaluation process
for the police board, COPA, and the superintendent,
also workforce allocations and response times.
So you can look forward to that.
As of right now, we're only here till April,
so I don't wanna start making agenda items past April,
but workforce allocation, the response times,
that's something that we are really honing in on
in the fact that there's disparities in how quickly
officers respond on South and West Side communities
as opposed to other communities,
and that's something that could be a policy fix.
Traffic stops, we've had a hearing on these things.
Traffic stops is also something that is at the top
of the list for our commission to take a look at.
We're also working with the independent monitors team.
We've had conversation with them as well as the AG's office
about what can we do about disproportionate traffic stops.
So those are two things that are being worked on right now
after we vote on the association's order in November.
Those are great topics, and when you talk about April,
that is when we would expect the mayor to have appointed
the permanent commission members
that come out of the nominating committee.
So January 8th, the application's open
for community members to apply.
I could be wrong, feel free to correct me.
30 days after that it closes.
District council members then go through their process
and make a recommendation to the mayor.
He goes from 14 to seven and then you all confirm or deny.
Yep, brilliant, looking forward to it.
It's one of the best things that we did
in the last four years and I'm really glad
to have the two of you in leadership.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Alderman LaSpada.
Alderman Villegas, followed by Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Driver.
We had a conversation earlier around the makeup
of the police board and so I heard from you that
moving forward there'll be some more diversity,
especially when Latino community makes up
almost a third of the city, so you mentioned
that moving forward you'll take that into consideration.
Is that correct?
Yes, and also wanted to thank you for raising that issue
as well as the mayor's office
and other concerned community members.
There were some mitigating factors, but that's no excuse,
and the bottom line is we have to do better
and we will do better.
Okay, so I can get a commitment from you
that the next board appointments that are coming up,
we're gonna see folks that represent a third
of the community on there that were exempt this time?
So I'm worried about if I'm gonna say something illegal,
but, and I don't know if I can legally say that,
but what I can say is there's a very strong commitment
from myself and my fellow commissioners to make sure
that Chicagoans are represented on the police board
and other things that we have authority over,
but I don't wanna say something
that's gonna get me in trouble.
Gotcha, appreciate that.
Around in your statement,
you talked about the police district councilors
and their goal around improving public safety.
Can you elaborate 'cause we've had some community meetings
around public safety in the ward
and we've invited some of the members.
And again, to your point, they're elected officials,
they can show up or they don't have to show up,
but I'm trying to get a sense as to what does that mean
around public safety?
What is it that they're trying to do around public safety?
Thank you, Alderman.
So the ordinance speaks very broadly about
what the district council members' responsibilities are
and lots of people comment questions
around public safety very differently
and my understanding is that the ordinance was drafted
to give those elected officials a lot of freedom
and flexibility to determine within their districts
what advancing public safety means.
Are you looking for examples
of how they've been successful?
Yeah, 'cause I mean, look, when you talk to residents
in the city of Chicago,
70% of people are concerned about public safety
and in the document and, in the name of the organization,
it's around public safety,
so I'm just trying to get a sense because, to your point,
we wanna partner with them 'cause this is a big issue
and the alderman are the ones who typically get the call
and what we don't wanna do is just say,
"Hey, go deal with those folks."
We wanna try to work collaboratively
to deal with this issue.
So again, I'm just trying to get examples
as to what does that mean to try to address public safety?
So I think what Adam is trying to say
is it obviously differs in each community, in each district.
Some examples that I have noted is that,
you know, obviously there was a,
I think it was maybe District 10 where there was a station
that was there was an accusation,
I guess the police officer,
the community were really upset about that.
They were able to have a meeting where about 100
or so folks came out.
I think a few alderman also came out.
I remember Alderman Rodriguez being there.
They brought out COPA and other folks to be transparent
and inform the community that there's allegations
that have been made.
They didn't actually have anything substantial
at that point, but that's an example of that.
I've also heard about district council members-
But I would say that's more on the accountability
side of the equation, I'm talking about-
The next one I was gonna say was one,
there was a district council that I know
had a meeting where they talked about the issue
of catalytic converters and what you can do about that,
so informing the community about that
as well as bringing them out.
So there's a number of different,
each district is different and they do have, you know,
kind of a broad range of issues that they deal with,
but I have seen them deal with very localized
and specific issues within their community.
Okay.
There's some district councils that meet regularly
with their district commanders and the leadership team
within the district where they're exploring priority-setting
around policing issues in the district.
There are some districts that are working on
non-police response within their districts
and thinking about it citywide.
There are some districts that are beginning an exploration
of restorative justice practices where there's some evidence
that that can help work to improve public safety.
So again, as Anthony was saying,
lots of different approaches across district councils,
and also they're in about their fifth month of meeting,
so I think some of them are still in the process
of determining how they're gonna do the work
that you're talking about.
Oh yeah, I agree with you.
I mean, they just got sworn in five months ago.
I was just curious as to some of the examples
around public safety 'cause I mean,
we're obviously trying to come up with different strategies
around the economic development portion.
One thing that I can say,
and I don't wanna talk too publicly about the example,
but there is an example of a district council member who,
a community member was aware of a crime that was committed
that was pretty egregious and they didn't feel comfortable
going to the police, but they did feel comfortable
going to a district council meeting,
pulling that person aside, having a conversation,
and then that district council member took it
to the police department and didn't mention their name.
I don't know if an arrest was made, but to me
that's a great example of bridging that gap
and actually helping with public safety.
If you're scared to talk to the police,
you having the ability to go talk
to a district council member who can then assist you
and getting justice.
Okay, cool, all right, thank you.
Thank you. Madam Chair.
Thank you. Alderman Villegas.
Alderman Vasquez, followed by Alderman Rodriguez.
Thank you very much.
And I'll just remind everybody
that we still have three more departments to go.
Yes, and so I would love to applaud y'all for all the work
that we all did to get it done, great,
but I'm gonna go into questions
and really wanna follow up on kind of the question
about bridging gaps.
So right now we've got folks who go to CAPS meeting
that usually number in the single digits,
and you've got the district councilors trying to establish
meetings as well that it feels like neighbors
sometimes are confused as to where to go.
I think when you think about increasing stipends,
for example, there is a case to be made to consolidate
the two that maybe some of it's just CAPS reporting
and then it's talking about
this larger public safety awareness.
How did you feel about maybe finding a way
to square the two, to increase stipend,
but also make it something where neighbors
have a better idea and understanding
of the regularity of the meetings and where to go?
Yeah, so I'll talk to your first point
about your first hearing the CAPS, right?
Yeah, yeah. The CAPS program.
There was a lot of tension early on.
Those folks felt like they've dedicated 20, 30 years
doing this work for free, no stipends for them.
They just do it for the love of their community
and we heard from a lot from 'em early on.
I think the thing that's important to note
is that CAPS is a function of the Chicago Police Department,
whereas the CCPSA is a independent organization
that's separate from the police department.
And early on we did try to actually bridge that gap.
We were not successful and to be frank and candid,
there was not a lot of collaboration between our commission
and the Chicago Police Department
under our last former permanent superintendent.
When superintendent Fred Waller took over,
he had a more of a open door policy
and allowed us to actually talk more with these folks
and to talk more with department officials
and it became a little easier,
and now with Superintendent Snelling,
we're really able to educate folks
and like kind of figure out a way to work together.
In regards to the stipends, as I mentioned,
I think the city's budget office has some sort of policy
where like you can't buy food and things like that,
so when I talk about increasing stipends,
it's to try to help folks break even,
not to actually pay them.
Again, most of these folks are actually spending their money
to buy food for their meetings,
to have a case of water at their meeting.
I was at a district council meeting the other day
and they had free covid tests, right?
So just giving them the ability to cover their gas
and the expenses that they're using for printing
or other things like that, I think will go a long way.
I know for myself, I work about,
I have a intense full-time job,
and then I also do about 30 hours a week on the commission
and every single month,
I'm probably at least 500 to $1,000 in the hole,
just with, if you're following the ordinance correctly
and you're meeting with COPA,
you're meeting with the police board,
you're meeting with the superintendent,
you're meeting with the district council members,
there's no way I can do this under 30 hours a week
and be effective at it and I'm also,
we're all in the hole every week.
Sure, and I'll note that when we're talking about
the district councilors, I believe the stipends
are actually determined by municipal code
separate from budget so we could make the changes
to the municipal code to meet that
and the reason why I wanna highlight that is I know
in budgets when we start talking funds,
but I think some of it is revisiting like we did
for the election piece,
revisiting the actual code that establishes the commission
to try to make some of those changes as well,
so I wanted to make sure on that because I know it is a case
for the district councilors.
Yeah, and I know when we were negotiating
and trying to pass the ordinance, like our stipends
were tied to the police board.
The idea was to make it the same as what the police board
got, but it's obviously a little bit more work.
But I think you're correct that it's actually
in our ordinance.
Yeah, so I think I'm looking forward to actually looking
through that lens because I think the other concern
is when we're looking at arbitration and the potential
that the police board might not even be able
to take on some of these cases, leaves it to folks
to understand that CCPSA is an accountability arm
that needs to be built up in that kind of world,
so we'll be visiting that as we're looking forward.
Next question I've got is related to
something that I've been trying to develop
and talk to our colleagues, which is auditing CPD,
that if you want an effective police department,
one that does the core functions it should,
that the funds should be used in a way that are helpful
to do so and there might be bloat
as there wouldn't be in other departments,
and so wanted to know kind of your take on auditing CPD
and like what that would look like.
I think I'm 100% for transparency and I'm also 100%
for efficiency and making sure that the funds
that taxpayers put into our commission
and also to the Chicago Police Department
are being used in an effective way.
I can't speak for Superintendent Snelling,
but I will say that every conversation I've had with him,
he has also stated that he values transparency
and having an open door policy,
so my answer speaking for me
and not the six other commissioners would be,
of course I support transparency
and of course I support efficiency.
I have one more question if that's okay.
Make it quick, please. Yes.
I'll say yes, Snelling yesterday was open as well,
so I wanna follow up.
The other question I have is about ShotSpotter.
I know folks have different takes on it.
You have folks looking to remove it,
but I believe that maybe we're functioning
from not even the right set of questions
as to what one would wanna see with any level of technology
and so just wanna know if CCPSA is planning on like
having more conversations around ShotSpotter
to kind of get folks to get the information
and figure out what right could look like.
The Stop ShotSpotter Coalition has reached out
to our commission.
They were supposed to use the clause in the ordinance.
They said that they were gonna gather 1,000 signatures,
which would then force our commission
to have a hearing on it.
We haven't received those yet,
but I've been in conversations with them
and I think it's a OPSA and the OEMC thing.
That's the first thing I'll say,
but it's not an issue that we'll shy away from.
We believe in public engagement and in the new year,
we're more than happy to have a hearing on that
and to take up that issue
alongside other different community groups.
Okay, thank you very much and thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Vasquez.
I'm gonna go with Alderman Rodriguez next, and then,
because I've got Osha, Martin, Hall,
Mosley, Hoppenworth, and Gutierrez next.
We'll do that after we break for lunch.
Is there anybody else that I need to add
to this list though?
Okay, go ahead, Alderman Rodriguez.
I was inspired by the earlier line of questioning
about the data around your success
and I wanna revisit your statutory requirements
as an entity.
My understanding is that your entity is statutorily required
to present the mayor with three candidates
once the superintendent's position becomes open.
Is that accurate? Correct.
And you did that? Correct.
And the superintendent was selected by the city council
unanimously was one of your three candidates, correct?
Correct.
Also, you're statutorily required to hold
a district council election.
Is that right? Correct.
And that did happen? Correct.
And there are 66 district councilors at this point?
65, we have one vacancy in district one.
I'll ask you later about how you go about filling that
'cause I am interested.
And the last thing is the district councilors
are mandated to conduct community engagements,
is that correct?
Yes, and they're required by ordinance,
by municipal code to have one meeting every month,
minimum, one public meeting.
And and what's the compliance on that so far?
I think it's been 100%.
I mean, I think I can think of one meeting
where like something happened
where they may have had to cancel,
but every month they have a meeting.
So as far as I'm concerned,
you're meeting your statutory requirements.
I do think we always can do better
in every one of our entities.
We have to do better because your job
is one of the most important ones.
Democracy created your entity.
I was so proud of being a part of that democracy
that created your entity.
We're gonna hold you guys accountable to make sure you do
the work that that needs to be done statutorily.
We do have some issues that need to be addressed,
but as far as I'm concerned, what you've said so far,
as far as your statutory requirements, you have met them,
so thank you so much and I thank you so much.
I'll yield so we can get to lunch.
Appreciate it, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Rodriguez.
We're gonna take a break for lunch.
We're gonna ask everybody to be back here in 40 minutes.
That's going to be 1:55.
So just to let everybody know the order,
it's Osha, Martin and Hall are the first three up,
so if you three gentlemen can make sure you're at the front
of the lunch line, that would be great, thank you.
And you too.
I will.
(voice speaking faintly in background)
(no audio)
No. (laughing)
It was good.
Yeah, he's said.
Oh.
He said when he played it,
he didn't know he was playing it for the police.
Right, he said.
Yeah.
He said maybe up there was telling you something.
(voice speaking faintly in background)
Good afternoon, we're back in session.
Committee on Budget and Government Operations.
Continue with the Community Commission
for Public Safety and Accountability.
Alderman Osha, you have questions?
Thank you, Chairman.
Hey, Anthony, how are ya?
Good, how are you? Good.
From start to finish,
the process looking for the next superintendent,
what was the cost?
You how to answer, Adam?
I don't know the specific number.
Adam will probably have a better idea.
Alderman, you're talking about the cost
that is outside the staff costs?
The entire process, what did it cost to come to the,
to bring, who is now Superintendent Snelling, to this body?
I can get you a precise answer through the Chair.
I believe it was somewhere between 150 and $160,000
for the support that we got from a search firm,
but the vast majority of the cost,
if you were to count it that way, was the staff time.
It was a very significant commitment of staff time
and a gigantic commitment of commissioner time.
I'm not sure how we break that down,
but if you're just wondering about sort of outside dollars,
we could get you that number.
Whatever that cost, it was well worth it.
Job well done.
Thank you.
I can't begin to tell you how excited I am
for Superintendent Snelling's time
in leading the police department.
You already see it's paying dividends
as far as rebuilding trust in communities,
rebuilding trust within the rank and file.
It was touched on earlier.
What can your organization do to assist in identifying
and removing members of the Chicago Police Department
who might be involved with the Oath Keepers
or any other hate organization?
So the first thing is that we've been working
on this policy and in conjunction in collaboration
with the Chicago Police Department since January.
We'll vote on that policy publicly on November 13th.
There is a public forum this coming Monday
on the October 30th, specifically around this issue.
But the other thing that recently came up,
and I wanna be careful not to speak for my whole commission
because I have to bring this to a vote tomorrow,
is that we're considering,
it's on our agenda for our meeting tomorrow night
to recommend that the Office of Inspector General
actually take a look at this themselves.
I did watch the hearing yesterday
with Superintendent Snelling and appreciate Chief Talley's,
the way that she wants to move expeditiously with this,
but again, I can't speak for my whole commission.
I think we'll have support tomorrow for it,
but some of us are of the idea that this should be handled
by the Office of the Inspector General and that's the item
that we'll be taking up tomorrow on whether or not
to recommend that to Inspector General Witzburg.
Okay. If I may just add two things
to what President Driver said.
So the order that will be up for a vote
has been a great collaboration
I think between members of the commission and CPD.
CPD did the original draft of the order
and there's been a lot of back and forth since January.
The order that will go before the commission
is a significant improvement over the existing order.
The existing order talks about how police officers
can't associate with members of criminal organizations,
but it doesn't do enough to define what that means
and the proposed order will be much clearer
about what that means.
It also says that police officers
can't associate with these organizations,
but it doesn't really define what it means to associate
and the new order is gonna be much clearer about that.
So I think there will be much clearer direction
for the department going forward when a new order
is put in place.
However, the second thing which I really wanna emphasize
is that while strengthening and clarifying the order
is important, we shouldn't go into this thinking
that the only problem was an order that wasn't clear enough.
The police department has always had on its books
other provisions that it could have used
to root out police officers engaging
in this kind of behavior,
and it hasn't used the tools that it had at its disposal,
so just putting a new order in place
isn't gonna solve the problem.
The police department has to use the tools that it has.
This is a point that the Inspector General
has made repeatedly over years,
so we need to strengthen the order.
TBD needs to use the tools that it will have.
Thank you.
I wanna switch gears.
Mental wellness within the police department.
What more can we do to support and just be there?
So what what I will say is,
one, our November meeting is dedicated to this,
so the way the November meeting will work,
the first part will vote on the association's order,
and then the entire second half of that meeting
is dedicated to officer wellness.
We've already had a meeting on it,
we're having another one now.
I think those meetings not only help to raise awareness,
but it also we're encouraging officers to come
and speak publicly.
For those who don't wanna speak publicly,
I spent the entire day, I asked,
I spent an entire day with officers about two weeks ago,
two Wednesdays ago,
and the first thing that they said to me many months ago
was the regular days off being canceled,
and so for me and our commission,
that was top of the list with every person
who we interviewed, what is your plan for workforce?
How can you get these folks accountability on the front end
so they have more time with their families
and maybe they won't need as many mental health resources
because they're spending time with the people
who are able to take care of them the best.
That was the first thing.
The other thing that we've heard, there's some HR issues.
I don't wanna go into that,
but there are some HR issues with people
who I've heard pretty egregious things
like if you wanna actually seek support,
I had a few officers walk up to me and say that sometimes
they're required to turn over their health file
and when they turn that over,
sometimes it includes notes from a practitioner
and that's egregious to me.
And while I don't wanna accuse the city of anything
because I don't have proof,
that's just a few officers who said it,
we're now very aggressively looking into whether
that's a thing, whether people who are being punished
or are harmed because they're essentially seeking help.
And I can go down the list.
I have a whole list of things
that have been particular issues.
Another thing that I'll be open and transparent about
that I've heard time and time again,
our disciplinary process.
I support transparency, I support accountability,
but what I've heard is that, look,
if I'm in trouble and I'm being investigated,
don't have me in what they would refer to as purgatory
for three years, two years, right?
Punish me, fire me, or acquit me,
but like don't have this hanging over my head
for two, three years while I'm trying to do my job
and take care of a family.
I can list probably 20 more things about what I think
can be done to help folks in this particular profession.
Something that's been fascinating in conversations
between commissioners and individual police officers
and police unions is that whenever we go places
and have these conversations,
a small part of the conversation will be about things
like the provision of mental health resources
and getting that better is for sure very important,
but they'll move pretty quickly to focus
on the kinds of issues that Anthony was talking about,
canceled days off,
the physical conditions in police stations,
the lack of access to working police cars
and the stress that it puts on them,
all of these things that we don't typically think of
as having an impact on mental health,
police officers are saying Absolutely have an impact
that needs to be addressed. They're very vocal,
and I know time is up,
I just wanna add one more thing.
I heard from them and then they were all talking about
how bad the condition in 11th district were,
and so our team immediately went to 11 district
and we got a tour of that from the commander there,
and she was trying to show me the quiet room
where they take time to decompress
and it was unbelievable what I saw.
This will be in our budget review, by the way,
but I opened the door, it was a Muslim officer
who was in there praying and he was sandwiched
between two chairs and there was like a desk on top of him
and it just showed me that we we're not even providing
an adequate place for people to pray,
somebody who has to see pretty egregious things every day,
and so what I hear most from them
and our commission is hearing most,
is not just practitioners, it's treat us with dignity
and respect also on the front end,
and then we'll and many times be able to help ourselves,
so that's, it's been eyeopening.
President Driver, Director Gross,
I appreciate your collaborative efforts.
Really appreciate the way you conducted the search
and as I said, I'm really excited about the future
of the police department and leadership
of Superintendent Snelling.
But most of all, I appreciate the fact
that you're really engaging in the mental wellness aspect.
So much more needs to be done.
We're leaps and bounds ahead of where we were
a few years ago, but a lot of work needs to be done
and I appreciate all your hard work.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, Alderman Osa.
Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth, followed by Alderman Mosley.
Thank you, Chair.
Hello, thank you for being here.
I also am very grateful for your work.
I was excited as the processes went through
the collaboration with CPAC and GAPA and where you are now.
I wanna shout out to Alderman Yancy for all their work
to bring us to this point
where we're talking about both police accountability
and public safety at the same time.
I was concerned about what I was hearing about,
about what your typical day was, President, frankly,
when you were telling me, we met a couple months ago, maybe,
maybe it was a year ago,
I don't remember how many months ago, what is time?
But when you're talking about your typical day
and where you need to go with the resources that you have,
I worry about not only you, but your entire team.
But what I'm hearing today is also that we're making
great strides and what I'm hearing is that you're doing it
from the inside out.
Really thinking about mental health is so important
and I appreciate that you're sharing all the conversations
that you're having that are making an impact,
especially with our officers who are on the ground
doing the work to keep us all safe, so thank you for that.
I had a question about the expansion of your staff,
and you mentioned that you were gonna have
a community outreach coordinator
and a community engagement of public affairs
and I was hoping to get the job descriptions
for those two roles.
I wanna understand because I'm trying to get a little bit
more understanding of what this commission is doing
from the outside in, and for me, as a new alderperson
working across different departments,
working with our new superintendent,
working with our new commander,
we working with the district councilors,
working with the businesses,
small businesses and the chambers of commerce
and the block clubs, I mean, we all have to work together
and so I'm looking at it from just a ward perspective.
Like what does that coordinator do and how are they
gonna help us do the job that we need to do
to explain to folks that we need a whole of city approach.
It's not just gonna be one person's job to keep us safe,
it has to be about the whole community.
So can you just go a little bit more
about what those new positions might do?
Sure, thank you for the question.
And both of those positions are a good example
of what President Driver was talking about earlier
about the ways in which we're stretched thin.
And obviously we'll work with whatever resources
we have to do the best possible job.
There are currently five community outreach coordinator
positions that we have filled on staff.
Those community outreach coordinators
provide support to currently 65,
soon to be 66 district council members
and 22 distinct government bodies.
Each of those bodies is required to meet once a month
as President Driver was talking about earlier today.
So the district councils alone have 264 meetings a year,
that's if all they do is the bare minimum
that they're required to do by law.
Many of them are also having multiple special meetings
over the course of the year.
Community outreach coordinators are providing support
to those district councils.
The outreach coordinators are assigned to between three
and five district councils to provide all kinds of support
that district council members request.
That can be assistance,
locating sites to hold meetings,
helping to put an agenda together,
doing outreach within the community
to encourage participation in meetings,
taking minutes at meetings, getting agendas posted,
sort of all of the work that district council members.
Yeah, I do wanna mention that my ward
has the 20th and 24th Police Districts
and those councilors have been fantastic
in terms of publicizing their meetings
and also running their meetings
and in public spaces and really very organized,
so I'm grateful for that.
I just feel like sometimes we're, you know,
at the starting line and we wanna work together,
but we're not sure who's supposed to go first.
I don't know if that makes sense,
but I do wanna put it out there that we wanna work together.
It's important to not only provide our neighbors
with things that are happening that relate to public safety
in reaction to some violent crime,
but also to create a culture that includes all of the things
that we're talking about,
so as we're talking about your expanding your staff,
I just wanna have a better understanding of who
really is setting the tone and who,
and especially as it relates to consent decree,
because I don't, I'm not in their shoes,
but whatever they're following, their guidebook, whatever,
ultimately we are only 5% in compliance
with the consent decree and I don't know how
that fits in with your goals,
but it is something that is already written out
and so how are we informing the public
of what we truly need to do?
There are a lot of, so first of all,
there are some limitations on what the commission can do
with regard to the consent decree.
The commission has authority under the ordinance
to set police department policy,
but policies that are covered by the consent decree
are excluded 'cause there's already a process
under the consent decree for managing those policies.
However, we're working right now
with the independent monitor to identify specific ways
that the commission staff and, if they're interested,
district councils can work in support
of some of the independent monitors efforts,
or at least to ensure that there's meaningful collaboration
and people are steering in the same direction.
There are other things that the commission is able to do
using authority that it has, for example,
President Driver spoke earlier about the commission's goal,
make goal-setting authority, and a number of the goals
that the commission established last year
for the police department this year aligned very neatly
with requirements under the consent decree
and so if the department is making progress on those goals,
and if the commission is working with and pushing
the commission to make progress on those goals,
that will all help to advance consent decree compliance.
That's great.
I think that we're all on the same page that we want
as Alder Villegas mentioned earlier,
most of the issues that are brought up,
even if they're quality of life issues,
they're about public safety
and so how are we talking about it together?
And I appreciate the mandate for meetings.
I would like to be, just put it out there that I would like
to be involved in those meetings
and I would like us to work together
and I hope that is across the board
across the city of Chicago because if we are safe,
then everyone should be safe, no matter where we live.
And you're saying everybody is independent,
but we all have the same goal.
I agree.
Thank you, Alderman.
Alderman Mosley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
President Driver, Director,
thank you all for appearing today.
I wanna first commend you just on the amazing job
that this organization has done
in bringing not just district councils,
but also a police superintendent.
You did such a phenomenal job that you got the city council
to unanimously agree to that
and I think that really exudes the opportunity
around bond building between police and community.
Were there lessons learned that you wanna share
that you think can be helpful in terms of bridging that gap
between community and police?
In terms of-
Bridging the gap between community and police.
I mean, it used to be a talking point to say
that what we want is not very different.
I've learned that that is 100% the case.
The things that we heard on the South Side and the West Side
and the North Side at those community meetings
and the things that we heard in the FOP Lodge
were the exact same thing.
I'll give you a good example.
Many community members were like,
"We are really tired of officers who," and this is,
I'm not speaking for me, I'm just telling you what we heard,
so don't want it attributed it to me,
but, "We're tired of officers who just like park
and turn their lights on and just sit there."
And we heard that at every community meeting.
And I swear I like my mouth dropped
when I went into the FOP Lodge
and just 100 some officers and the first thing they say is,
"We're tired of sitting in cars, turning our lights on
and just sitting there."
And and for me, it was just a defining moment of like,
you could've been in the South or West Side
and the residents are saying the same thing
that you're saying and there's actually
a lot of agreement here.
I found that more than anything,
just the issue of mental health,
that people from organizations I'm a part of
that I've fought for my entire life
are saying the exact same things
that those folks are saying, so for me, it's like,
I would just say that I would share
that we can't run from issues.
We can't run from people who we don't agree with.
You have to stand in the fire, you gotta take the heat,
but at the end of the day, if you listen closely enough,
like we're actually all way, way more aligned
than we previously thought.
In the media it's that the blue abolish.
When you actually talk to folks on the ground
and you get into those communities
and you do real community engagement, that's not the case.
People are actually really more aligned.
So I would just say lessons learned would simply be
to get out and talk to Chicagoans more
and actually listen to people.
And how does...
Alderman, could you raise your mic up.
They're having trouble picking you up on audio.
How does that work continue?
We have a police superintendent,
but how does this great work that we started continue?
I'm share one of the things that-
And does your budget support that?
I'll share one of the things that I told
the three finalists on what my goal was
in the superintendent search.
We built up a lot of community support.
We met with hundreds of organizations.
I asked every single one of those three people
who were finalists, if you are selected,
will you commit to going back and meeting with those folks?
They all say yes.
The goal there is that we tried to build this thing
from the bottom up.
We build a lot of community support across Chicago,
then we're able to transfer that to whoever
the new leader is.
So that person is coming in with the wind in his back
and that person has the support
of a lot of different groups,
but on the flip end of that is now you're also
more accountable to those people.
Those same people who got your back right now
will be the same people who hold you accountable
when they disagree with you.
The overall goal is to bring more people into the process,
put residents in the driver's seat here,
put them out front so that they're the people
who are now having their voice heard
and I think that translates to a better city for all of us.
And again, as you asked the second question
was does our budget support that?
I'm very grateful for the budget that we have.
We do need a lot more support.
And again, I'm saying this that we have
a better understanding now of the amount of work
that it takes.
300 meetings a year is all have to be OMA compliant.
It's a beast of a thing to try to manage and our staff
is doing the best that they can,
but we really do need more support
or we're not gonna be able to maintain this
and we won't be able to keep staff.
That's the truth of it.
Folks are gonna start leaving
because they're getting burnt out already.
Switching gears, and forgive me if I missed this
when I was getting my flu shot.
District councils, how can alders support them
and can alders get a schedule
of the meetings that are occurring?
Yeah, so there's a schedule on our website.
I'll figure out the best way to actually maybe send that out
monthly so that you'll know where those meetings
are taking place.
I think if you ask 22 district councils
what they would support they would need
from the alderman's office,
they would probably give you 22 different answers,
so I don't mean to punt on the question,
but I am saying that it's really different.
There's some district council members who said
we don't want the police at our meetings.
There's some district councils that said
we wanna mandate that the police come to our meetings.
You go into each of these districts
and they're very different,
so you'll get very different answers from them.
Got it. Again, job well done.
Thank you both for coming today.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen.
We apologize for keeping you this long, but as you can see,
there's a lot of interest in the topic,
especially coming off of the superintendent search
and you guys did an excellent job
in presenting quality candidates.
I think this process, while, for lack of a better term,
folks went kicking and screaming, we did come
and I think that this has been a very good exercise,
exercise in democracy and exercise and getting people
on board together so we appreciate the work
that you all have done.
Please do not forget,
if you guys need some adjustments in the program,
please let us know.
We'll be going through our process of amendments
and we're open to that,
plus support for district councils as you all see,
just let us know what you feel that you need
and we'll work through that, okay?
Thank you.
All right, you all are excused.
Our next group will be the Commission on Human Relations.
(no audio)
Good afternoon.
Back on for Committee on Governor Budget Operations
Budget Hearing.
Next before us we have the Chicago Commission
on Human Relations, chaired by Nancy Andrate.
Chair Andrate will give her,
introduce the staff in the box, give an opening statement,
but first we'll have a brief overview by COFA.
Janice.
Thank you, Chairman.
My name is Janice Oda-Gray, acting director of COFA.
Start out fiscal year '24, the budget is 3.33 million.
That's a total departmental budget,
which is $161,420 more than the '23 budget.
For budgeted FTEs, it's 20.
It was 20 for the current year
and it was 20 for the prior year, no change.
For funded with corporate funds, it's 41.41%.
Corporate funds, 41.41%.
The other 58.59% is in block grants.
For personnel, 2.5 million.
Non-personnel, 0.81 million.
Personnel expenses are on the rise,
while contractual services are budgeted
to decrease by $31,994.
Looking at the funding type.
As you look at the local funding, the corporate fund,
if you go all the way to the one, two, three,
to the third, to the fourth column,
the corporate fund has a total of 1.3 million.
Going down to the block grants,
that has a total of 1.951 million,
which gives us our total of 3,000,330.
Looking at the permanent FTE, the same way.
For local, which is 100 corporate fund, we have 12 FTEs.
For block grant, we have eight.
Moving to appropriation category,
the top appropriation category is indirect cost.
I'm sorry, it's personnel services and then indirect cost,
and then contractual services.
Below is a graphic depiction of the chart above it.
That's my report.
Thank you, Director Gray.
We'll open, I'm sorry, if you could introduce the staff
and then give your opening statement
followed by opening questions from Alderman Silverstein.
Absolutely.
Good afternoon, my name is Nancy Andrade.
I'm the Chair and Commissioner
of the Commission on Human Relations.
Thank you so much.
To my right, I have first Deputy Commissioner Ken Gunn,
and in the box we have some members of our staff.
We have in the blue blazer we have Joanne Newsom,
Deputy Commissioner followed, seated to her immediate right,
we have Vardisol Gallegos,
who is our Management Director for Employment Law.
And to her right, we have Kristen Lee,
who is the management director for Housing Law.
And to her right, we have Danielle Serrano,
who is our Director for Intergroup Relations.
And to his right we have Norman White,
who is our Hate Crime Victim Advocate.
And seated to Norman's right,
we are proud to introduce our intern
from Loyola University, we have Deena Al-Ali,
who is interning with us this semester.
And then to her right we have Caleb Bates,
who is our Public Relations Representative.
Thank you, may proceed with your opening statement,
abbreviated portion.
Thank you.
Honorable Chairman Ervin and honorable members
of the city council and the City Council Committee
on Budget and Governance Operations.
On behalf of the Board of Commissioners and staff,
I hereby submit the following statement in support
of the mayor's 2024 budget recommendation
for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations,
known as the CCHR.
As the Civil Rights Enforcement Agency for the city,
we investigate and adjudicate complaints of discrimination
in the areas of housing, employment,
public accommodations and credit.
We mediate conflicts between individuals and groups,
assist victims of hate crimes.
We provide educational programs to reduce discrimination
and fight the darkness of hate.
Our work sheds a light of hope to those who reach out to us
in their quest for justice, closure, healing,
and when being confronted with bigotry and hate.
We promote safety for Chicagoans by enforcing
the housing discrimination laws,
expanding the sexual harassment ordinance.
A safe dwelling and a safe place of employment
are the root of overall safety.
Our work emphasizes education to let the public know
that they have rights, for knowledge is power.
2023 has been a busy year for the CCHR
in response to an increase in hate crimes,
both nationally and locally.
One of our goals this year has been to work
across the city's diverse communities
to bring people together to take a stand against hate.
Our first initiative in this regard
was the CCHR Unity Brunch held in January.
The event brought together leadership from across the city
to promote equity and combat hate,
discrimination and prejudice.
We followed this up with our Unity Summit in August,
which was developed to foster dialogue and collaboration
among different segments of Chicago's diverse population
to address prejudice, discrimination, and hate.
While it has been very helpful to hear
from the city's leadership,
the CCHR is also looking forward to hearing
directly from residents about these important issues.
To do so, we will be launching a racial equity
listening campaign for targeted communities
on the South and West Sides to learn how the commission
can better serve residents in these areas.
In addition to these programs,
the CCHR continues to inform and educate the public
about discrimination in employment, housing,
and public accommodations.
Through our report discrimination campaign,
the CCHR placed ads on CTA buses, trains,
and entrance stations beginning in November of '22
through January of 2023.
The CTA ad campaign was a huge success
as our new complaint filings have increased by 86%
as of September 30th, compared to the same period in 2022.
While fighting discrimination through the investigation
and adjudication of complaints is the primary method
by which the CCHR seeks to discourage discrimination,
we also worked with the mayor and the city council
to strengthen and develop new laws
to prevent discrimination.
In 2023, we worked to pass the Bodily Autonomy Ordinance
introduced by Alderpersons Rosana Rodriguez Sanchez,
Carlos Ramirez Rosa and Matt Martin.
The ordinance protects the reproductive rights of people
coming to Chicago to receive these services,
as well as gender affirming care.
We are also working with Alderman Andre Vasquez
and our city colleagues in the Mayor's Office,
Human Resources and Law Department to implement
the self-identification of gender identity ordinance
initially introduced by Alderman Vasquez
to ensure that documents used
in the ordinary course of business
respect and accurately reflect the gender identity
of Chicago residents seeking city services
and our employees.
Finally, with the support of the mayor,
we are excited to have filled several much-needed positions,
including a public relations representative,
which we have not had on staff for more than 20 years.
We were also delighted and honored to have an influx
of talented youth join us this year.
In the spring, we served as a host
for an international fellow from Peru
who learned about our discrimination complaint filing
process for the public and our work to protect
the rights of the LGBTQ+ residents.
In addition, we are grateful to have hosted a talented group
of college interns this year,
all from the Chicagoland area representing Loyola University
and the University of Toronto.
Looking ahead to 2024,
we are excited to announce that the CCHR
and the Chicago Police Department were recently awarded
the Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Grant,
which is a $400,000 grant by the Department of Justice
to implement a new hate crime reporting pilot program.
The purpose of the program is to encourage the public
to report hate crimes.
As part of this initiative,
the CCHR is partnering with eight
community-based organizations across the city
to serve diverse populations
who will serve as safe sites where the public can go
to receive support and assistance in reporting hate crimes
to the police.
This will also produce some valuable data.
The CCHR remains committed to reducing discrimination
and hate in Chicago to be a beacon of light
and make equity a guiding principle
in our planning for 2024 and beyond.
Thank you for your continued support,
respectfully, Nancy Andrate.
Thank you, Chair Andrate.
We will start with Alderman Silverstein,
followed by Alderman La Spata.
Are there any other speakers for Community Human Relations?
Okay, very well, Vice Chair, if you wanna come up.
Thank you, Chairman, good afternoon.
So you and I have been talking a lot recently
about hate crimes.
Very important to me right now
and I have a couple of questions regarding that.
Just wondering, has your office seen an increase
in hate crimes in light of the current tensions
in the world?
We have, based our reporting,
our reporting of hate crimes is based on what
the Chicago Police Department provides us.
To date, we have a total of 81, 81 hate crimes,
which represents a 5% increase from last year at this time.
We are working closely with the Chicago Police Department
on making sure that any reports that might be backlogged
are being brought to us in a timely manner.
So you don't have the details about the last few weeks.
Meaning?
If there's been an increase
just in the last few weeks about-
There have been some reports that have been,
and if I might share, you yourself have reported
a hate crime and of which we are well aware through CPD
and we were able to quickly respond to you
just as we would respond to anyone else,
so there have been some increased reports.
We have been aware, we are aware of what's happened.
Things that have happened in the suburbs are awful
and they do have a trickle down effect
and I'm referring to the obvious awful murder
of the six year old boy in Plainfield.
While that happened outside of Chicago,
nonetheless, those awful effects,
awful incidents trickle down into the city.
We are not immune and I think anything that happens
in the greater Chicagoland impacts all of us,
regardless of where we are.
But I don't know if I'm fully answering your question
or if there's something else you would like me to say.
Well, you know that in our new legislation
that's been introduced, Chi vs. Hate,
we've also added hate incidents, so I was just wondering,
with everything that's going on in addition
to the hate crimes, have you had any
more recent calls about hate incidents that are happening?
No, and we are working, as you know, as you just stated,
we are working very collaboratively with you,
your office, as well as the mayor's office
and all of the different departments
that will be impacted by any changes to the ordinance
and we're working together to come up with a definition
that is gonna be meaningful to you,
meaningful to the public, and also most importantly,
works internally with the various departments.
And of the calls that you get from hate,
would you say it's more vandalism? Verbal threats?
I know we've been having a lot of demonstrations.
What would you say?
It really depends sometimes with the community.
For instance, hate crimes against a Jewish community
that we've received from CPD are typically graffiti.
When you see a hate crime against someone
in the trans community, it's usually much more serious,
death often, or at least a very bad battery,
So it really depends,
and a lot of criminal damage to property
just across the board.
And, sorry, I just have a few more questions.
So I mean, I myself am hearing of a lot of incidents,
so I'm a little surprised that you haven't heard
of any more incidents, but I mean,
what as a department can you do to help
decrease or lower the temperature of interactions
between lower, between our communities?
Well, it- I mean, nobody wants hate.
There's way too much hate in this world
and we need to do whatever we can do, all of us,
to reduce the number of hate crimes and hate incidents,
so I'm just wondering, could you just go through the process
of what you do when you are contacted and notified
of a hate crime or a hate incident?
Absolutely, but can I back up once.
You stated that you have been made aware
of various incidents.
You can always call us too.
Any alderperson can always call us and inform us.
I mean, we work collaboratively
with all the aldermanic offices as well as CPD.
So by all means, if there's something that you think
that we should be aware of, please call us and let us know.
And sometimes that works just as fast as calling CPD.
But to answer your question,
when we receive a hate crime report,
we get it from the Chicago Police Department,
we get it from the Civil Rights Unit.
So essentially, if there is someone who experiences
a hate crime, they will call 911 and report it
and it is up to CPD then flags the report
as a hate crime and they send it to the Civil Rights Unit.
Civil Rights Unit then sends it to us
because we work collaboratively with the Civil Rights Unit.
We reach out to the different victims
and we also send a letter to all the aldermanic offices
knowing that there was a hate crime reported in their ward.
We reach out to our victim through Norman,
who our hate crime victim advocate,
and we inquire as to whether they need
any additional resources, do they, they feel safe,
and we will go the extra mile to make sure that that person
receives any additional resources that they may feel
that they're needing.
At the same time, Norman is also working in conjunction
with civil rights to make sure if there's any updates,
we receive them.
Granted, we're from a civilian point of view,
we're not law enforcement,
so there's only so much that we can do.
And once, if there is a court date established,
because civil rights will also work with the detectives,
the report will then go over to detectives,
the detectives will then determine if this needs to go ahead
and go to the State's Attorney's Office.
And at that point, if there's actual court call,
both ourselves, CCHR and sometimes CPD Civil Rights
also accompanies the victim to the court call,
be it in person or be it via Zoom,
and that's generally the process what happens.
Okay, I'm just gonna go back to, you know,
I had said that I've been hearing of some incidents
and that's why I'm just gonna plug my ordinance again.
It's important that we have hate incidents on the books
and so that there will be one place to report that
so that it's not just coming to me and to other alderman
and we can better track that as well.
And what I'm also hearing from you is how
quickly does it take for the police to notify you?
Is there much of a lag time or is it more real time?
It's pretty quickly.
We have a good relationship with CPD.
There was a small backlog with the Civil Rights Unit,
there was some personnel changes.
We speak regularly with civil rights.
We had an in-depth conversation with them this past week,
this week, so we don't hesitate to reach out to them
if we have any questions or if we hear of something
on the news, say, "Hey, I saw this on the news,
has this been reported?"
And we'll reach out to them and they'll give us a copy
of the report.
So we do work in tandem in that sense,
in terms of getting the report and the information.
And again, I really wanna stress that any aldermanic office
should definitely feel free to call us as well
and let us know because sometimes
the more we are aware of things that happen,
some things don't get picked up in the media,
some things do.
The more that you see something,
say something and let us know,
we can work and address this.
I totally agree with you.
The numbers that we have,
the statistics that we have of hate crimes are,
I think we all agree are grossly under-reported
and it's time that people start reporting them
and that we can track them
and hopefully stop a crime from happening
by tracking incidents.
So yes, I'm-
Correct and this is why we're excited
about our pilot program because the pilot program
is working not just with the eight
community-based organizations that we've identified.
We're also working, we're going to be working
in a broad sense with the Attorney General's Office
and with the Illinois Commission on Hate and Discrimination
because they too have received grants similar to us.
The Attorney General's Office received the exact same
Matthew Shepherd Steven Byrd grant as we did.
We're gonna be working together with them
to see how we can collaborate
and also with the Hate Crimes Commission at the state level,
they received a similar grant for a toll free number,
a hotline, so we are basically uniting our forces together
to really amp our visibility and the public's education
and awareness about hate crimes,
and that will essentially also track hate incidents
to a certain degree, but the fact that the three big,
I guess the Attorney General's Office, CPD,
CCHR, and the Illinois Commission on Hate and Discrimination
are working together on this,
I think that is going to make a big difference
in the lives of all Illinoisans, not just Chicagoans,
but everyone in Illinois.
I agree and I look forward to continuing to work with you
on all of these things.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Alderman Silverstein.
Thank you.
Just to pick up on one thing that you said,
I'm wondering, Commissioner, and hello,
nice to see you. Nice to see you.
The ordinance that Alderman Silverstein introduced,
that many of us supported,
how's that gonna affect your budget as it's presented today
when that passes?
It will, we are anticipating,
definitely more increased reporting, which would,
and it all really depends on the final definition
that is agreed upon.
So I don't want to speak ahead of myself, but in general,
it is safe to say that we will have more intake of calls,
volume of calls, and as you can see,
we only have one hate crimes victim advocate.
And he's awesome.
He is, he is awesome.
I mean, he is awesome and Norman does a lot.
Norman is fabulous.
However, if we get double or triple the amount of calls
and intake that we're getting now,
then we are going to need additional staff
and that can be easily a significant increase in our budget.
Certainly, and that's the reason I asked the question
is just that, and you've just answered it, right,
so there's not currently an additional position
in anticipation of this workload coming in.
Correct, but whereas with our pilot program,
our pilot program takes into consideration the actual staff
that we have as well as collaborating
with the other organizations.
Oh, that's great.
I'm just trying to get you more help.
Alderman Silverstein.
Yeah.
Just a point of information,
I'd like to get her more help also,
but just so that you know that this is,
the police are also gonna be involved as far as outreach
and things like that, so it's gonna be working together
with CCHR and the police with the new legislation.
Just wanted to clarify that.
Thank you.
Alderman La Spada, did you have anything?
Yes, yeah, thank you so much, Commissioner,
really glad to have you.
I wondered initially through the Chair,
could you provide us the number of instances or cases
that your mediation team has taken on in the past year?
So, happy to answer the question.
It can be through the Chair, you don't, yeah.
I can answer right now real quickly.
So with regards to mediation,
we actually have two types of mediations.
We have our adjudication mediation
and we also have our community-based mediation.
That's the one.
Is that what you're interested in?
The community-based mediation?
We have to date, we have 35 community-based mediations
which have taken place, which is a lot.
That's a year-to-date 35?
You have to realize that the actual mediations,
there's a process to get to mediations.
Both parties need to be open and agreeable
to coming together towards the mediation.
We get a lot of requests for mediations,
but at the end of the day,
sometimes we're not able to actually conduct a mediation
because one of the parties may not wish to participate
in the process.
So in terms of calls, the calls are much, much larger.
It's like more than 100
that we've responded to. Wow.
And that is a lot.
Our staff in that division is literally swamped,
which is a good thing and a bad thing.
It's nice because we've gotten the word out clearly
that we are here as a resource and people
are taking advantage of that and I think that's wonderful.
That's what we're supposed to be doing.
But we have two people right now.
We'd love to have a third person
as to conduct the mediations,
but that's not in our budget,
but if there's something you can do about that,
we'd appreciate you.
Would that be within
the Human Relations Investigator position?
No, it would be the Human Relations Specialist,
Specialist II.
We do not have that vacancy.
We do not have that vacancy at this time.
Where would that be in your budget?
I feel like I'm not seeing it.
We don't have, oh, it's-
Under Intergroup Relations.
It's under Intergroup Relations.
That's under the CDBG budget,
under our Intergroup Relations and Outreach Division,
there are currently two Human Relations Specialists
right now in that unit.
So that's funded under CDBG then?
Right, it's CDBG. Okay.
Yeah. Okay, because that,
I mean, that's the other thing
that I don't quite understand 'cause we talk a lot about
hate crimes in Chicago on the floor of council,
but at least your corporate fund budget has not increased
appreciably past the rate of inflation
over the last four years
and it's something that I don't quite understand
and it's something, perhaps I'll follow up with you offline
because I feel like our,
how we talk about this issue does not often seem reflected
in how we budget around this issue
and I've always believed that a budget is a moral document
that where you invest is a reflection of your priorities
and I would like to see this reflected as a priority
in ways that are more than rhetorical,
is a thing that I would say.
Try to pick my words very carefully there.
I also wanted to ask, you talked about,
I think you said 85 hate crime instances,
incidents that had been reported year to date.
81. 81.
81, and that's based on what CPD has given us.
Is there any reason to,
how do you interpret that?
Is there a reason for us to consider that an under-count?
I asked this question because NYPD
has a hate crimes dashboard,
which is quite informative and worth checking out
where they report 375 incidents in their city
with 213 arrests.
Naturally, New York is also a much larger city than ours,
but is there reason to believe that cases
are going under-reported
and how do we solve for that?
Well, I can't speak as to the definition that
the city of New York uses to define a hate crime.
That's strictly within the realm of law enforcement
and how they categorize it.
That is a general consensus that folks
who are looking at hate crimes,
the general consensus is, yes, the numbers fluctuate,
and why is that?
It's based on the fact that there's a different definition
that folks use to determine what is a hate crime.
Again, we are basically using the definition
that is Chicago Police Department uses.
Are there under-reports? Absolutely.
You know, absolutely, they're just not being reported
and it's for a number of reasons.
Some people just don't feel comfortable going to the police.
They don't feel comfortable calling 911.
They feel that if they call, what's the point?
No one's gonna listen to me.
And some people, for cultural reasons, linguistic reasons.
So this is why we're doing the pilot program
and we heard these complaints and we've spoken to CPD
about this in the past so this pilot program
is something that we've been working on
for the past year and a half.
It's something that has gone through a lot of vetting
with the different organizations that are participating
in this and the goal is anyone who goes to one of these
participating CBOs, they see this as a safe place
and you can report anything that happened to you,
be it a hate crime or hate incident, and the CBO will then,
they don't take the actual reporting.
They basically are the welcome,
they are the welcoming space.
Someone walks in and says,
"I think I experienced a hate crime."
That organization will then call the affinity officer
for CPDs district.
The affinity officer will then come and take the report.
During that time as they're waiting for the police,
the goal is to do a brief intake with that victim
as to any services that either the city can provide
to him or her or they,
or that the actual organization can provide, you know,
basic questions like do you have housing?
Do you need a bag of groceries?
Do you need help paying your utility?
As they're waiting for the police to come.
Once the police comes and the report is taken,
and then it goes through the whole police process.
So that's the goal of the pilot program.
It's to create a lot of trust and safe zones.
It's not meant to replace 911.
It's not meant to replace going to CPD.
It's just meant to enhance that
and working collaboratively with CPD where,
and with these organizations,
we hope to really get the message out.
I appreciate, may I ask one quick question
and one quick comment? Of course.
If we can make a quick, yes.
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
I wanted to ask,
and I know that you're not Chief Snelling,
but do we have any sense of how many of those 81 incidents
that you named resulted in arrests in the city of Chicago?
Oh, we'd have to-
We'd have to, we would give you that information
through the Chair.
We don't know that off. They're under investigation.
I'd appreciate that.
Yeah, if they're under investigation,
there's, I mean, we'll provide you with what we can,
what we can gather.
I appreciate that.
I really hope, and as a comment,
that we figure out how to engage your work,
particularly with our new arrival and migrant populations.
I know that we have a lot of inflammatory rhetoric
in the city right now.
It's likely, as we've already seen
with one of our colleagues,
that that will lead to criminal behavior
and I hope that we're finding ways to both address that hate
and the actions that will precipitate out of it, thank you.
Thank you Alderman La Spada.
Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Thank you, thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Good to see you.
In terms of like maybe some of the colleagues
have already touched on some of the questions,
but for the new initiatives that the commission
has for next year, there's that implementation
of this new hate crime reporting pilot program
that I think is being mentioned and the partnership
with the different diverse populations
to help encourage the reporting of hate crimes
as well as providing assistance and how to report
to public safety institutions.
What urgent or what, 'cause I've seen there's an increase
in complaints about 89% since last year.
Do you have, in terms of where have you seen the most recent
incidents or more frequent hate crimes
that you are receiving?
At least if there's anything that you can share
in terms of where your concerns are right now.
Are you, for clarification purposes,
are you asking for locations of where hate crimes happened?
In terms of like hate crimes, I mean,
we've seen them grow, I mean, I can go farther.
The 89% increase, and again, someone that represent.
Those are the discrimination cases.
Okay, so you receive 89% of discrimination cases,
exactly, so can you share in terms within that, you know,
the hate crimes, what kind of hate crimes
are more generally, where are your most concerns
relating to hate crimes in particular?
So the hate crimes,
for point of clarification for the council,
the hate crimes do not fall under discrimination cases.
Hate crimes are a separate category.
So when we're talking about discrimination cases
that we are receiving complaints of,
that has to do with discrimination
when you're looking for housing
or you're looking for employment
or you're looking for public accommodations.
Hate crimes does not fall underneath that category.
But with regards to adjudication is the bulk of our work
with regards to receiving complaints from the public.
And quite honestly, we've had a dramatic
skyrocketing numbers of complaints,
so this year alone with regards to employment,
our employment filings have gone up 23%.
Our housing employment has filings, have housing, I'm sorry,
housing discrimination have gone up 63% since last year.
Public accommodations have gone up 84%.
And a question that we are getting asked is,
what's the increase
with all these discrimination complaints?
We can see it in two ways.
One is we're getting the message out.
People are aware that we're here as a resource
and people are not shy about enforcing their rights
and to file a complaint and they've experienced a wrong
and they know that we are here to provide
some sort of justice, so that's one,
and the other is we just don't know.
Sometimes with regards to employment, we thought there'd be,
the numbers have gone up, it's only 23%,
we thought it'd be higher in the post-pandemic phase,
but with regards to housing,
housing has gone up dramatically.
We don't know what the reason is for that, but it has.
Public accommodations have skyrocketed to 84%
and I attribute this to the disability community
just being very vocal and aware of their rights
and I may also want to applaud Commissioner Arfa
for her work on really getting the message out
that Chicago should be a very accessible city
and I think that folks filing a complaint
and letting us know where accessibility
needs to be addressed is one way of achieving that.
We also had our CTA ad campaign and that
we definitely attribute a rise in the increase
in our filings due to that.
We have also done increased outreach.
We have new staff and so we've done more outreach.
We've worked with the different councilor offices.
We've done work with very stable grassroots organizations,
Chicago Urban League, the Metropolitan Family Services.
We've also done work with (speaking in Spanish),
and we've also modified our complaint filing process
to make it easier to file online.
So thank you, and definitely very interested
on collaborating on the fair housing enforcement.
I think it's concerning, of course,
the number of complaints and that it keeps growing.
The other thing, and again,
I'm glad that we're separating the hate crimes
from the discrimination cases.
What kind of, because I know there's the labor standards,
for instance, division, what kind of support, you know,
and I know that there's some staffing requirements,
but for this pilot program, in terms of hate crimes,
you know, I know that it's community organizations,
how can we lend support?
You know, I think that will,
I'm just concerned, you know,
in terms of how even people are accessing
the different ways that they have to report a hate crime
or even the different discrimination complaints
that you are describing, so what can we do to help out?
I mean, I know that you have different initiatives.
I'm not sure I can speak for myself,
but I'll definitely would like to see
more of these on the ground
and I see that you have that as a pilot program.
So with regards to how you can help us,
we would love to expand our staff even more if we can.
So right now, our total number of staff
that we are allocated is 20.
Of the 20, we have 17 positions filled.
The other three are in the process of being filled
so we hope to have them filled
by the end of this calendar year
and that would be bringing on two additional investigators
for our adjudication division,
which would help with the discrimination filings.
And we are also looking for a project coordinator
work to really coordinate workshops
because we get so many requests
from the community for people to go,
for us to go out and educate folks
on all of the different ordinances that impact our work,
such as sexual harassment laws.
We'd love to go out and do trainings.
We'd love to do trainings with regard
to the bodily autonomy ordinance to let people know
that they have rights with regards
to their reproductive care and gender affirming care.
We'd also like to go out and do more.
We do hate crime awareness training.
We'd like to do more.
I mean, I would love to be able to clone Norman if I can,
but I can't, but if you can as assist us in letting us have
an additional person to also do hate crimes work,
that would be fabulous.
Yeah, absolutely, and finally,
my last question is in terms of what kind of coordination
exists in terms of state, federal, and again,
I'm really concerned about the increase of extremist agendas
in general in the city.
I think that should concern us all.
Many of these agendas, unfortunately,
travel internationally,
but the rise of hate crimes, anti-Semitism, phobia.
In the interest of time-
I'm gonna finish my question, and again,
this is our opportunity to make sure that we talk.
Absolutely, just there was a question that you just asked
that she could answer right now
as far as the coordination between agencies.
So with regards to coordination of agencies,
like I said, we are gonna be working with
the Attorney General's Office.
We're working with the State Commission on hate and-
Are we going to be working or are we working?
That is my question.
We've made contact, we've met, we're scheduling a meeting.
We're in the process of scheduling a meeting.
So all three of us got the exact same grant at the exact,
pretty much at the, with the exception of the state.
The state got theirs in March.
Ourselves, and the Attorney General,
I believe we both got it in October,
so we are literally sketching out
what our program is going to be.
So what is the program?
I mean, can I get more information?
I'm a little baffled by, you know, the, again,
we are hearing from colleagues talking about the raise of,
you know, even attacks to elected officials and all that.
What is the level of, I think, in my opinion,
the federal government is absent, right?
That is my opinion.
And without the federal coordination, I mean,
talk about what kind of level of coordination we have,
even with law enforcement.
You know, I mean, to me it is some of the most pressing,
pressing issues right now to be able to make sure
that this follow up and that the either discrimination cases
or hate crimes are actually followed through.
And I, again, I know I see more and more reporting,
but, you know, as of a few days ago,
we can have now individuals with guns showing to protest
and still expected to walk out like nothing happened.
I'm seriously concerned about that.
I'm seriously concerned about that and how institutions
are failing to make sure that we call extremism
when it happens.
That's what the question, again, from the city is urgent.
And I'm glad to hear that there's some steps forward,
but it seems like a lot of these programs
are not well established.
I think this is work in progress.
Am I wrong?
We have the pilot program.
This is why we have the pilot program,
and this is why we're also having the conversations
about the proposed ordinance.
We're all in agreement, Alderman,
we're all in agreement that this is not the world
that we want to live in.
There's way too much hate and way too much,
way too much fear that is being generated.
Doesn't matter what your background is.
A lot of us are just living in fear and we don't want that.
We don't want that for anyone.
We don't want that for our children.
We want our children to grow up in a safe place.
I believe that we are really taking significant steps
to address that.
We understand the urgency of the matter, we do.
I feel it.
I have cried.
I have cried seeing some of these news reports, I have.
It's awful and I feel very confident
that we are going to implement things soon,
which will begin to make a difference.
I really do believe that and the great thing is that we have
a new superintendent of police who is completely
and absolutely 100% on board.
We have a city council, which is clearly 100% on board
with this as well, and then we have us, we have the CCHR.
We are anxious and willing to be given this power
by way of having more staff and having access to funds
to really do this outreach and do the work
for the community to make this a better city, so I hear you.
I'm with you. Thank you.
And I know that you're not, you know,
I think that we've have to-
Alderman, we really gotta move on here.
I'm not going to move on, with all due respect.
Alderman, I'm chairing the meeting here.
Look, this department is responsible-
Alderman. For the human rights
compliance and by Chair, I'm gonna push back on this.
I'm gonna push back too because-
We're talking about the solutions here, right?
That have creating even more inflammatory issues
on the ground.
I understand that- No, no, no.
I'm impatient. I'm impatient.
Let me say, I'm chairing the meeting.
Give me a minute here.
In the interest of time, and I'm not trying to silence you
on the things that you're asking.
You're asking things about the federal government
that has nothing to do with- It has a lot to do with it.
No. And that is the attitude
that is wrong in this floor.
Let me finish, please.
Please, I do not wanna raise my voice here,
but you're asking questions and she's clearly,
this department is standing at the ready.
We can call a public hearing to have a bigger discussion
about that and I welcome that,
but this question right here that you're asking now
doesn't have anything to do with the budget
unless you're asking for more positions for her.
Well, yes, because this department,
and if you're not aware of,
is responsible for the compliance on human rights
in the city of Chicago.
And if we are simplifying this the way that we are
and trying to move along like nothing happened,
I have a problem with that.
I have a big problem with that.
And the attitude of council members trying to brush things
that are very important.
And I do have a problem when the federal government
is not responding to the human rights of people
in the city of Chicago.
I have a big problem with that.
Thank you, Commissioner, we're gonna move on.
Alderman Harris, followed by Alderman Lawson.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I really wanna thank you, Commissioner,
for everything that you all do.
and this department is definitely needed at this time,
a point in time, we've gotten to a point in our history
where meanness has become the day
that people are meaner than ever, than to each other,
so I just think that with the hates crimes portions of this,
that we can work on it.
I welcome the fact that we probably do need to have
more broader conversation about what's happening as a city
and how we get there as a city,
so maybe later on you could set up something
with the mayor's office to come back
and have a broader conversation about what's happening
with the actual task force that you all are putting together
and how aldermen can be involved and informed-
Absolutely. About what's going on.
So, at a later date, I hope that you can come back to us
sooner than later. Absolutely.
With all the stuff that's happening all around us
so that my colleagues do not feel like pushed off
or backed off or like that you don't want to talk about it,
but I welcome the opportunity for you to come back to us.
Maybe the chairman of the committee
will be happy to host you- Thank you.
So that you can come back and talk to us.
Again, I wanna thank with such a small department,
thank everybody for what they do.
Ken and I kinda are the dinosaurs in the room,
I could call him that 'cause we've been around
a long time together,
but thank you all for everything that you all do.
It is not easy with a city this large,
with the amount of issues that we have.
And again, you all are the, really today,
our most necessary department to go through
some of the troubling issues that affect us,
so again, thank you.
Thank you Madam Chairman, for letting me speak.
Thank you.
No problem, thank you, Chair Harris.
Alderman Lawson, followed by Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you, Vice Chair, I just have a couple quick things.
I wanna thank you, Commissioner, and your staff
for the work that you do.
I know we've had the opportunity to connect
in the last five months since I've been elected
and I think we're all very interested on the pilot program
and the updates on that.
Have the partner agencies been identified yet
or are you still working on that?
Yes, they have, yes, they have
and I can read them off to you.
I have them right here.
We have Castle, the Chinese American Service League.
We have Howard Brown Health Center.
We have the Instituto del Progreso Latino.
We have Inner-City Muslim Action Network,
also known as IMAN.
We have Metropolitan Family Services,
the Chicago Urban League, the Anti-Defamation League,
and Northside Community Resources.
I can make sure that each and every single one of you
get a copy of this.
That'd be great, thank you so much.
And then that answers my other questions on timing
and things like that.
Are we done with the CTA in advertising?
We have a new, we have another one coming up
towards the end of this month about hate crimes
so we are talking to CTA.
We need to create artwork for it
so it should probably be launched the same time
as last year, November, end of November,
and it'll probably run through beginning of January
and we saw that that timing worked really well for us.
And in terms of like just driving people to come
and see us more and at the start of the new year,
so we're hoping that we'll continue.
Are they giving us a deal on the advertising?
That I don't know.
Did they give us a deal on the advertising?
A few freebies thrown in.
All right, they should do a few more I think.
I think they should.
Let me know if we can help on that.
I wanted to, just for clarity,
a hate crime is flagged as a hate crime
by the Chicago Police Department,
not your department. Correct.
So they make that determination.
There's no one else that does, right?
Correct. For in the city, okay.
So once they make that determination,
it's referred to you. Correct.
But the prosecution
is handled by the Cook County State's Attorney, right?
Can we, and maybe through the Chair,
get the number of prosecutions of reported hate crimes
in Cook County for the last two years?
You know, last full year and then this year.
I think that would be helpful.
The other thing you may have is I was gonna ask about how
many hate crimes this year and last year,
year to date, involve the trans community?
Oh, actually, we can give you specifics,
but I think I can give you.
For trans.
Five this year, none last year.
Five this year and none last year.
None last year? Mm-hmm.
Reported to us through CPD.
And maybe that speaks,
I know there are people who feel they have been a victim
of a hate crime that does not get classified
as such by the police.
What is the process there?
Is that something, a place where you can be helpful
in working with the police on it
or in explaining the person the criteria?
I know I've had to do that as aldermanic staffer.
And I think when we talk about the Chi vs. Hate ordinance,
hate incidence is something that, you know,
if it's not a crime, at least I'm reporting it.
You know, for me, I know that I've done my part
after whatever happened.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Sure, well, currently the way it's handled
is a hate crime, something is reported as a hate crime.
It is up to the police department to determine
whether it is a valid hate crime.
And if it's not a hate crime,
they will then label it as a non-hate crime incident.
That's what they will, non-hate crime, but a hate incident.
That is how they will identify it.
We don't do that as well.
We are strictly civilian.
We don't make any determinations
as to whether it's a hate crime or a hate incidents.
We are, again, talking with Alderman Silverstein
and with the mayor's office, police department,
Law Department, and a few of the city departments
talking about that, about what,
how we can come together on a definition
of possibly of a hate incident
and what that's going to look like.
Right.
I think that's it.
I love to see all my Ramblers at CCHR.
Let's keep that up.
I think it's probably the right environment
for the work that you're doing, and you know,
the tone that we set here makes a difference
in the tone that we set with our city
and with our commissioners, so thank you for what you do.
Thank you. Thanks, Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Lawson.
I'll just throw in there too, while there's a,
I think, we understand there's an under-reporting
of hate crimes and hate incidents,
there is actually something here in Chicago
at the Chinese American Service League
called the Anti-Hate Action Network
and they track anything that's reported to them,
so I'm happy to share that information with my colleagues
because they have been here,
established here in the Midwest
by the Asian American Foundation
as the Midwest Center for tracking hate incidents.
Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair,
and thank you so much for the work you do.
I'll try to just jump right in and make the use of time.
Through the Chair, I've got two questions.
One, if you could send us a breakdown of the requests
that you've received by ward and kind of the nature
of those requests, just to kind of get a sense
of what everybody's seeing.
The other one would be a-
For point of clarification,
requests like hate crimes that have been reported or?
That's a good question, thank you for that.
So I think one for hate crimes,
other for like neighbor conflict, that's I think is,
you know, separate from that.
I think the other, through the Chair,
I guess third one is, you know,
sometimes folks call the other departments on each other
and it's not necessarily about the other departments' work.
It actually is a neighbor conflict.
If there's anything that you all have that kind of shows you
what ultimately ends up as part of your wheelhouse.
We have neighbors who call Department of Buildings
on each other.
It's really not about building stuff,
it's about neighbors not getting along.
Right.
To know if there's any way to, I guess, catch that,
for lack of a better term, if you're your department.
I think that would just fall under
neighbor-to-neighbor conflict.
I'm not sure I, maybe I didn't understand
your question properly.
So sometimes neighbors weaponize 311 against each other.
What I'm asking is,
is there a way for you all to track that?
Like there's a neighbor conflict, you find out the neighbor,
you see they're calling 311 on each other
because we're wasting other departments' resources
when people weaponize it that way.
Alderman, I would just add that sometimes
when that happens, we make the initial contact and we have,
once we talk to the person and dig a little deeper,
then we find out, hey, this person has also reported
to this department, but we still have to respond, but yes.
Sure, and I guess, do you have any tracking
of like how often that occurs or that stuff?
We don't have a mechanism now to do it,
but we can manually do that.
Okay, I thank you for flagging that.
I think when we talked to like DTI about 311,
it could be a way to backend do some of that tracking,
so that's part of the question there.
I've got two big questions I wanna ask.
I feel a little bit, you know, we're good on time.
You're good. One is clearly we
find ourselves in a situation
where there's a Middle Eastern conflict.
We've even had it here in this council when we had,
you know, talk about a resolution.
Temperatures are flaring up, it's boiling.
Have you all seen any of that through your department
or and do you all have any strategies
as to how to better have these conversations,
knowing that this might continue?
We were proactive in that we started having
these conversations back at the beginning of this year
when we had our Unity Brunch.
We talked about hate, discrimination, prejudice.
We had people come in from speaking about, you know,
Islamophobia, speaking about anti-Semitism,
speaking about homophobia,
so we've been addressing that, it's not new to us.
This is our line of work
and we've taken a very proactive step on that.
That conversation that we had with the public in January
resulted in our Unity Summit, which took place in August.
There we took more of a deeper dive and we had
a wonderful collaboration from members of the community.
We had a panel on the many faces of Islam.
We had talking about Islam and breaking stereotypes,
educating folks about Islam,
also talking about anti-Semitism.
We also talked about LGBTQ looking at rights
and discrimination through an LGBTQ lens.
So we are, that's part of our wheelhouse.
We're doing that since we've started those conversations.
Those conversations are still, they don't die.
We have on our board, we have someone from Iman.
So the Muslim community is represented on our board.
We also have someone from the Jewish United Fund
so we have someone from the Jewish community on our board.
We have great conversations
with not just those two communities,
but we also have conversations with as many
of the diverse communities as possible,
so I understand where you're coming.
We're trying to, I don't wanna say there's no way
you can douse the temperature that's happening
because it's happening, people have emotions,
people have the right to express themselves,
but we're just letting people know that we are neutral
and we're here if they have,
if there's a way that we can assist.
I just wanna be very mindful of my time
'cause I'm trying to get a question in.
So I would challenge, and not challenge,
respectfully challenge,
find a ways to partner to do more on the ground
or even in council because we're seeing it even here,
that I appreciate that there's a larger unity ones,
but I think some of that needs to be scaled down
more to the ground for like different wards
and so I'd ask that,
but I've got one question separate from that.
Well, I'd love to talk with you offline about that
'cause I'd like to get some guidance from you
and some direction. Absolutely, love to do that.
And the last question I have is the migrant issue.
The levels through which there's caused tension
across different communities,
whether they're directly impacted, Black and brown, right?
Like it is clear, it is palpable.
What's being done by your department to kind of address,
have those conversations,
find ways to bring people together when it's clear
that because of these outside pressures
and the lack of resource,
we're in situations where people who are ultimately family,
are fighting against each other or arguing,
like what's being done there?
So first and foremost, we are working closely
with Deputy Mayor Beatriz Ponce de León.
We are also working closely with Deputy Mayor
for Community Safety, Garien Gatewood.
And we are someone from our staff is on their weekly calls
regarding the migrant topic
and we are providing insight.
We are also providing assistance when we can.
We're helping develop a strategy,
an outreach strategy with the migrant community.
We have gone to shelters to give
know your rights presentations,
not legal immigration know your rights,
but know your rights as you,
as you are now a Chicagoan regardless
of what your immigration status is.
You are a Chicagoan and you have rights.
And so we've done that, we continue to do so.
On our own, Norman and Danny will go out and they will visit
the different police districts
and they will see what's happening,
so we are on the ground in that sense
and it is unfortunate that it is only just two folks
who are able to do that.
We'd like to have more staff to maybe assist
more in that capacity, but we are there.
We are providing assistance as much as we can
because like I said, there's only 17 of us,
and of the 17, there's only four
in the Intergroup Relations Division.
If you could through the Chair
just provide what ideal would look like so that way we,
what ideal would look like in relation to staffing.
That way we can all have the conversation,
see how we can support that work,
which is clearly necessary in this moment
so thank you very much and thank you so much, Chairwoman.
Next we have Alderwoman Hadden to close this out.
Oh, and I get to close this out?
This is wonderful.
Oh, I'm sorry, Alderwoman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
All right. After you.
Leni, you get to close this out.
(laughing) Thank you, Chair.
Commissioner, I just wanted to say thank you
to you and your team.
I feel like I've appreciated
a lot of my colleagues' questions today.
And I guess I'll just say they really underline
the additional demands on you and your team.
And so similar to my colleague Alderwoman Silverstein
and others, you know, through the Chair,
if thinking about the work that we're asking you to do,
thinking about the legislation happening in council,
if you could give us an idea of what 2024,
other than what's currently in the budget, right,
if there were like a couple of positions that you needed
to expand, through the Chair, I would love to see that
and make sure we have the conversation.
Thank you.
Because, you know, on the council side, you know,
my colleagues got a very ambitious piece of legislation,
you're hearing and you guys know,
you're seeing all of the challenges our constituents
are facing and the time for your departments growing need.
So just wanted to say thank you for the great work
for being so accessible.
I wish more of our constituents would take advantage
of the mediation services.
I keep trying, they try and make us be mediators, but yeah,
that's it, so through the chair, I would appreciate that
and thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Alderwoman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Thank you, Chair, thank you, Commissioner.
Thank you to you, to all that you're doing to make Chicago
a better place to live for everyone here
and also those that want to make us their new home.
I just had a quick question about,
as you're doing more outreach,
and I'm glad that you're advertising on the CTA,
but have you considered also advertising
in independent local ethnic media?
Yes, it is in our budget request.
Yes, it is.
Awesome, thank you.
And then I had a question.
You had mentioned the brutality against our trans siblings.
And, you know, it wasn't too long ago in 2022
when I lost a friend, a beautiful, Black, trans activist,
Elise Mallory, who worked in the State's Attorney's Office,
and also I represent Andersonville in the 48th Ward,
one of the coolest neighborhoods in the world, supposedly,
but people still don't feel safe
walking down the streets of Andersonville.
After George Floyd, a Black neighbor said to me,
a woman, she said, you wouldn't know, I'm a big lady.
I walked down the street and you wouldn't know
I was a woman, you just saw my my wrist
and so it is about talking about what kind of world
do we wanna live in and people should have
the bodily autonomy to have the independence
to be who they are no matter where they live,
so I appreciate all your work.
I do wanna know more about ways that we can work together.
I wish that we had met in May
after we were inaugurated because all the work
that we're doing involves human rights
and not from a policing point of view,
but from a civilian point of view
and from a human point of view
as we're welcoming new neighbors,
so I would like to be involved in those conversations
as one of the most diverse wards in Chicago,
one that also has a temporary shelter
and that was stood up in a way that I didn't agree with
because there wasn't enough time to talk about
how we are gonna build a community because truly
we are in this together and so I look forward
to working with you.
I just wanted to make sure that I don't have
any other questions except to say
how much are you planning on working with
our newly elected district councilors,
as well as the newly elected alderpeople?
We have reached out to them.
Our initial outreach to them was inviting them
to attend our Unity Summit.
I think a few of them did come, they did attend.
We haven't done a whole lot formally, but I welcome.
That is something we want to do.
We want to strengthen that relationship
so if you all want to help us strengthen that relationship,
we'd like to do that.
Are your interns paid or unpaid?
A lot of them are here for academic credit.
We put money in the budget for next year.
We have been fortunate in that some of the interns
that we have had in the past have received funding,
a stipend through their school.
So when their school has a program so that if they get
an unpaid internship, their school will give them a stipend.
So we're grateful for that,
but now we know that we can actually ask for money for that
so we are grateful for that as well.
Yeah, I'm just thinking about your department is so small,
you know, you're small and mighty,
but I'm saying because of the size are forced to work
across departments and how to leverage all of the assets
that you have, including your young people,
especially when we're talking about
a newly elected division that works
in every single police district.
These are meetings that are mandated and so they're already
on the books and it's an opportunity for you to be
on the ground as we're asking you to be on the ground more,
to have a presence in meetings that are already taking place
that you don't have to organize
so I'm just thinking of ways that we can work together
to not be redundant.
Give us more staff so they can attend those meetings
and we'd love that.
Thank you, yeah, I appreciate that so much
because as again, we're saying that we want to build
a Chicago that everyone can live in no matter who they are,
we also need to work together with what we have
and I just wanna say one more thing.
You know, I'm really, I'm grateful that you're working
on the South and West Sides
for your racial equity listening campaign,
but I would also promote that everyone needs
that kind of training, not just on the South and West Sides.
Thank you. Absolutely.
Thank you Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
And I'll close this out with I think that the work
of your department is needed more now than ever.
I agree.
And just listening to everybody in this room today,
that is so clear and it is about extremism
on all sides that we're having to fight
and I think you heard it here today.
I think you'd get support to have a budget in 2024
that reflects the kind of work that you'd like to be able
to do to help us do that in every single ward.
For my own ward, language accessibility
is a really important thing.
And reporting crimes is something that's very difficult
for us so I think that, you know, if we could,
I'll invite you to the 11th Ward to Chinatown
to talk to some of our residents so that they
can get educated about hate crimes
and the difference between hate crimes and hate incidences,
but that with all of these,
what we need to do is talk about them.
We can't just sweep these under the rug
because that's why we are where we are today,
too many things being swept under the rug.
And with that, I will just say thank you
for all of the amazing partnership
and I can't not give Norman a huge shout out.
I've called him many, many times.
Unfortunately, we have a decent amount,
an indecent amount I should say
'cause any amount is bad of, of hate incidents
with racial racist graffiti
or people being verbally attacked
and he is the consummate professional
and always willing to help so thank you all for being here
and for everything that you do.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you, council members, thank you.
We're gonna take a quick three-minute break
and bring Animal Care and Control in next, thank you.
Thank you.
(no audio)
(council member speaking faintly in background)
(no audio)
(council member speaking faintly in background)
We're gonna go ahead and get started, everybody.
We're gonna start with,
this is for Chicago Animal Care and Control.
We're gonna have our friends from the COFA, sorry,
the committee, council.
Council Office of Financial Analysis.
I just know it's COFA, I did not study that, I failed today,
but please go ahead.
Okay, next up we have Chicago Animal Care and Control.
I'll try to move quickly through this.
So their FY24 budget is $7.7 million.
That is roughly 672.7 hundred thousand more than last year.
They have 82 FTEs that remains level with FY23.
They're 100% funded through the corporate fund
with 6.1 million going towards personnel,
and 1.6 million to non-personnel.
Let's see, so you can see they're 100%
derived from the corporate fund, all 82 employees.
And again, most of that money
going towards personnel services, and that is it.
Wow, that was brief.
Thank you very much, Daniel.
(panel laughing)
And I don't know your actual title
'cause it's not in my book.
So I'm the Acting Executive director.
Thank you, Acting Executive Director, Susan Cappello.
If you wouldn't mind introducing the folks
that you have here with you and in the box,
and then we'll have you deliver your opening remarks.
Absolutely.
So next to me, I have Armando Tejeda,
our Executive Administrative assistant,
and in the box I have Arthur Hamilton,
our Animal Shelter Manager.
Angela Rayburn, the Operations Manager.
Blanca Guzman, our staff assistant responsible
for our IT and procurement.
Daniella Felton staff assistant responsible
for our FOIA requests.
And Chloe Snowden Morgan,
a human resources business partner.
Go ahead. Thank you.
Well, thank you Vice Chairman Lee,
Chairman Ervin and honorable members of the city council.
I wanna thank Mayor Johnson for the opportunity to serve
the residents of Chicago as the Acting Executive Director
of Chicago Animal Care and Control.
I am honored to be here today to highlight and discuss
our budget, review our goals, and our progress
towards those goals and present our initiatives
for the upcoming year.
CACC's mission is to protect the public safety
and promote humane care of animals.
We enforce animal-related laws and provide
a safe environment and medical treatment for sick,
stray, abused, and neglected animals.
As you know, the shelter is responsible for caring
for all of the stray and abandoned animals in our city.
The shelter also provides adoption services
and helps to reunite lost pets with their owners.
This past year gave us the opportunity to work
even more closely with our community
to provide resources for Chicago pet owners,
seek innovative ways to continue to return more animals
to their owners, and with our partners,
strive towards as many live outcomes as possible
through adoption and rescue.
Every day, CACC takes in animals of all kinds,
including wild and domestic strays,
and those confiscated for cruelty and neglect.
Chicago's Municipal Animal Shelter is one of the highest
performing municipal animal care and control facilities
where most animals leave alive.
Shelters nationwide are currently facing
a number of challenges, including CACC.
The number of animals that the shelter takes in
has increased significantly in recent years.
This is due to a number of factors,
including the economic downturn.
And CACC is also facing rising costs.
The cost of food, veterinary care,
and other supplies has increased significantly
in recent years.
CACC has evolved to meet those challenges
operating more effectively and efficiently
in this challenging operating environment
to ensure that we continue to provide
high quality essential services to the city of Chicago.
CACC is the only organization within the city
that is responsible for controlling the animal population
and this aspect of our mission
is not only large, but crucial.
One of the most important impacts of CACC'S operation
is to continue to manage certain aspects of animal intake
by appointment with an emphasis on prioritizing
sick or injured animals.
CACC has taken in 9,948 animals as of August 31st,
including 5,032 dogs,
3,705 cats,
and 712 other animals including chickens,
rabbits, Guinea pigs, livestock,
and other kinds of wildlife.
CACC welcomed over 13,024 visitors in the facility
through August 31st this year.
And CACC is open to the public from noon to 7:00 PM
for residents to look for their lost pet or adopt a new pet
without an appointment.
Of course, most people think about finding animals
good homes when they think of CACC
and we are proud to report that as of August 31st,
5,897 animals were adopted or transferred out of the shelter
to start their new lives.
Our animal control officers are in the field daily
to help with sick and injured animals, stray pets,
dangerous animals, and wildlife.
By August 31st, we had already closed over 20,000
animal-related service requests.
We are committed to working with alderman,
other city departments and communities to support the safety
of residents and animals through an effective field response
with a focus in diversity, equity, and inclusion to ensure
that all residents receive quality, efficient service.
CACC also works hard to get animals back home
via various return to owner strategies in the shelter
and in the field as well.
So far this year, 898 animals have been reunited
to their families.
CACCs animal control officers have reunited 61 animals
back to their families without ever having them bringing
them into our facility,
which is an increase of 84% over last year.
Let us take this opportunity to encourage Chicago residents
to ensure that their pets are microchipped and registered.
CACC has also been focusing on providing services
to residents and their pets.
One of our most successful programs is our vaccine
and microchip clinics.
Through August 31st, these clinics have served
over 1,900 pets with vaccines and microchips.
There were 1,497 rabies vaccines to both dogs and cats,
1,726 core vaccines to both dogs and cats,
and 1,057 microchips to both dogs and cats.
CACC partnered with Cook County Animal and Rabies Control
and others to provide these services for free.
We look forward to increasing the number of clinics
we perform throughout the city.
If you're interested in hosting a clinic in your ward,
please make sure to reach out to us.
The city of Chicago is proud of our partnership
with friends of Chicago Animal Care and Control,
especially for our after hours program,
which has provided critical care to many animals.
We graciously thank friends and Med Vet Animal Hospital
for their life-saving work for our city's critically ill
and injured animals.
Through August 31st, this partnership provided
urgent medical care to 26 animals,
again at no cost to the city.
A big part of preparing animals for adoption or transfer
is the veterinary care our medical team provides
to the animals.
Through August 31st, our medical team spayed and neutered
1,875 animals, provided 3,069 microchips,
and administered 4,734 rabies vaccines.
Additionally, over 6,200 exams, procedures,
and other life-saving treatments were performed
for sick and injured animals.
Beginning on August 2nd, PAWS Chicago has offered us weekly
spots for spay neuter surgeries for dogs at CACC.
57 additional dogs were altered from this partnership.
CACC relies heavily on dedicated volunteers to find adoptive
and foster homes for the animals and to provide care,
exercise, and attention to the animals
while they're at the shelter.
We have 198 volunteers trained at this time
and are open to inviting more residents
to join as volunteers.
Moving forward, CACC will continue to strive
to bring animal service improvements to Chicago.
Our goals for increasing live outcomes and improving
animal services to the public are aligned
with best practices and humane approaches
to animal welfare nationwide.
We will continue to work with you and your constituents
to identify and implement improvements
to continue to support Chicago pets
and the residents who love them,
as well as continuing efforts to keep animals
with the people who care for them by working with pet owners
to empower them to take an active role
in determining the best outcome for their pets.
The heart of our shelter is the hardworking staff
who pride themselves on providing good care to the animals
and quality service to Chicago residents.
Chairman, please allow us to thank our staff
at Chicago Animal Care and Control,
as well as the volunteers, rescue partners,
and other community organizations who help at the shelter.
I would also like to take this time to thank Mayor Johnson,
his administration, and the entire city council
for your continued support of CACC.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Executive Director Cappello.
Are there questions from any of the alders that are here?
Alderman Riley, please.
Followed by Alderman Hadden and Alderman Lawson.
Thank you Madam Chairman, and good afternoon.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond
to some testimony we received earlier today
during public comment from some of your actual volunteers
at the facility and obviously they believe very much
in the work that you all do, I certainly do,
but they raise concerns about capacity and resources
and that resulting in more animals being euthanized
than we'd like to see.
Of course, we don't wanna see any animal euthanized,
but there were claims that that number
of euthanizations is up.
Could you speak to that briefly?
Well, I've, thank you for that.
I definitely appreciate the opportunity to respond to that
because I did listen in this morning
to all of those comments.
So I've had the opportunity, I'll call it,
for working for the city of Chicago for the past 32 years.
I've been with Animal Care and Control for the past 21.
When I was there in 2002/2003,
we were bringing in 24 to 25,000 animals a year,
everything, including wildlife.
We were euthanizing over 20,000 of those animals.
So in my eyes, the way I look at it,
we are doing fabulous work right now.
We're impounding approximately 15,000 animals a year.
Less than half are being euthanized.
And I'm going less, less than half.
Art Hamilton, my shelter manager actually has some numbers
if you'd like to hear those numbers.
The way the economy is right now,
while we were during covid during the 2020 pandemic,
our shelter was empty.
We had maybe 30 dogs and 10 cats.
Everybody's going back to work and we're seeming to have
people not have time for their pets anymore.
People aren't coming in to adopt.
It's very difficult.
Our intake is very, is high.
Would you like more specifics on the intake and euthanasia?
I can have Art mention something.
You know what, I don't wanna extend,
I know we have a couple other departments,
but perhaps through the Chair
you could share that information,
and these are not meant to serve as a criticism.
I wanna give you the opportunity to respond
to some of the comments that were made
when you weren't in the room.
Look, just to comment and then I'm done.
You know, if there, I know there is,
if you have a need for more capacity and more trained staff,
it should be included in your budget request
and I understand you've been here a long time.
I've been here for a while too.
The push and pull with the budget office, right,
but yours is a department that is consistently underfunded
and relies very heavily upon volunteer work.
And thank God for the volunteers that give time
to this facility.
But you need more professional staff
and we need a bit more real estate.
You have a very difficult job in housing these animals.
The volumes are huge, but when they're with you,
we wanna make sure they're getting the most humane treatment
possible and so this is, for me,
is actually a funding priority.
Your budget is not very big
and so I would ask my colleagues to consider,
maybe not this year, but next year,
a substantial increase in the resources we're putting here.
We all love animals and while our first responsibility
are to our taxpayers,
we also have a responsibility to be humane to our animals.
So thank you for the work you do and thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Riley.
Alderwoman Hadden.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you Executive director.
I plus one my colleague Alderman Riley's comments.
And along the lines of kind of human resources,
I was wondering, have you had discussions
with DFSS or the mayor's office
on this big increase in youth jobs?
So I'm wondering if Animal Care and Control
is going to maybe be able to utilize
some of those youth job positions, if that's come up yet.
That is absolutely a great question
and it has definitely opened our eyes to bringing youth in.
Our volunteer program has always
and only been open to 18 years and older.
So we've had some youth because 18, 19 to 23 is considered
youth is the way I'm looking at it,
but we recently had a reach out from Prosser Career Academy.
They're bringing 54 junior high school students
to our facility for the first time in a couple of weeks.
So we're trying it out that way.
We're gonna see what we can do.
We also have a great partnership with an organization
called Safe Humane Chicago.
They have actually been doing youth engagement
at our facility for quite a few years.
Most recently this past over the summer,
they partnered with a organization called Enlace
and they had eight to 10 students.
They were all 16, 17-year-olds doing manners training
with our dogs, using our dogs,
the dogs that are in our shelter
to do these manners training and it just,
it gave me goosebumps everywhere
just to watch these young kids come in,
work with the dog for an hour and this dog is sitting,
staying, playing dead, giving high fives.
It was just absolutely amazing to say
these are the same dogs that are in our kennels.
These young students see it.
How do I get the public to see that?
So that's one of the things that I'm definitely looking for,
is trying to, when we are able to really increase
our youth engagement, is to really get that out there
to really show the type of animals that we have,
but we are looking to increase all that this year.
I've already talked to somebody over at DFSS
for summer programs for sure.
We're in the middle of construction also,
so my whole front lobby's shut down
and I have no large rooms, so it's gonna be hard,
but we're gonna make this group of 54 work
as I put a tent up out in the backyard.
So we're gonna do it.
Good deal and you kind of led into my second
and last question, which again is around,
you mentioned you're doing some facilities upgrade
knowing that your animal care and control officers
are out in the field a lot.
I was wondering what's the status of your fleet,
your vehicles and equipment?
Like how many vehicles do you have at your disposal?
Is that lower than usual, higher than usual in conditions?
That's a great question.
It's actually higher than usual
because we're out of parking spaces in our parking lot.
Angela, would you mind saying how many vehicles
do we actually have?
Sure, right now we have-
Pull it down. You just gotta pull it.
Right now we have 20 vehicles,
which we actually got three vehicles-
Can you say your name for the record?
Thank you.
Angela Rayburn, Operations Manager.
So right now we have 20 vehicles,
currently this year alone we got three.
We're waiting for another one
and we have an order coming in next
for another four new ones.
That's great.
We put a lot of miles on those trucks.
And I'm just gonna add one thing.
This year actually we got two new electric vehicles that we,
I'm calling them the Vanaimal Mobile,
but they're electric and we're using 'em to go
to vaccine clinics, offsite events,
and other engagement events.
Fantastic, thank you.
Those were my questions.
I appreciate all that you guys do and thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you Alderwoman Hadden, are you?
You missed my "thank you, Chair."
Sorry, someone was handing me something.
There were kids texting me, sorry.
Alderman Lawson.
Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.
Hello, Director.
Just a couple quick things.
I think we're all concerned about the numbers
and what we can do to be helpful
so I know Armando's very good at sending my office,
whatever we can put out on our weekly newsletter
and you know, even beyond that,
do you guys do offsite adoption events?
We do.
They are rather minimal because it's hard to just take
a bunch of staff that I out of the shelter to go do them
So we do rely on our volunteers to help us
with offsite events.
Okay.
We do what's called a Doggy Day Out.
So our volunteers come, they pick up a dog,
we all meet up at one location and we'll do things there.
We've done a couple at OEMC,
we're even reaching out to other city departments.
So we did OEMC Health Department.
We're on the schedule to go to COPA next week.
And then we're on the schedule to go maybe
even the following week
out to the Administrative Hearings Building on Sedgwick
on Superior, so we are out there doing these things.
Tomorrow, may I do a shameless plug?
Tomorrow we're gonna be at the Daley Center
doing a how Howl-o-ween event.
I didn't howl like I should have,
but we're doing a Halloween event at the Daley Center
tomorrow one o'clock we're gonna have some dogs in costumes,
come and see 'em.
If you wanna do one in Lakeview,
let me know how I can be helpful.
I've got a neighborhood that is very high dog ownership.
Certainly high registration as well
and they're all adopting.
So I know you are volunteer-reliant and I've known
a number of people over the years with friends of CACC.
What sort of is your volunteer universe like now
and then the follow up to that is,
are you using or interns and you answered the youth question
a little bit, I'd like to see an expansion of that,
but intern service learning hours,
whatever we can do to get you more bodies
I think it would be great for all of us.
And we can absolutely use more bodies.
Our volunteers are invaluable to us.
So we have about 200 registered volunteers.
To get into our volunteer program,
you have to attend an information session because people
think you're coming into play with puppies and kittens.
That's really not what's happening at the shelter.
So we have an information session explaining that
and then all of our volunteers still need to be
fingerprinted and background checked
and then they have to go through
a three or four training sessions.
Again, it's not puppies and kittens.
There's a big safety concern about having,
with volunteers having the correct training in our facility.
So through all that training,
we do have about 200 active right now.
Most of them on the weekends.
I do struggle with getting volunteers during the week.
We have not gone into an intern/extern service hour
type of program yet.
If there's something out there that exists
that I could look at to try to gauge off of,
I'm happy to do so.
But volunteers are always needed at the shelter.
So if anybody's interested in being a volunteer,
our website has all the information
about what you need to do.
Excellent, and then just one more question.
It came up earlier in the public comment
about backyard breeders and I don't know what our city code
says about backyard breeders or if that's something,
if we could be helpful in strengthening that code
and adding more enforcement in increasing the fines.
Are they even coming from Chicago?
So if you would speak on that for just a sec.
So there is nothing in our city ordinance
about backyard breeders.
Something was tried quite a few years ago.
I'd have to look at all that to see exactly what it was
to see if it can be re-erected maybe.
(laughing) I see 'em pointing to each other.
I have two friends right here.
Yeah.
So I'm open to talking about that
and having a discussion about it.
We are seeing that people are probably going to breeders,
you know, pet shops are no longer here in Chicago,
so people are probably going out to breeders for those pets,
but we have great pets at the shelter too.
I'm not sure if they just don't know about us or if they
really just don't want the types of dogs that we have.
Sure.
I'm open to looking at or reopening the conversation
for the backyard breeding ordinance.
Great, that's all I have.
Thank you very much, thanks for the work you do.
Thank you, Alderman Lawson.
I just wanted to pass this along.
This was something that on of the public speakers
left a copy of earlier just for your records
and if there's any questions in there,
I think you've answered most of them,
but if there's anything,
we'd appreciate those through the Chair.
And then we've got Alderman Lopez.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director.
Just when you thought I was not gonna pop in.
I was waiting. Bam, here I am.
I don't think I've ever missed animal care and control.
Probably not. Probably not.
And my, how things have changed from our first years
of being here talking about animals to now.
So I do want to just first start out by saying that I think
that you, your department and the entire team
have been doing a remarkable job through pandemic
and other things, trying to address
the unchecked animal crisis that we have
in the city of Chicago
and forgive me for not being here to hear your comments,
but I think we can all agree that it is a crisis
where we see the abandoned animals running loose
and to my colleague from the 44th Ward,
we have tried and I think we will have something shortly
related to that coming forward before this body to address
some of those concerns, but I think at the end of the day,
it's all about education and making sure that the services
to help provide the medical procedures in communities
is where I think we really have to focus.
I think I may have mentioned that even last year,
where being able to reach out to neighborhoods
that are the hotspots for a lot of the animals
that we take oftentimes are where you have
veterinary deserts where you'd have lack of options
to getting your pet spayed or neutered and because of that,
it's not always just backyard breeding for money.
Sometimes it's because little Fido and little Fifi
get it on when you're not looking and all of a sudden
you've got 10 more puppies popping out
and you don't know what to do with them.
Yes, Fido and Fifi, yes.
Not Fluffy 'cause that's the rabbit.
But I think that one of the things that we have to commit to
is a use of our resources to ensure that we are expanding
those mobile clinics out there,
not just to where it's the microchipping,
but also offering the spay and neutering,
particularly for the males.
Because I think that as it relates to like the bully breeds,
as they're affectionately referred to the Chicago pit bull
that we know with the square head,
we need to start tampering down those
and I think it's important for the city council
not just to tell people no,
but to give them an option so that they can in fact
get their animals spayed and neutered
so it doesn't become an issue.
I think also as we're looking at some of the issues within,
I'm glad to see that we're moving forward
with our reconstruction.
I think that there are opportunities for us to elicit
and bring back donors who have previously been willing
to work with Animal Care and Control if we're able
to move the needle on some of the positive outcomes,
which I know has raised some concerns in the community
about the need for having to unfortunately euthanize
for space because we're simply at capacity
almost every single weekend,
this week this year, if I'm not mistaken.
So I think that being able to address some of those concerns
will help us go a long way.
What I do actually want to ask about is I see that we have
still an issue with the veterinary vacancies.
Is that a new vacancy or is that an old one?
So it's supervising veterinarian.
That has been vacant all year.
And is- We're about to post it.
So it's been vacant all year.
Was it because of lack of interest,
lack of ability to post from this administration,
last administration?
No, it was absolutely a lack of interest.
So we did post last year,
I think two or three times I could double check on that
and we had absolutely nobody, zero candidates.
And that's with posting it out into like
the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association site.
Any veterinarian that I've heard of get friends and family
to tell me whose vets they are,
I sent it out to a bunch of vet clinics via fax, email,
went and dropped some of the postings off
just to try to lack of better word,
steal somebody from somebody else.
So it's definitely a lack of interest
in what was called the supervising vet.
We did re-title to Veterinary Medical Manager,
so maybe that sounds a little better.
But we are posting that, I believe in November,
early November, if not the end of this month.
And do we have any feedback as to why
other than just being a supervising vet title?
No. Nobody's reached out and said,
"Oh, I'm not working there."
So I'm really not sure besides the fact that
there's a nationwide shortage on veterinarians right now,
not only on veterans but on veterinarians,
but on certified veterinary technicians.
It is a nationwide shortage nationwide issue for that,
but I'm gonna keep trying until I get somebody.
And are we relying then on the contracted
veterinary services to pick up the slack?
No, PAWS Chicago has been helping us out with spay neuter.
We also have some slots with spay neuter
over at the anti-cruelty society
so they've been helping out with things like that,
but we do have three full-time veterinarians
on staff right now.
Is there any possibility of trying to work
with like the University of Illinois at Urbana,
which has the veterinary school,
or in Iowa to try and create like a pipeline
so that we could start maybe paying now
so that we get 'em later like we do for CPS?
So we were talking to University of Illinois
just before the pandemic started and then it all stopped.
So I will definitely pull everything out
and rehash that too.
Okay, well again, thank you.
I wanna thank again your team for always being responsive
when I'm calling you at nine o'clock at night
after I catch a dog in the alley somewhere.
And I know that working with our police too,
for those of you who don't know,
most police districts have the wand, have a cage,
so they are also able to take in the short term
until an ACO is available.
But I definitely think the more we can do to educate
and bring these resources as others have
will probably the quickest and easiest way
for us to decrease the amount of puppy breed,
animal breeding in the city of Chicago.
In the immortal words of Bob Barker,
"Always spay and neuter your pets."
Thank you.
Thank you Alderman Lopez.
I just have a couple of questions before we let you
off the hook here.
I was also struck by the number of public comments
there were today.
That was a little surprising I think to all of us
so I'm glad that you were listening earlier.
I wasn't taking copious notes or anything like that,
but you know, what I heard was from the volunteers,
the level of euthanizations and I believe
you've already addressed that.
Can you talk to me about how many staff work in the field,
like using those trucks and what the time span,
are we 24/7 operation?
So we are not 24/7 in the field.
We have field officers on the street
from 7:00 AM to 10:30 PM seven days a week.
Staffing, I'm gonna have to throw it to Angela.
How many on each watch, please?
Angela Rayburn.
Full staffing, we have one day where everyone's there,
it's 16 full staff members as animal control officers,
but they're broken up into three shifts.
Our busiest shift right now contains eight staff members.
Next one would be about three.
And then our night shift is two
and sometimes they are paired
so it takes the number down of trucks out in the field.
And what time is the night?
What are the three shifts?
Can you...
Second watch is 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM,
mid watch, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM,
and third watch is 2:30 to 10:30 PM.
Is that enough, you think, to cover the city?
It's a big city?
It's more of a question 'cause we were talking
about staffing earlier for you.
Ideally, well, I've done some research on our calls
and when they come in.
So actually a lot of our calls do come in heavily
in the morning and then after around five o'clock
they start to dwindle.
So we did change schedules a little bit to accommodate,
to respond, be able to respond quicker.
We made that change actually for this year of 2023
and we're gonna continue that into 2024,
but obviously if we had a full staff of 20,
it would help us out responding to calls and timeliness.
And are any of your current vacancies for those positions?
Yes, we just posted Animal Control Officer,
it closed on the 13th,
so we should be getting that list from DHR
to start the interview process.
Great, thank you.
And then after hours, is there,
please just come in through 311.
Sorry, I'm like, I'm interested.
Do people just call 311 or is there a number to call
directly to Animal Care and Control?
No, all of our calls have to come through the 311 Center.
Okay.
So what happens when it's after 10:30 in the evening
when there's a call for an animal.
Alderman Lopez isn't going to pick up the animal
and care for it until you're open.
So I think as Alderman Lopez has said,
there are police stations out there with a kennel or two,
maybe they do have wand scanners.
We have a regular corps of police officers who do pick up
animals on the streets and bring them to us.
Our facility is not, is open to the public
from noon until seven, seven days a week.
So if the public finds a stray animal and wants to bring it
in, they could bring it in between noon and seven.
If Chicago police find a stray animal on the street
and want to bring it in, they have access 24 hours.
So we have security overnight who will let them come in.
They fill out a form and there's a certain number of kennels
put to the side where they could put these animals
overnight and then we do the rest upon intake
when we get in in the morning.
Gotcha. So police can come in,
but again, open to the public only from noon until seven.
And then you mentioned the volunteers
that do overnight stuff too, I assume they also have access?
That's our, no, so that's our non-profit
Armed Friends of Chicago Animal Care and Control.
They have an after hours care program.
So if our animal control officers,
so our medical staff works 11:30 to 7:30.
Our medical staff is there during our public visiting hours
because if an animal needs to leave,
they need to leave with a rabies shot
and our veterinarian has to provide that
so only a veterinarian can give a rabies shot.
So our medical staff leaves at 7:30,
our animal picks up an injured animal at eight o'clock,
what's that animal gonna do? Suffer overnight?
So Friends of Chicago Animal Care and Control
have this program through Med Vet Hospital
and we bring the animal to Med Vet.
They stabilize overnight,
and then we bring the animal back to our facility
in the morning and our medical staff continues treatment.
Okay, two last questions and then a comment.
Do your crews as they work in particular
in the later evening shifts,
do they face some of the same challenges
that some of our other frontline
customer-facing city employees do, like parking enforcement?
Is there harassment or any of that that goes on
when they're out trying to rescue an animal
or anything like that?
So yes, there is.
We've had some recent uptick in incidents
over with just this year.
I'm working very closely with the Department of Finance
and Environmental Health and Safety Division
to provide training for deescalation
for all of our officers.
We've worked with Streets and Sanitation who has given me
access to a radio main phone number
so if we do witness an incident,
not only calling 911 for police assistance,
but then calling Radio Main to get 911 to come out.
So we've done that so far, and again,
the deescalation training and of course EAP at all times
for any of our staff is available.
Not only do we have that on the street,
it's also in the facility so we also have,
I'll just say not friendly customers who come to us
and we have incidences inside the facility too.
Okay, gotcha, so it was really one more question.
No more questions and just to comment.
I had recently an occasion to work across many departments
on a particularly unique circumstance with a house
that was infested with fleas and Angela,
can you just tell me how many cats came out of that house?
Angela Rayburn.
We pulled 33 cats out of the house.
As of last week, all but two had been either adopted
or transferred, and actually most of them were adopted
directly from us. Oh, great.
That's great to hear, not that there were 33 cats there,
but that they've all been adopted.
I wanna just acknowledge your staff
that were really great partners on this particular instance
where it was a very unique situation
and I was glad that we were able to do some legwork
in advance so it wasn't something
that we were just pulling people in.
Obviously there needed to be some hazmat type situations
going on there and glad that you guys stuck with it
and appreciate all the help.
Alderman Lopez.
Now you can close.
Now I can close.
My unofficial round two, actually, but in light of something
that you mentioned, Madame Chair,
it should be noted that most of our ACOs
do have the bulletproof vest, correct?
Yes, all of our officers have body armor.
And how old is their body armor?
We just replaced them last year.
So we don't have any need for immediate replacement?
No.
And do our ACOs wear any kind of body camera?
We do not have body cameras.
That's actually next on the list after training
to speak with Finance is working on that right now.
And what is the anticipated cost?
I don't have any of that yet.
No? Okay, but I do definitely think
that to the Chairwoman's point,
we know we're dealing with a lot of unsafe conditions,
especially when we're dealing with animal fighting,
dog fighting and the decimation
of the Animal Crimes Unit in CPD.
You guys are now like the all-in-one group
dealing with some very unsavory individuals
so we may wanna make sure that that's also on our radar.
And then of course, something near and dear to my heart,
which I can't believe we almost let get out of here
without talking about, two things if you can have
provide through the Chair, a heat map where all the calls
come from as it relates to all of your three associated
311 calls, that would be wonderful,
a list of all of your delegate partners
and homework bound agencies that assist with all of that.
And then lastly, our favorite topic, farm animals,
non-domesticated animals.
For everyone's edification,
we have been working quite diligently to address this,
but I just want, if you could talk about the impact of
and cost associated with when you impound a horse
or a pig or an alligator or a peacock
or a wild turkey or 200 chickens
because all of that, while it makes us laugh,
is everything you've dealt with, right?
You're correct, yes.
So there is a cost to that.
We don't have the facilities
to necessarily house farm animals or livestock
so they're placed in very temporary housing.
We reach out to our partners.
I think Lincoln Park Zoo helped us out very much
a few animals ago, we'll call it,
to provide us with food for the animals.
We're also very lucky that we've had some background
with a lot of these animals
where they're not in our possession for very long.
So sometimes they get transferred out to other farms.
But yeah, Angela seems to have this little black book
in the back of her pocket where all the goats live.
It's just amazing.
And she was on the phone with the goat owners.
She was on the phone with the goat owners
and they were there within the next day,
very next morning to pick up those goats.
Having a registration for those type of animals
would be fabulous so that we can reunite them
with their owners and not bring them to our facility at all.
But yeah, we really rely on our partners to help
with a lot of that.
And then I think touching on what you just ended with,
getting animals back home, you know,
we've done a lot with regards to the field return to owner.
Is there anything else that we need to do to address
to make that law more functional?
We see the rise of air tags now for pets.
Is that something that you think has a place in everything
that we're doing or things that we need to update since that
law's been about five years now, four years on the books?
I will let you know that you did miss
the opening statement and I did say that we had an increase
of 84% return to owner in the field
due to that ordinance change.
So that was absolutely wonderful
and that was just over last year.
So 84% increase over last year.
The air tags, I mean,
I really fear that it's on a collar and dogs do,
or cats do come loose of their collars
so they can get lost at themselves.
Microchips are the best way to go.
Increasing microchip clinics would be absolutely wonderful.
I'm on board for that.
Doesn't require a veterinarian to be with us
so we can do that with support from vet techs,
which are a lot more abundant, I guess.
So yeah, definitely more microchipping
and not only microchipping,
but making sure that people either register that microchip
or that the facility registers for them.
So all the microchips we implant
are automatically registered through our software system
to the company within 24 hours
that registration goes through.
So if that dog gets loose right then and there and somebody
finds 'em and they do the microchip research,
they could find 'em and take 'em right back home.
And along those lines too, then PAWS I know
'cause I have two from PAWS.
If I, for whatever reason, didn't update my microchip,
they would still know it's a PAWS dog.
Is there a way that people still know
it's a Animal Care and Control pet?
So that's also, we're like the secondary contact.
So the owner would be the first contact, the implant,
the implanting company is the secondary contact.
Thank you.
Final question, Alderwoman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Thank you, I just wanted to say thank you
for all your work and also if you do decide
to do a mobile event,
the 48th Ward welcomes you where Edgewater,
Andersonville and Uptown.
I also, I sit right in front of the microphone here
for public speaking so I was very touched
by what everyone had to say.
I had two questions for you.
One of them was about your advertising.
Where do you spend your advertising dollars?
So we still, we have a very small advertising budget.
In order to get out to multiple communities,
we do spend it on the CTA.
So while you're driving around, look at the bus tails.
Our advertisements are out there.
Our current ad is called Leash Up Chicago.
And what we're gonna be doing for the next few Sundays,
all of us are giving up our time to do those,
to give away free collars and leashes in different areas
across the city of Chicago.
So Leash Up Chicago is our campaign for this year,
and it is on the bus tails currently.
Awesome, thank you.
And then where's your facility located?
We're located at 2741 Southwestern Avenue.
And yes, if you wanna come out and have a tour,
bring your staff with, if you want us to come to you,
we're more than open to that.
Great, and then would you consider spending
some of your advertising dollars in independent news media,
especially ethnic news media on the South and West Sides?
Absolutely.
Armando does most of our advertising stuff for us.
I actually have a contact with The Defender.
Say your name for the record, sorry.
Armando Tejeda, Executive Administrative Assistant.
I actually have a contact with The Defender,
so we're looking at possibly doing something in there.
We actually, one of the lease shop places we're going
is actually Austin, so we reached out to them,
let them know we're gonna be in Austin,
but we're also hoping that next year we can maybe do some
advertising directly in The Defender as well.
Awesome, and then can you just walk us through
what it takes to place an animal in a loving home?
Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, Armando.
So basically an animal comes into the facility,
we vaccinate right off the bat just to give it a boost
to its immune system so it gets its core vaccines.
While it's there, after a while,
after it gets seen by a vet,
it also gets a rabies vaccine.
From there, the animal gets temperament tested
by our animal placement coordinators volunteer.
Based on their feedback,
the animal gets placed for adoption,
it goes on the adoption floor.
We're also open to the public
so not only when they come in can they go directly
to an animal they're interested in,
but they can also walk on their own
in three of our pavilions.
If there's an animal that they're interested in,
they come back, tell staff.
We set them up with either a volunteer or staff member,
they take the dog out, see how the dog behaves with them.
If they have other family members,
we invite them to bring those family members too
to see how everybody interacts.
If the dog is spay neutered,
they could leave that same day.
Otherwise we put them on a surgery list
and they could usually leave within 24 to 48 hours.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
As a dog owner who laid Maggie to rest,
it feels like yesterday, you know,
that connection with my pet was very important.
Maggie was part of the family
and I hope to get all of your animals housed,
so thank you for all you do, appreciate it.
Thank you Alderwoman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Chairman Ervin.
Thank you, I just wanted to thank Director Cappello.
I spoke with her today on a matter.
Ultimately, I think we had to come up with some plan
for more of the wildlife that is, I won't say that
I guess we're encroaching on them,
they're encroaching on us,
but as we tend to get more non-traditional wildlife
in city living, there may need to be some adjustments,
advocacy for adjustments in laws
for the possums, raccoons, deer.
I had a deer on St. Louis and Jackson.
I'm like a deer, I mean, we're on the West Side of Chicago
and I'm looking at a deer.
These are some interesting times
and now we're starting to see more things.
So just to, you know, just something to put on the radar
for thinking forward.
How are we gonna handle these unique circumstances
that many of our residents are coming across
and they really just don't know what to do,
so that's all I wanted to add.
And yeah, we're happy to come out to a town hall meeting
or to even if you have them virtual,
we're happy to talk at them
to talk to your constituents about what to do
and what we can do.
Very well, thank you much, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Harris.
I just wanna say ditto,
but thank you first for everything that you do
and your staff, but ditto to what
the Chairman just mentioned.
In my ward, we are overrun with opossums and raccoons.
They are just as common as things like birds
so that should tell you that it's quite a few of them
in the community and it's become
such a major problem for us.
The interactions, once it gets dusk,
can be kinda scary sometimes,
especially because a opossum may not always back down.
And so I'm just saying it's a real problem.
So as a city, I think we need to start having a dialogue
about how, moving forward, how we deal with the outbreak
and I say this only because it's very costly
to the constituents to have to pay
a private pest control agency.
Guardian is racking up.
And so it's something that we probably need
to take a real look at moving forward,
everything from trying to invest in cages and other things,
because I've bought several cages that I never see again
in life because sometimes you have to let people
borrow them, and when they borrow them,
you never get 'em back.
So it's something we need to look at.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you very much and appreciate your presence
here today and all the hard work that you do, thank you.
We're gonna stand at ease here for three minutes
while we switch out for the Department of Buildings.
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(panel speaking indistinctly)
Put me in, coach.
Good afternoon.
We will conclude today's hearing
with the Department of Buildings.
We'll have a brief overview from COFA,
followed by Commissioner Beaudet's opening statement
and introduction of his staff.
Dan and Janice, please proceed.
Thank you, Chairman.
Department of Building, I'm gonna do a brief overview.
First of all, just wanted to mention that the survey
that we did a couple months ago right before budget season
started, we did have some issues
with the Building Department that they wanted to look at
and we're gonna talk about those now.
The top issue is troubled buildings and inspections.
They had other issues too mentioned in the survey,
inspection, summary closures,
strategic task force, and troubled buildings.
Department of Building had an FY24 budget of 40.14 million,
which is 1.5 million more than FY23 budgeted.
They had 290 budgeted FTEs,
which is two more than fiscal year '23,
funded with corporate funds, 81.83%.
The other 18.17% was grant funded.
Personnel, 35.2 million, non-personnel, 4.99 million.
Okay, looking at it by fund type,
as you can see, the corporate fund,
the local fund had a total of 39,000,917.
The corporate fund had 32,000,847.
The other funds was grant and that was 225,000
for a total of the 40 million 142.9.
Permanent FTE by fund.
The local, which included corporate water fund,
vehicle tax fund, and sewer fund had 290 FTEs.
And the grant fund had zero FTEs
so all of the FTEs went into the local fund,
the majority being in the corporate fund.
Looking at it by appropriation category,
personnel services was the highest at 35 million,
followed closely by contractual services of 4.4 million.
That's my report.
Thank you, Janice.
Commissioner, if you could introduce the staff
that are here in the well and in the box,
followed by your abbreviated opening statement.
And then we'll go from there.
First questioner will be Alderman Villegas.
He has an event this evening.
We wanna get him out and then we'll go from there.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, good evening, everybody.
I'm Matt Beaudet, Building Commissioner.
Next to me is Marlene Hopkins, First Deputy Commissioner.
And in the box, if you can stand when I read your name,
Grant Alrich, Managing Deputy Commissioner,
Carl Byrd, Deputy commissioner for Technical Inspections.
John Scott, Deputy Commissioner for Code Enforcement.
Al Hutchinson, Deputy Commissioner for Plan Review,
and Hal has tickets to Hamilton tonight,
so hopefully we'll get out quickly.
I shouldn't have said that with Alderman Lopez here.
(all chuckling)
Martha Renoso, Deputy Commissioner
for Non-Planned Based Permitting.
And Lolita Ware-King,
Deputy Commissioner for Finance and Administration.
And of course Ernestine Black is upstairs
answering the calls of your staff.
I just wanna point out that the staff I mentioned today
have 102 years of service in the Department of Buildings,
179 years of combined service in the city of Chicago,
and 206 years of combined service
over 24 government agencies
so this is a very well seasoned team
that I'm blessed to have.
It's a competent, collaborative and compassionate,
boots on the ground team.
Good afternoon, Chairman Ervin,
Vice Chairman Lee and members of the city council.
I'm pleased to be here today to discuss the 2024 budget
request for the Department of Buildings.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to work in partnership
with Mary Johnson and the members of the city council
to support economic development
in all 77 Chicago communities and to help ensure
the building safety for residents and visitors
is maintained through administration
of the Chicago Construction Codes.
Through August, we have issued a total of 25,000 permits,
collecting $22.2 million in permit fees.
Plan-based permits, which covers new construction
and renovation, have a reported value of $5.25 billion
year to date, which is an increase over the reported value
of 4.4 billion in the same period in 2022,
and near our pre-covid records of pre-covid 2019
reported value of 5.27 billion.
Despite covid and material and skilled labor shortages,
economic development continues throughout Chicago
and we continue to process and issue permits
and inspections in a timely matter.
I'm also proud to report that communities experience
a 10% or greater growth in plan-based permitting
are concentrated primarily on our South and our West Sides.
Crane's a key pre-indicator of community investment
that were once concentrated in a few communities
have spread to the South and the West Sides as well.
We also remain busy on our inspection side
and through September of this year,
we have completed over 150,000 inspections,
including over 31,000 301 inspections.
We continue to value our partnership with community members
and all the persons who are invaluable
eyes and ears on the ground.
To further protect public safety and quality of life,
we work with alderpersons, city departments,
and community members to identify, secure,
and in some case, demolish vacant buildings
that can serve as a hub for criminal activity
in our neighborhoods.
Through September, we have demolished 120 buildings
and have boarded up and secured
over 1,200 additional properties.
Also, a total of 2,800 vacant buildings were registered
or renewed, totaling 620,000 in revenue.
Our strategic task force works closely
with the Chicago Police Department and the Law Department
to enforce the Drug and Gang House Ordinance
and the Responsible Establishment
Safe Neighborhood Initiative which targets
troubled buildings and businesses.
We also continue to act against bad contractors
that prey on homeowners and businesses.
Over the past decade, we have implemented reforms
that make it more equitable and cost-effective to build
and easier to obtain building permits
through a streamlined, more user-friendly process.
DOB continues to work with AIS, now DGI,
on a multiple year effort to migrate
from our outdated IT systems used to support permitting
and inspections to the new IPS 11 system platform
that is used by other departments.
I'm very happy to announce that next month we will automate
the remainder of our paper-based permits.
So yes, we are getting away,
finally getting away from paper-based permits
and automating our payment processes,
reducing the time to permit while enhancing public data.
The easier and quicker we make it to get permits,
the more people get permits.
The new Chicago building code has been in effect
for three years now and with rising construction costs
and a dire need for more affordable housing
and neighborhood commercial investment,
the new code's flexibility, expanded options for equitable
and cost-effective construction
are more important than ever.
As promised, our new code modernization program enables us
to take advantage of code cycles that update and incorporate
the latest innovation and processes.
This program is vital to allowing people to renovate
and remain in their homes, spur new economic development,
maintain and grow our affordable housing stock,
and create real equitable investment
in historically disinvested neighborhoods.
By being among the first to adopt the latest energy code
last year, the city, and more importantly our residents
and small businesses were the first in line
to take advantage of federal funding
out of the new Inflation Reduction Act.
Multi-year process to modernize our codes continues
with the mechanical code of ventilation,
refrigeration coming up next,
plumbing and hazard occupancies.
With other code updates,
we'll collaborate with labor industry partners
and the community to develop consensus-based codes
for your consideration in 2024 and subsequent years.
And I wish restress that making,
we are making equity a keystone
in all of our code monetization efforts to ensure
that we have a code that works and provide options
for all of our communities.
As we head into the colder months,
we'll enforce the Chicago Heat Ordinance.
Here in times of extreme cold,
our inspectors will be out every day, including weekends.
We'll continue to work with the Law Department
to expedite legal actions in the circuit court
whenever necessary.
We also work closely with DFSS to assist tenants
when heat cannot be immediately restored
and temporary relocation is required.
Also, we must adapt our operations as we continue
to encounter extreme climate change.
We're grateful to work with the council last year
on the cooling ordinance that now requires 55 plus
senior buildings and other large residential buildings
to provide cooling centers during a extreme heat events.
We are also committed to working with Mayor Johnson
and the city council on citywide efforts to promote access
and equity in the construction industry for women
and people of color.
It's imperative that we not only continue this growth,
but that their growth be equitable.
As a son of a Native American electrician,
I can attest that a good paying career in the trades
is not just a paycheck, but is a generational blessing.
In 2024, DOB remains committed to bringing
common sense solutions to the challenges facing
our city and we'll do what we can through innovation
and streamlining to move construction projects
and equitable residential commercial economic investment
forward in all communities, while at the same time,
protecting building safety and the safety
of the neighborhoods that all of our residents call home.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today
and I'm happy to answer any of questions, thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner.
We'll start with Alderman Villegas,
followed by Alderman Burnett.
Any other people wish to?
Thank you Mr. Chairman for flexibility there.
Commissioner, Marlene, good to see you guys.
I view your department as economic development
because we need permits to actually get things going.
So through the Chair, could you provide,
in one of your bullet points it talks about demolished
120 buildings and boarded up all these buildings.
Through the Chair, could you provide how many
are in the queue waiting to be demolished
and in court as well?
Sure, we'll have that for you, thank you.
You talked about IT investments or IT upgrades.
What's the timeline for everything being automated?
Is this your last phase that you mentioned here?
No, we're continuing on the phase.
So 2024 we're looking to do, or late to this year,
we're looking to have all of our permits online
and we then need to move on to the inspection side as well
and the inspection scheduling, so this is not the end,
unfortunately, but we're seeing great progress finally,
and we look forward to work with Commissioner Lucius
and his new team on accelerating
our move into the modern age.
Around the strategic task force,
could you talk a little bit about more about that
because I think when we're talking about
the strategic task force,
I think we need to have a balance where we're seeing
in some cases problem businesses, right?
But then also businesses where bad things are occurring
and they're getting caught in the middle of this.
And the reason why I think we need to look at this
by case-by-case basis is because
from what I've heard from small businesses
with the strategic task force,
that it's a a one-stop approach where we're just saying,
"Hey, this is what we're gonna do
to close you down temporarily."
And the reason why I'm concerned
'cause it is economic development
when you're talking about closing businesses down.
People are not going to work,
the city's not collecting revenue,
and so could you speak a little bit more about
what we're doing to address those issues,
but then getting businesses open quicker?
Yeah, sure, thank you for that question.
We work with the Chicago Police and others
and mainly the community to identify these bad businesses.
These aren't businesses that we just picked ourselves
or even CPD picked.
We are responding to complaints in the neighborhood.
What are you gonna do about this business?
This business is bad for our community.
They're siphoning money off of our community.
People are getting hurt there.
So it's not really the one-off, you know,
somebody was hurt and then, you know,
the whole force of city government comes down on them.
This is a collaboration with the community.
These businesses are identified.
Unfortunately sometimes they're repeat offenders.
We just had one that this is their third closure
in four years.
There was a murder there,
there was narcotic sales going on there.
The alderman of the ward was saying he's seeing people
going in there even though it's supposed to be closed.
We met with the owner and the owner, you know,
had the usual story, I'm being picked on.
I'm like, well, you're not being picked on.
You were actually at that meeting in '81.
This particular owner where we gave them a list
and we have the list here and happy to share with you.
You know, here are the top reasons why
we have to shut a business down and,
you know, no, it wasn't, you know,
you're not being picked on,
you're not being discriminated against.
The person that owns the store directly across from you
is the same demographic as you are
and that store is immaculate,
yet there is issues at your store.
So we do work with them, you know, we tell them,
this is what you need to do.
You get a letter from us.
These are the dangers and hazardous conditions
that you need to fix.
When you fix them, please call us.
We will go out and fix 'em.
This particular person kept saying they fixed it
and they didn't and we get the photographs of, you know,
the gas shutoffs switch not being fixed.
You know, a car fire takes about 1,000 gallons of water
to put out.
If you got an underground gas tank that's on fire,
that's dangerous for the workers,
it's dangerous for the patrons,
it's dangerous for our first responders
and it's dangerous for the members of those communities.
I appreciate that.
We take it very serious and we work with people,
you know, we're happy to tell them, you know,
this is what you need to fix.
I got it, I'm running out of time,
so I got on more question.
So around this strategic task force,
I'm looking to get CPD and yourself and some other folks
involved to figure out, again,
how do we make sure we hold the bad characters
accountable, but at the same time,
those folks that are impacted by some of the public safety
issues that are occurring in the city and get caught up
in these situations, how are we making sure
that we're getting them up op open up quicker
so that way again, they can begin,
have revenue for the city, hire people from the community
'cause a lot of times these businesses
that are located there,
50% of their workforce comes from that neighborhood
and so when we have 'em closed, that means no one's working.
That means that there's no revenue coming into the city.
So we're gonna have a further discussion on this,
but I just think that the strategic task force in some cases
is shrapnel hitting some folks that are not the bad actors.
They're just getting caught up in a policy
that we put forward to try to get these bad actors.
Yeah, I mean, happy to discuss that.
Again, we work with each individual owner.
Most of these you can pull a permit in a day.
These are mainly electrical issues or plumbing issues,
but they are still very important issues.
I have honest discussions with the owner.
I'm like, you know, I wish you would care more
about your workers and your patrons
before you have to get shut down
because all of a sudden it's when they get shut down,
that's when they start caring about their workers
and the people that are in those neighborhoods
and that needs to change as well
and always happy to have the conversation.
I appreciate it, thank you.
Guys keep up the great work.
Thank you, Alderman Villegas.
Alderman Burnett, followed by Alderman Harris.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon or good evening, Commissioner.
Appreciate you and all your staff.
I don't know, I guess I'm like a lot of folks.
I've been dealing with Marlene and Carl for a long time.
I pretty much just call them all the time, everything,
but I know my staff tend to call Stella Black a lot.
Is it Stella Black? Ernestine.
Ernestine Black, I apologize.
Ernestine Black, yeah, they call Ernestine a lot.
And so we just wanted to say thank you guys for everything.
Matter of fact, Carl was such a good guy.
He was off work and answered my call,
you know, so, and still took care of the business,
so I just wanna say thank you very much, Carl.
Glad to see you back at work, Joe.
But also, Commissioner, I noticed that in the book
that I thought that that weren't you,
are commissioners getting COLAs or no,
'cause it seemed like your salary stays the same.
I think now have the discussion with budget.
I think we all get COLAs.
I don't know if that was a typo that they had in the book,
but I'm still at the same salary in this book
as I was last year.
Well that's the interesting thing.
If I was you, I'd talk
to the Budget Department about that. (laughing)
That's interesting, it seems like everybody else
went up a little bit except you.
But, Commissioner, and I know I said this last year
and I'm still experiencing it with some of my constituents.
In particular, Carl's helping me with a guy.
He keep getting different inspectors, right?
He do the work, a different inspector come,
they tell him to do something else, he spend more money,
then that inspector don't come back, check it,
then another inspector come
and tell him to do something else
and it is costing these folks money and driving them crazy.
I think you all need to figure out a way
to like keep an inspector on a project 'cause you know,
or all of them need to be reading from the same book
'cause it seem like people got different, you know,
they'll come in and I don't know if this is true or not,
but people be like, they a different inspector come
and see something different
and add something else on to the violation, you know,
and make 'em do something else after he finished the thing
that he had to do and so that's a concern
of my constituents.
I get that complaint periodically.
Hopefully you all can remedy that
because that really drives people crazy.
They don't mind doing what they have to do,
they just don't wanna keep doing something different.
And especially if they in court and stuff 'cause they trying
to get out of court and all of those different
kind of things.
But other than that, you know, your guys,
they work very well with my office.
They help us a lot in helping people in our community.
I just wanna say thank you
and hopefully they get that right on your COLA, man.
I wish you luck on that. Thank you, Alderman.
Thank you for your comments and your questions.
We do strive to get consistency and that's something
that we will continue to work on.
All right, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Burnett.
Alderman Harris.
Thank you, Chairman.
I wanna thank Marlene Hopkins and Carl Byrd,
I mean my office, we reach them to death.
So they are our biggest interact, they act, oh God,
they are interacting with our office in a manner
that I am super proud of, they work really hard.
Marlene is the boots on the ground kind of person
who is everywhere and I really wanna say thank you
so that she'll know, Commissioner,
and so that you'll know how hard she's working
and she's out there, she's doing it
and she's doing the job right by the books
and so I appreciate her hard work and her commitment,
and to Carl, who my staff just loves to death.
Not that they don't love Marlene,
but they bother Carl a lot more
than I let them bother Marlene. (chuckling)
But I'm concerned about our,
tell me what our demo budget is.
Our budget?
So we are at, we have an increase of two positions,
which I'm grateful for.
No, what's the total budget for demos?
For demo properties?
Oh, for demo properties.
So, the budget's, it's actually a geo bond
that we draw from, which I believe is around $10 million
for the geo bonds,
but to date we've spent $6 million on demolitions
and we spent, what do we have?
I don't know.
So by the end of the year
we will have expended whatever the budgeted amount,
or pretty close to that, right?
Yep, pretty close to,
but we get replenished in 2024.
So, if that is not enough,
I'd like you to get some more money
because there's a ton of stuff in the ward
and for many of us, as our new wards have increased,
so have the type of properties that we get
that just like in a ward where you get extra blocks,
whether 7th Ward got some of my bad stuff,
I got some bad stuff, so I got a few extra properties
that we need to really, really work on as a city.
I just don't think that there's enough money
to invest in 'em, to save 'em,
so I wanna make sure that we have enough money
to at least start the dialogue about
with the Building Department about whether we can,
they can be saved or whether they can need to be demoed.
Yeah, thank you, Alderman,
and always you'll get those addresses just us right away.
I will, you know I will. Oh yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you for your compliments.
Thank you, Alderman Harris, Alderman Hadden.
Thank you, Chair, and thanks, Commissioner, for being here
and Marlene and the whole team.
I really appreciate you guys' partnership,
especially over the last several months
you've helped me even when I don't like the answers,
so appreciate you. (chuckling)
I've only got two questions.
One, and this is just a through the Chair request.
I'd love to see by ward just a breakdown of what
kind of calls you've had around the cooling ordinance.
And I would also like to see it for the heat ordinance.
I know we're just beginning the season, but you know,
from before, so if you could get those through the Chair,
I would appreciate that. Sure.
And my second question is,
and you were speaking a little bit about this,
but how many vacancies did you fill this year?
So I actually have some information
on the cooling ordinance.
We've done 497 inspections so far.
And we've taken, we've filed five circuit court cases
on that vacancies.
Wait, wait, before you move on, I just wanna note,
you don't have to have the exact numbers here.
But you guys know, Commissioner Beaudet has done some
of those inspections personally,
including buying batteries for remote controls,
so thank you for that.
Thank you.
And then for vacancies, we currently have 59 vacancies,
but actually it's now it's 56 because we onboarded
some more folks this recently, but you know,
I'm happy to say we're working with DHR
and we are in the process
of filling most of those vacancies.
You talk about the work that Marlene does,
I mean, she does the interviews,
she's got 16 interviews scheduled for,
or she's got interviews scheduled for 16
building construction commissioners coming up very shortly.
We are posting for other vacancies.
How many, if you've got this available,
if not, through the Chair,
how many positions did you fill this year so far?
And I ask that just because it seems notable
that you've actually filled quite a few.
So I'm happy we filled 20 so far.
So we 18 of inspectors and two project managers
for our permitting side.
Oh, that's fantastic.
We heard some positive news like that from Streets and San
and I'm just wondering if you've, if things have been
working well, have you've been supported by human resources,
is that going well for you?
Yes, we're getting the stuff posted.
The challenge is the people that are doing interviews
are the people right here.
It's hard to take Marlene out of the field for a day,
if it's even possible.
She's probably doing interviews
and working the phones at the same time.
But, you know, we're pushing while we have
the opportunity now with Mayor Johnson
and filling these vacancies,
we're taking full advantage of that, you know,
and we have to, because, you know,
we are an older department.
83% of us are over 45 years old.
51% of us are over 55.
We've only have 2% that are under 34 years old.
(alderwoman laughing)
Well, thank you.
We gotta continue to fill these positions.
Well, I appreciate it.
I think that's really positive news over this year
and so it's exciting to see in departments
that are so important to kind of the day to day
of our constituents lives that you guys
are able to make that progress so we hope to continue
to be partners in helping you.
I know Alderwoman Taylor put together job fairs
that several of us sponsored.
I know we've got another one coming up on the 28th
and I look forward to more of those opportunities
so we can push your positions out and get our constituents
engaged in some of those city jobs,
so thank you and thank you, Chair.
Thank you, and the job fairs are very important
'cause we need to fill the pipeline in the skilled trades.
We've got 400,000 open positions coming into this year
nationally in skilled trades and the trade numbers
are going way down and the trades people
are getting grayer like myself.
We need that pool to grow that we can draw
the future inspectors and permit reviewers from.
Thank you, Alderman Hadden,
Alderman Scott followed by Alderman Vasquez.
Hello, how are you guys?
Hey Alderman, how are you?
I got a few questions and thank you.
And it's always a mess in my ward, but,
and so that leads to one of my questions.
What plan do you have to address some of the,
not some, like a lot of the abandoned buildings?
What kind of plan do you have to address
the abandoned buildings?
Well, I've said this in prior hearings.
The plan needs to be comprehensive
and it needs to be a collaboration
with a number of departments.
I always said the easiest thing for me to do
is to go out and write a ticket to them
and to have the Law Department do an enforcement,
but what's the end game?
It's not just a matter of citing these buildings.
We cannot find a ticket or demolish
our way out of this problem.
So that's where we need to work
with the Department of Housing who has some funding
to do some stuff with these buildings
and Department of Planning and Development,
the Department of Law to make sure that
these are going through the court system as quick as we can.
The goal is not to demolish buildings
'cause once it's gone, it's gone.
Correct.
Now all I've done is, in some areas,
is create an open air drug market.
It's not a drive-through drug market
so we need to get these properties into the hands
of responsible owners that are going to
do something with it, but, you know, that said,
the best intended owners and non-profits,
it's hard to rehab these buildings, they need money,
they need funding to do it, so, you know, we need to have,
again, that start-to-finish end game of, you know,
how we're gonna turn these buildings around.
And how hard is it, you know,
I know in a lot of areas,
there are a lot of buildings that are on the demo list
and so what can prevent a building
from getting on a demo list?
Again, the quickest we can get
to that building, the better.
I know there's always been talk of automation.
What I like to see from automation is something
that a tool we could actually use,
which is predictive analytics.
So we've got all this information that comes in
into government as well as the private sector.
So if we start to see a building that is late
on its property taxes or utility bills,
or they get a lot of calls from Streets and San
or CDOT for stuff that's going on outside the building,
even police and fire, we know that something bad
is probably happening inside that building.
That building is deteriorating.
So if we can get those key indicators
and get to those buildings quickly
and start enforcement action before it
unfortunately ends up on the demolition court call,
we could save a lot more of those buildings.
Okay, and I mean, and Marlene has worked with me
with a few, a lot of buildings in my ward from saving it
from being demoed because she said that's, I mean,
that's not typically what we want and I always plead and beg
not to demo, but some of 'em are just, like you said,
I think the last one we demoed was,
couldn't get the homeless people out,
I couldn't get the drugs out and we
kinda like had no other choice.
Nobody owned the building and I couldn't sell the building.
So other than that, that was, you know,
that was more of a justified reason, but I try to,
in the 24 Ward, I try to save as many as I have
not to add to that 3,000 plus number that I have.
Do we have a, can I for back to the Chair
or can we start getting quarterly inspection reports?
And even if you have like typical,
but you do, I haven't, well I haven't seen it in my report
in my emails for the possible demo list
that you'll do sometimes that you send out.
Can you start sending those.
We could work with, again that goes back to technology.
All this is something we should be able to do.
You can do anything on this device here, you know,
call a stranger to come pick you up,
drop you off at another stranger's house and have a stranger
go pick you dinner up and bring it to you.
I know more about my dog's medicine and delivery on my phone
than I know about some of the things that government works,
so government needs to be, use technology
to get all this information out to your office
and to the public so we can start following these items.
Did you ask for that in your budget?
Well, we asked for a lot of stuff with our IT upgrade
so what we are very adamant about is that
we are not going to accept a like-for-like system.
So this goes back several years.
I don't want them to repeat the Hanson seven system,
which is not user-friendly to any of us.
It doesn't even talk to inspection side,
doesn't talk to the permit side,
Hanson seven, so that's where we get a lot of, you know,
misinformation that violations have been open for 10 years
when they've actually closed out
but the system doesn't recognize that
so we need a system that works for us and works for you
and works for our community
and that's why we've been very adamant with former AIS
and even back when it was do it that we just do not,
don't give us a like-for-like system,
give us something that we could use.
All those reports, we should just be able to,
your staff should be able to just go on those
and generate those reports pressing a button.
We're not there yet,
but that's where we're fighting to get to.
I appreciate that, thank you.
I'm done, okay.
You had the look in your eyes
that you had one more question.
I did not.
Well, we'll let that go.
Alderman Vasquez followed by Alderman Lawson.
Thank you, Chairman, so to follow up kind of on that line
of questioning, now that we've got DTI
where we're able to thankfully split AIS back to get that,
who's the point person at Department of Buildings
to talk about the upgrades
that you wanna see in that system
'cause we're gonna be talking to DTI regularly now
and wanna make sure that we're bridging that gap.
So right now, myself, Marlene, and Grant work
with the DTI team.
We have an open deputy spot for IT.
That person left.
We're trying desperately to fill that
so that would hopefully be the point person
'cause the struggle is I've got Marlene and Grant talking IT
when they should be doing permitting and inspections
and enforcement, so we wear many hats
in the Building Department.
Our deputies do not sit in offices.
They're boots on the ground folks
as if you've heard and seen yourself, so, you know,
it would be nice to have to fill that position so we
could have somebody that really can monitor
these programs and advocate for what we need.
Absolutely, no, thank you for clarifying that.
So we'll help like get that application out there for folks.
I think that makes absolute sense
to what Alderwoman had mentioned earlier.
I think a lot of us could speak firsthand
to the fact you'll drive up and do investigations yourself,
which one, is commendable, but two,
we need you in the office delegating to other folks
so what would it it look like ideally for you all
to have the number of building inspectors
that you would want that would allow you
to kind of delegate that out.
Like if you could through the Chair, submit like what number
you're asking for and what that would look like
that would be helpful through the Chair
'cause I wanna make sure of time.
Can we also get,
sorry, I'm checking here.
So I wanted to get a heat map
of the amount of cases that end up in court
after they go through your system
'cause a lot of that has been a little bit of hardship
on our end too is like we've got folks
that are not affectionately called slumlords
that are screwing up some of these buildings
and they ultimately end up in court
and it's hard to hold 'em accountable
and so just knowing what that heat map looks like citywide
would be important.
Similarly, along kind of like some of the tech stuff,
but I think this is more about a database
of just contact information when it comes to landlords.
With the amount of folks that we have citywide
owning these buildings,
it is sometimes very challenging to find out
who one needs to go to to hold them accountable
and so are there any efforts there to actually set up
kind of like a registry or database of all the folks
that own any properties here in the city?
That we haven't explored.
Again, that would be a major IT lift
when we're trying to actually get to where we should be
as far as having IT for permanent inspections.
All that information is with the clerk
of the Cook County Clerk,
so all ownership information on properties
is with the clerk, as well as anybody
that has a financial interest in that property,
so what's different from the Building Department,
from other departments is we don't write a ticket
and just hand it to someone who's ever standing
outside the business or put it on the door.
We have to send it to the Law Department.
The Law Department has to do a title search,
which could be very, it takes time and we could send it to,
you know, anywhere from one to six people
because for us to go to court and have any,
and for the judge to have any jurisdiction
over that real property and those real property rights
we have to go through, we have to notify everyone
that's got an ownership interest in it.
I gotcha, so I'd advocate as we figure out the IT person,
that's something we're just pulling to your point,
county databases and other to kind of create a database,
so I'd highlight that as like also something to focus on.
Another question we have from staff.
So, you know, we like to follow up after inspections,
but we don't have access to the DOB findings directly.
We have to go to Ernestine to kind of make those calls
and I'm sure you're inundated with those kind of calls.
Is there just a way for us to access
what those findings are anywhere?
I know that's part of the IT problem,
issue that we're working on.
Gotcha.
And I could find out where my dog's food is, you know,
being delivered when it's being replenished and everything,
but I can't find out results of building inspections online.
I think it's pretty clear you know I'm gonna be all over
trying to make sure we help you out with that.
It improves so much when it comes to city experience,
so thank you for that.
I think lastly the question I have is more related
to like ADUs, container homes.
As we're trying to get that going,
we see a lot of challenges from folks who wanna develop that
who then are subject to either zoning or building permits
and they're just confused and so is there any like team
or process to try to help facilitate that
so we get more ADUs and similar type of properties online?
I know we work with housing and DPD on that.
It touches a lot of people.
I think Buildings is probably the easiest part
because it's a technical building code, you follow it,
but then we have to factor in, you know,
you have to run water lines out to those.
That's not cheap.
The zoning aspect, I know Patrick and I discussed this
before and now there's, the city's trying get it done
and get it where it's cost-effective.
If you have to spend $2 million on a container home,
it's not cost-effective.
You're not doing it.
So, yeah, I would say,
and I could follow up on conversation offline
about like a task force that would have the three apartments
kind of represented to help expedite more of that creation
'cause it's more affordability, which is necessary,
so thank you all for all the amazing work that you all do.
I can't thank y'all enough and thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Vasquez.
Alderman Lawson, followed by Alderman Lopez.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you Commissioner
and your team.
I've worked with many of you for a very long time
and so I appreciate the depth of service that we have
here in the box.
I'll echo what my colleague
from the 40th Ward said about ADUs.
I know we're gonna take a deeper dive, you know,
over the winter on that and how we can really streamline
so that, you know, we get more,
especially around coach houses.
I've heard that that's especially difficult.
I have a number of questions that are probably gonna be
through the Chair, but I wanted to ask,
right now, if a building inspection is requested,
what is the average turnaround time
for the inspector to visit?
We try to get out there in a couple weeks.
Some are longer.
We just onboarded a bunch of electricians,
so we knocked that down.
Personally I just got an electrical inspection
and I told the wife it's gonna be three weeks.
Good.
I talked to DPD and Acting Commissioner Murphy
about this last week.
I'd asked the current time for permitting,
the average time for non-planned developments
and I guess it was like 104 days, roughly, 109 days.
Yeah, it's down to 101 today.
I'm grateful for Patrick Murphy
pointing out that for 101, 39 days is with the city.
The remaining time is with the two-thirds
of the permitting process,
it's they're waiting on the design professional
to get back to us.
And that's helpful for us because we get those calls.
That's when I call and say,
"Hey, what's going on with this?"
And I've done enough of them to know that it's been sitting
with the architect for three weeks.
It happens all the time.
But I just, you know, we've gotta always do our part.
Do we have a benchmark for that timeframe though?
I thought it was 90 days is what sticks in my head.
It varies.
Again, it's really outside of our control.
If you get your plans to us and they're good,
you can get a permit in 20 days.
Right.
And I know it's, in talking to the developers,
they always, and they apologize to me a lot
because they talk about it takes eight months
to get a permit and I'm like,
"No, you got your permit in 60 days."
Like, "Well, I didn't mean you, I meant the process."
Right. So the process
from going to, you know,
DPD on the conceptual aspect of it and going through,
if they have to go through plan development
and if they have to go to a committee and then to council
and then they've got a bunch of financing issues.
Especially in the last year, right?
Yeah.
And then too, maybe just, you know,
the new e-system, how is that gonna help
with transparency for the developer,
for the architect, for the expediter, for offices like ours?
I'm sorry, the new IT? Yeah.
Well, hopefully it's gonna be transparent
where you could see everything you need to see
so you don't have to track me down.
Will aldermen have access to that?
Hopefully, yeah. It would be helpful.
And the public will have access to it too.
Okay, great.
So they'll probably, you know, if I'm looking
at my neighbor's house and there's something going on,
I could see, they could see right now if there's a permit,
but they could see what the activity is.
They could see who the licensed contractors are
so if they, if it's supposed to be lost in electrical
out there and there's a Beaudet electrical truck out there,
they know that, you know.
Sign me up for Beaudet Electrical.
I have a couple things just through the Chair then,
'cause you probably don't have 'em,
but our 10-year trend on permits, you know,
looking at five years is kind of tough
because of where we've been up and down,
both the volume and value.
I see less permits in my ward than ever, I feel like,
so I'm interested in that.
And then just the 10 year trend on time to permit,
I know we're moving in the right direction there.
You mentioned cranes.
How many and maybe through the Chair,
where are they right now?
I have one. I have that here.
Bear with me, sorry.
Miscellaneous file.
Oh, thank you.
Glad I got Marlene here 'cause it's end of day.
I'm not as good at the end of the day
as I'm in the beginning of the day.
So we currently have 13 that are up,
four on the West Side, or three on the West Side,
four on the South Side, two on the North Side,
four on the Central Side.
But you know, there's cranes and Woodland
in Grand Boulevard which we didn't see before.
Right, great.
That's encouraging.
18 in 2023 already here today,
which is one more than we had last year total.
Okay, good.
How many are private versus public
might be the other question.
I don't know if you have that available.
I don't, I would probably say they're all private.
I'm not aware of any big public project going on right now.
Great, and then just my last question.
I know you mentioned diversity in the trades
and I didn't know if the department,
Hire 360 hosted all of the new members this spring
and their program working with the trades,
working with young people,
does the department have a relationship with Hire 360?
So what does that look like and how can we be helpful
to that mission?
Yeah, so Jay's great and we also work with Cisco,
which is all the unions got together and started one.
That's Dan Allen,
our former Chief Electrical inspector runs that.
Powering Chicago, Albert Waters.
134 is an excellent program.
We work with all of the trade associations,
Isea, Black Contractors, Owners and Executives.
Women in Trades, Chicago Federation of Women Contractors.
So we work with all of them because this is something
that's personal to me, being the son of electrician,
that we need to get folks into the trades.
We're under 10% in the skilled trades for women.
Were under 7% in the skilled trade for African Americans.
We're under a third for Hispanics.
And what was troubling for me is when I was looking
and seeing that the people in the apprenticeship programs
isn't even gonna keep up with those numbers.
So we need to get the young folks into the trades.
It's a great paying job, it's a career.
Exactly.
And we need them because, you know,
we desperately need folks in the trades.
That's one of the three things
that is hurting development right now.
Number one is financing
'cause nobody can get money to build.
The other is materials have gone up 41%.
And we still have one, well, now we've got two wars going on
that is disrupting the supply chain.
But even if we had financing and we had materials,
we still need people to actually do the work.
I mentioned on my solar panels, I told the wife,
I'm like, you know, we got the permit, great,
now it may be a couple months before they can come out
and install it because they don't have electricians
to do that work.
Great, thank you again.
I kind of miss working a little more closely like we did
the previous four years,
but appreciate all that you do and all you do in 44.
Thanks, Commissioner.
I do wanna give a shout out to our friends
in the skilled trades.
We've got the best apprenticeship programs in the world.
Awesome.
We're looking for people to go into 'em.
Great, thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Lawson.
Alderman Lopez, followed by Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth.
Thank you, Chairman,
and good evening Commissioner and everybody.
I get to stay for you and Animal Care and Control
and we talked about dogs in both segments.
I'm excited about that.
But I am gonna make this quick
in light of someone's tickets.
Thank you.
I'm gonna hold that against you later, by the way.
He's not even listening to me, he's just...
He's gonna inspect the theater while he is there too.
I know.
It's quite all right.
If I may get through the Chair, list of the vacant,
an update on the vacant property registration,
how many vacant properties per ward.
If we can get a list of open building violations by ward
and by time that they've been open,
if we could get a list of the active demo orders by ward
and by date of issuance,
also, if you can provide us through the Chair,
information on receivership programs,
if we have any that we are monitoring,
if there are any that are going on throughout the wards,
as well as our delegate partners and any potential RFPs
for the board ups or things that we do.
One of the things that we hear about constantly here
at City Council is Mark Carter,
individuals will come every meeting and talk about the need
to use our programs to put people
in the communities to work.
It seems that even though we geo bond out the 10 million
for demolitions and things of that nature,
it never seems to be going towards individuals
from the community to do that work or being hired
to do the work, especially when we know that it's, you know,
10 wards specifically on the South and West Side
that see the most activity.
We should be using some of that money towards putting people
to work in those regards so if you could share
anything with that, I would appreciate it.
I wanna quickly just talk about,
I know you stated to my colleague from the 49th Ward
that you're making progress on vacancies
with regards to the 59 that you have listed.
How many of these 59 have been listed as vacant all year?
We can get that information through the Chair.
Roughly. Yeah.
I don't know 'cause we know people will leave
and then we fill it up.
We promoted, some of these are from promotions
that have been moved up so we moved up
supervisor electrician to the chief.
That opens up a supervisor,
we'll move an electrician up to that.
It just, the reason I ask is because every year
we see the same lists in the same categories
and I know Alderman Riley talks about the fact that we have
this recurring cycle of almost like permanent vacancies
that we never seem to catch up on,
so hearing that year after year,
I'm just trying to get a sense of where our issues are
in terms of hiring and I know we have issues with trades.
I know we have issues with getting people into the trades.
But I also know that we have a nine month window for hiring
people and the fact that departments have to do their own
background checks, which will take up on Friday
with whomever's in charge of human resources now.
That isn't calls that quite frankly Marlene or Ernestine
or anybody else up here should be having to make
because you have jobs to do,
being HR directors is not one of them,
so I just wanna make sure that if wherever these bottlenecks
are happening, that we're able to pinpoint them
in no uncertain terms.
As much as you guys try to play nice with each other,
I know you're not being 100% when you tell us
that this is how it is 'cause we know how it is.
Additionally, with regards to my colleague
who's not here from the 40th Ward, you know,
ever since Judy Friedland was up there,
we've been talking with the department, with law,
and everybody that's here moving closer and closer this way
about the need to put together a user-friendly list
of landlords as well as tenants so that we could avoid
some of the pitfalls
when it comes towards rental properties.
And every year it's the same thing.
It's technology, it's the Law Department,
it's this, it's that.
And I think I can probably say that I've heard it
for seven out of the last eight years.
Am I gonna hear this again next year?
Hopefully we're not gonna hear it again next year
because I'm as frustrated as you are with giving
the same answers year in year and repeating what,
not only what Judy said, but what Alicia Davis said,
what Mike Merchant said, going back several commissioners.
It seems like all of us know the problem
and yet we are unable to fix it
and I don't know how that's possible,
especially over something so important where we have
in particular so many buildings that have violations,
buildings where we have open-ended questions,
buildings where we have lack of activity.
And especially when it comes towards for people who rent,
not knowing what kind of building they're going into
or what kind of person they're dealing with.
We know bad actors when I call and you know,
Marlene or you or anybody, I could say,
I've got management company X and if I hear that sigh
on the other side of the phone,
you guys know because of the institutional knowledge,
but there should be an easier way
for people to identify that.
And I think that, and forgive me, Chairman,
I'm not gonna ask for round two,
I was gonna ask this last question.
Is there a way for us to then,
as we're talking about how we make all of that user-friendly
and public 'cause that's always been the discussion,
do we need to start thinking about having
like annual inspections or pre-rental inspections
for properties so that we can start forcing that creation
of those databases that we need for public consumption
so that they know that they're moving into an apartment
that has heat or with a landlord that has routinely failed
to meet building code violations?
Well, thank you for the question.
I would really like to get our IT system up and running
so that people have this information at their fingertips.
I really would not wanna do annual inspections
or pre-inspections of rental units.
To be honest with you,
we will never have the resources to do that just.
As a city.
As a city, yeah.
Now, would we be able to do that if they are hiring
certified people to do those inspections
that are approved by the city?
Don't know if that,
if there's enough folks out there to do that either,
to be honest with you, and again, whether that's,
you take that with a grain of salt,
but you're paying someone to inspect it
and they're gonna give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
Again, if we can get all this information that we have
online so that people could look at it
and digest it themselves and if you're looking
to rent a building and you see it's got a history
of violations, that's one that you should probably
take a pass on.
I really wanna get information out there.
That's the best tool we have
and I truly appreciate you and your colleagues pushing that.
That's what needs to happen and I'm very grateful
to Mayor Johnson, two of the folks that he's brought on,
John Robertson and Mary Richardson-Lowry former building
commissioners, so, you know, they understand it
and now we have folks that can help us push
that down through the mayor's office to try to get us
this information that we need.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth,
followed by Alderman Robinson.
Hi, good evening. Evening.
Thank you.
Hi, good evening, thank you for being here
and thank you for all the work that you're doing.
From the 48th Ward, my team thanks you and your department
for your quick response to some of the issues
that we have had in the 48th Ward.
We're a very condensed ward and we have a lot of high rises
and a lot of CHA buildings and SROs,
seniors and those with disabilities
and time is really of the essence
when it's a public safety issue really
when they can't get out of their buildings.
I wanted to thank you for the latest one
that we had to call you about where your team came out
and found 17 violations,
so I just wanna appreciate you for all your work, thank you.
Can you explain how you work with CHA and other departments?
Or do you work with CHA and other departments?
You just talked about your,
the possibility of doing routine inspections.
The issue that I have is that we don't know
that there's an issue until there's a public safety issue.
So what is it that we can do as alderpeople to help
our residents stay safe
so that we don't actually have to call you?
Oh, and thank you for the question.
It's the million dollar question that we always have.
It's like how do we use our public sector
and our private sectors and our other sister agencies,
other government agencies to really get everything together
information-wise and cut off
a lot of these issues at the past.
So, you know, folks can always call 301.
We work with CHA.
We notify them when we find something in their buildings
to have that fixed right away,
get elevators or anything else,
but again, it really is a large team effort
and it's a constant effort.
Thank you.
How does it work with 311
in terms of prioritizing buildings?
So 301 is a, calls going to 301,
they get triaged by 301 and when they come down,
when they assign it to the respective departments.
So when a call comes into the Building Department,
it's looked at by one of our various supervisors
for our bureaus.
We started asking 301 to ask, are there seniors there,
are there children there?
So we know if we have a senior that we need
to get to that building a lot quicker than otherwise.
Or there's children there,
we need to get to there as quick as we can.
And then from there it's a triage to, you know,
obviously dangerous and hazardous stuff goes first.
Thank you, I appreciate that,
especially when you're talking about elevators.
We have a large number of people who use assisted devices
and those with disabilities, so it is, again,
it's a public safety issue when they can't get out
of the building and we don't want them to get stuck
in their first.
I appreciate all the things that you're saying
about bringing people into the trades as well.
I was at Hire 360 and that was fantastic.
Can you talk a little bit about how you're promoting
what your department does maybe with Chicago Public Schools?
Sure, and Marlene reminded me
that there is a special notification in 301
for whenever there's a senior there.
But for CPS, we work with CPS,
we work with city colleges as well.
I do career day fairs.
I used to do career day at CPS myself.
Again, just going back on my background about what,
you know, where my father was, three dead end jobs,
a family of eight in a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment.
And then he got in the 134 electrician apprenticeship
program and it changed his life,
changed my life, changed my grand, changed my kids' life.
So, you know, we stress to the kids that this is a trade,
a skill that you're learning that you're gonna have
for your rest of your life.
They will pay you to go to school.
You're not going to a four-year college
where you're going into debt.
You get paid while you're in the apprenticeship program.
When you come out, you've got a skill.
You're working with folks that have been in the business
for a long time, you're learning from them
and, you know, today's tradespeople
are tomorrow's contractors,
and they're the future developers.
So, you know, if you wanna stay in the trades as my dad did,
it's fantastic, but if you, you know,
if he wanted to open up his own electrical contractor
position, he could have done that
and then he could have went on to be a developer,
so we really stress the kids and we're at the CPS fairs
and our folks there, and they could see us
and see what we do and hopefully
they'll get in the apprenticeship program,
they'll get the experience and they can come on
and then be building inspectors
and when they're in their late 20s or their 30s.
Thank you.
I just wanna comment one thing that I feel like
the 48th Ward is one of the most diverse wards
and as I was knocking on doors last year,
someone said, "This neighborhood used to be so diverse."
And I said, "What do you mean?"
And they said, "Well, there used to be a policeman
over there and a plumber over there
and an electrician up here."
And I do think that we need to talk about the value
of trades as a career, especially with our young people.
And again, I just wanted to thank you for all that you do
to keep Chicago neighbors safe.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Thank you Alderman Manaa-Hoppenworth, Alderman Robinson.
Commissioner, good to see you.
Thank you for your time today.
It is very difficult in this climate
to onboard small businesses.
And a lot of times when businesses
are coming into our wards,
it's very daunting and a lot of businesses
wanna give up spending more money than they have to
and I believe that it's not anything against the department,
I just think that it's a process that people
just don't know how to get through.
But I want to figure out how do we clone Carl Byrd
and really at all departments
dealing with small businesses such as businesses in general.
I had to call Carl because I had a situation
where I had a business owner
that just didn't know what to do.
Carl went out to that business and kind of walked through
the process and so I just wanted to share that story
with you and maybe we can figure out how to mirror that
across the department because I think it's important
as we are trying, again, desperately bring businesses
into our ward and sometimes we make it difficult,
just government in general.
And so however we could figure that out,
I would appreciate that, but I also just wanted to share
with you the success story that I had in my ward.
Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.
We work with, you know, we try to work as best we can
with our small businesses.
I had this discussion with the prior planning commissioner.
We give people neighborhood opportunity grants
and then we hang the mission accomplished banner
and that's just the beginning
'cause now they've gotta get architects,
they have to get contractors, they've gotta navigate
the building permit process, the licensing process.
And you know, again, I keep saying we need
a start-to-finish process in the city and an end game
rather than just giving somebody money and saying, you know,
"Here, we helped you out," 'cause it is, you know,
if you're not familiar with it, it is daunting.
It's like, how do I hire an architect?
How do I hire contractors?
A lot of times it's not just an architect,
it's you gotta hire the right architect,
Absolutely, and I think also,
I wanna wrap up by saying that as a new alder,
it's also helpful to have somebody that's responsive,
that also can help me figure out
what's right and what's wrong,
and then just being responsive to the questions and concerns
that I have so I just wanted to share that with you
and really appreciate the work from the department.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Thank you, Alderman Robinson.
I actually have a couple items as well
and then Vice Chair Lee had some items.
I missed you?
Oh, go ahead.
Go ahead, Alderman Mosley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to the Building Department.
I mean, from Marlene you have been amazing.
Every time Carla's call, Carl has been out
to our ward meetings and thank God
for Ernestine Black as well.
It's just truly phenomenal team all around.
I wanna start out talking about vacant properties and ags.
How do we expedite kind of the penalties
and court cases for vacant properties?
I'm speaking of this because I hear anecdotally
that there have been vacant properties in my ward
for 20 years or so forth,
and folks are just trying to figure out how their quality
of life can be improved considering
that they have a vacant properties,
which then the broken window, the torn down porches,
the raccoons in the back and things of that nature.
Yeah, so again, we work very closely with the community
and the Law Department.
I'm very grateful that Mary Richardson-Lowry
is now the Corporation Council because she sat in the seat
and understands the challenges with vacant properties
and we've discussed other new ways we can attack that.
The courts are the courts,
so we do have to go through that process.
And we do work with the judiciary and Marlene works
with the judiciary very closely.
And to their credit,
there are some judges that actually go out to the property
and look at it themselves and, you know,
see how it's impacting the community
so we're continuing to push that,
continuing to push it to get those properties
in the hands of responsible individuals.
But as I mentioned before,
that's only part of the game because the, you know,
they need resources to then rehab those buildings.
So it's not just a matter of giving somebody a deed
and saying, you know, you now own the building.
They're like, oh, okay, great
but now I've got to get architects, get contractors,
get resources to turn that building around.
So that's where I'm hoping that we can have
a start-to-finish process now.
I know Mayor Johnson is looking at that
rather than just the usual write 'em up,
throw 'em in court and wait for something to happen.
And I often hear banking,
like the banks get brought into the conversation.
Is there a recommendation that I can take and work
with my congressional members to put forth a solution
that will help us?
So some properties are bank owned,
so not every vacant property is the same.
So what we are seeing now with our aging population
is that the owner owns it free and clear.
The owner passes away, has no heirs, or the, you know,
the heirs are grown adults in California or Florida
and have no interest in the property.
And then it's very difficult to get that into the court case
to get a judge to either put that in a receivership
or turn it over so those are very difficult properties.
One bucket there, another bucket is there is property
that does have a mortgage on it,
so mortgage company calls me,
says we're gonna foreclose on you.
I have this pack up, I leave.
And then the mortgage company's like,
okay, well we're just gonna release the mortgage.
So that property sits with nobody really owning it
and legally I own it still,
but I've long gone and I think that I don't own it anymore
and it deteriorates and trying to get me into court
to work on a building that I thought I don't own anymore.
That's another challenge.
So it's not so much pulling the banks into court.
We do do that as well.
So again, when the Law Department files a case,
it is gonna have a number of people that are on there,
so it's gonna, you know, mortgageor, the mortgagee,
anyone that's got a lien on it, it gets brought into that.
But, you know, developing a strategy for that actually
has an end game in it, which unfortunately is gonna require
some monetary resources to whoever we give that property to,
or whoever hands it, it gets into can actually fix it.
Cook County Land Bank does a good job,
but if they just keep acquiring properties
and they're now sitting vacant and now they're owned
by the land bank, it's not getting us
to where we need to get to.
Squatters, how can your department help residents
quality of life when it comes to squatters?
Unfortunately squatters have more rights than you and I.
That's just the reality of it.
Now, you know, you the people that get deployed in military
and they come back and someone's in their house
or people go on vacation,
they come back, somebody's in their house,
they've got a fake lease,
the police really can't drag them out.
You know, the option is to go to court,
which again is a very, you know,
lengthy process of hiring attorneys
and doing what you have.
But, you know, we try to address squatters to, on our end,
if there's a vacant building, we try to get that,
and it's open, we try to get that boarded up.
If they break in, we try to reboard it,
but unfortunately we can't board a building up
if somebody's in there because then they've got no way out.
So squatters are a real problem all over the country
and I think we, again,
trying to work with the new Corporation Council
and the circuit courts to really come up with a strategy
on how we can address that
because, you know, once they get in,
it's hard to get 'em out.
And if they do get 'em out, a lot of times
they trash the place before they leave.
And this may be another matter that we have
to work at Corporation Council on demolitions.
I just hear all the time that residents call,
they get a response from Department of Buildings,
but saying that it's in demo court
or it's scheduled to be demoed.
Is there a way to expedite those things that are,
have already been marked for demolition?
If we have an active demolition order, you know,
that's one tool to get us to try to get it
in responsible hands so we really do not wanna tear down
a building that is salvageable and is good.
If we tear it down, it's gone.
And the odds of somebody actually building on that property
is very slim and sometimes it doesn't eliminate the problem
because, again, you tore down a closed drug market
and now you just have an open air drug market.
So again, what I would like to try to focus on
is getting all the resources that we have
in the private sector and really have some resources
to address what needs to be done and that building
needs to be fixed up and put in the hands
of a responsible owner, but that takes more
than just building code violations takes more
than just putting it in in court.
Again, it's gonna really come down to, you know,
who is gonna help the nonprofit or the responsible owner
that takes on that property,
who's gonna help them have the resources
to bring it back online either as a their own residence
or a rental. Got it.
Let's talk about open violations
and let's start with businesses.
So like what happens in an instance,
for example, in my ward, there was a business,
BACP went out, Buildings went out, they were fined by BACP,
they were cited by Buildings, but like overage of signage
or excessive signage and it's still there today,
months after they've been cited for.
We'll go back out there again.
Signage, when we take them to court,
the option is what we seek is for them to either get permits
for those signs or if they can't get permits for them,
remove the signs.
And what about open violations
when it comes to residential?
I'm mostly concerned about our seniors who live
and are renting and they call because they don't have heat
and then a building inspector goes out,
they see that there is no heat, a boiler may be missing,
there's no heating unit with inside of their residence
and it's an open violation and all that time,
the senior is left without any heat.
Heat's the one we take very seriously.
Probably the most serious,
one of the most serious violations we have.
So we have a dedicated court call in the circuit court
working with the circuit court judges.
We've got that set aside for a heat call.
And you know, one of the prosecutors there
is assigned to that.
He's very diligent on those heat calls.
And there's times when we had to do receiverships
for heat calls.
And what happens in instances like
we have a reoccurring guest for public comment
that talks about there family's home
was accidentally demolished.
Is the Department of Buildings working with that constituent
to try to bring some resolve or get them an answer.
If you have the address,
I'm happy to look into that, that's probably...
Thank you for that, and then elevators,
I hear that there is large just open violations
around elevators that are not working properly.
And again, thinking about our most vulnerable,
our seniors, our pregnant women,
our disabled folks who rely on those,
is there a strategy to close?
Yeah, so we go out there, we close those.
Unfortunately with elevators,
mechanical systems are the ones that, you know,
require the most maintenance and break down the most.
We know that to be from being in City Hall,
whether the elevators are working or not,
but you know, we're trying to modernize
the elevator systems so we average
about 2,400 annual inspections
annually and about 4,800 elevator cars.
10% of 'em are processed for administrative hearings
and 2% go to circuit court and we stay on them.
It's like if we have to get a receivership,
if the Law Department has to ask the receiver
to step in and fix those elevators,
they do where elevators are are also old,
so they really need to replace those and modernize those.
It's something that elevators we're always going to really,
unfortunately have issues with elevators
just 'cause the nature of the device.
Yeah, no, I'm happy to hear about modernizing
and I mean even the workers that operate those,
the elevator operators
I'm sure will appreciate that as well.
Last thing for me, this doesn't fully reside
in your department, but you are impacted by it.
Can we talk a little bit about seniors who,
and in reverse mortgages and how a senior may transition on
and the family is still there,
there are repairs that need to be made to the home,
but they're not the deed holders and so the repairs
that are getting done aren't necessarily
the best repairs because there are issues
around pulling permits and signing off
and I'm not the deed owner.
What can be, deed holder, what can be done
in these instances to ensure that the repairs
that are being made to homes are done in a satisfactory,
safe and in compliance?
Yeah, well, they could still pull permits.
The heirs can still pull permits, get that work done.
We encourage them to pull permits for several reasons.
One, it's, you know, the work is done
by licensed contractors, so it's safe.
We do generate revenue from permits,
but that's not the purpose of permits.
Purpose of permits are to making sure
that the work is code compliant,
the materials are code compliant.
So, I'm not catching on the backend
where it's gonna cost you five times more
because you did substandard work and meanwhile
the people you hired are long gone.
Well, I guess I should frame it more so
if they are financing or using the property as leverage
to get the work done, how does that work?
We're not so much involved in, I mean, you know,
you pull the permit, you pull the permit
and how you pay for the work,
that's not something that our department looks at.
We just make sure you've got a permit,
that they're licensed folks that are doing the work
and if it requires an inspection,
we go out and we make sure that work has been done properly.
But you know, how it gets paid for,
that's not something that we are involved in.
Thank you again to the Building Department.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Moseley.
Alderman Coleman.
Thank you, Chairman, Commissioner, Ms. Hopkins.
I don't know what you would do without Marlene Hopkins
and Ernestine Black, so I want you to know you're like
Beaudet and his Angels, okay?
What is the timeline for demolition?
Like the average, and I know it's case by case, you know,
pin by pin, but what's the true average timeline?
It varies because again, if it's salvageable property,
we don't move to dumb it out right away.
If it is in the state of deteriorating
where it's a danger to folks,
we could have that bid out in 24, 72 hours.
We had a demolition, or one of our inspectors
actually fell through a floor in a building
we had to demolish.
Permits, can you tell us how you all have kind of pivoted
to make the permitting process more efficient
and are there any upcoming improvements
with the permitting process?
I know I've gotten compliments on how it's gotten better,
but what else are we doing to make it even more efficient?
So I mentioned earlier all of the,
our easy permits are our non-planned based permits
are now finally going on online.
Oh, great. So, you know,
it never made sense to have to come down to City Hall,
pay 30 bucks to park, stand in line and then say,
"I'm sorry, you're missing a signature on page three,
come back," 'cause we've lost those people.
And the more easier you make it to get a permit,
the more people get permits,
which means the more work is being done
by licensed contractors, which means it's safer,
which is best around for everybody.
But permitting we're, again, we're automating
our smaller permits so that's online.
Our larger permits, we continue to work to streamline that.
And I mentioned earlier it's, you know,
two-thirds of the time it takes to take a permit
is traditionally with the other side.
So, you know, the important thing is to get code compliant
drawings to us right away.
And, you know, we do one review, one and done,
that's the best case scenario, but when we have plans
that we have to keep sending back
to the design professionals,
that's when it becomes a lengthy process
and that's where we find that, you know,
two-thirds of the time again is on the other side.
It's my name on it, so I still wear the jacket for it
so all delays get blamed on me.
Always.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Last thing, gut rehabs and illegal gut rehabs
have been more and more popular and the,
I'm finding that permits are not being pulled
for one and two units on my side of in 16 and 20
and probably even the 15th Ward, kind of that Inglewood,
West Inglewood, Greater Inglewood area.
And then we're finding that contractors
are then dumping. Yeah, fly dumps.
Ah-Huh.
Not only in the 2,000 city owned lots,
but there're fly dumps in front of the property.
They're literally throwing- Stuff out the window.
Out the window.
Have we looked at increasing fines,
cracking down, and then what's our timeline
to stick that sticker up?
Because then they'll even find a way to go through the back
or find, get creative with ways of continuing
on their rehab without permits.
What do you recommend we do
to really send out a clear message?
So just call us, call us, call us
'cause you know, we go out, we've got stickers in our cars,
we go out and we put the stickers up ourselves.
If there are folks violating that, then you know,
we will go there, back there with the police if we have to.
These are unlicensed contractors for the most part
so they don't care, their work is suspect.
Somebody is eventually gonna buy that house
or live in that house and suffer the consequences of it.
So, you know, we're out on weekends,
we're out at nights and when I say that's us.
I like to do garage sales on Saturdays in the morning
and I usually end up finding one or two places that I need
to pull over and look at.
And you know, our partners in CDOT,
our partners in the Streets and San, fire,
we all look out for each other, so, you know,
we'll hear about, you know,
potential fly dumping from Streets of San
'cause they gotta clean up all the stuff
that's on the public way,
vice versa that we find a gut rehab that's not,
it's in progress with no permits,
we notify our other agencies because like you said,
they're either throwing that in a vacant lot,
which the city has to clean up,
they should be having to see that dumpster permit,
which they don't have.
They're probably on the public way,
which they don't have see that permit for.
So we, you know, we try to bring all of, you know,
the full force of government down on those folks
'cause those are the ones we need to...
Commissioner, what's the fine for that activity?
Ours is 500 to 1,000 is our general fine range,
but for stop work orders,
so if I have to put a stop work order on you,
you're getting a fine.
And then you're also getting penalties
when you go to pull permits
so you're either paying two or three times
what that permit fee would be.
You're then paying that.
In the meantime, you're not doing any work,
and if there are any licensed contractors
we happen to catch out there,
they get bricked for the whole city.
Have we quantified what we in fines for this year?
Or last year?
We could try to get that to you.
Okay. Through the Chair.
And I'm also curious if increasing the fine
have we ever considered. Yeah.
Because it's more,
it's be become more and more prevalent
in communities like mine.
And again, if you know that this fine is only 500
or $1,000, oh you can, you know, I'll handle that.
I can, that's pennies.
If it was more like 2,500, that'll hurt you a little.
Yeah, so we try to work with folks because our fines
go to the property owner.
They don't as much go to the contractors that are caught,
especially if they're unlicensed.
So we try to educate folks.
It's like, if you're gonna do this work, pull a permit.
It's not because I wanna have a permit,
it's because, you know, I'm trying to really protect
what you guys are doing and get it that way
'cause what we usually get is, oh, I didn't know,
they told me they pulled a permit,
I didn't know that, and now the homeowner is being hit
with fines and are running to your offices
saying that they're aggressive.
And I'm really speaking of the vacant properties
that the illegal contractors are doing the work and again,
throwing items outside of the windows.
So just something I just wanted--
Yeah, so I'm gonna just show,
we got about $1.8 million in fines this year.
Okay.
We've got 2.4 for last year.
And last question,
what is ordinance on two-flat buildings
in terms of bathrooms, kitchen, what?
It all depends on the square footage of what they have.
Okay, I'll get that offline.
Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you.
Always a help.
Thank you Alderman Coleman, Alderman Mitchell.
Commissioner, Marlene.
I've noticed over the last few years that properties,
multi-unit properties are being sold with illegal units
and I have no idea how they're making it through
the real estates process.
Can you speak to that?
I just had one couple of 'em like a month ago where,
you know, once you have it, you gotta change,
they have to change zoning and it's ahead,
how are they making it past the real estate process.
What's your thoughts on what we could do?
If they're getting past the real estate process,
they're not hiring lawyers.
So, you know, we are one of the most FOIA departments
in the city and not because they're trying to see
what we're doing, but we have a lot of the records
for buildings so what I tell folks is,
before you buy a building, check the permit history.
That at that rear addition, is there a permit for it?
If you think you're buying a three-story,
a three-unit building,
get a zoning certificate and make sure it's three-story,
three units and not two units.
So, you know, a good real estate lawyer does that.
I didn't even do my own.
When my wife and I bought our house, we hired a lawyer
to do this 'cause I'm emotionally involved in it,
I don't want to be persuaded.
I wanna make sure that you know what I'm buying is what,
what I think I'm buying is actually what I'm buying.
Is it what the inspector.
I'm thinking the inspector should catch that as well.
Well, I mean a home inspector really isn't going,
a private home inspector really isn't gonna look too much
into the zoning so again, what you do is you go to,
you know, you go to DPD and DPD has the records of,
they have zoning certificates,
so if you think it's a five-unit building,
if zoning says it's not a five-unit building,
it's not a five-unit, it's not a legal five-unit building.
It may be a three-unit building that they, you know,
two sellers ago subdivided and the person that just bought
it now is the one that actually got caught buying.
Right.
Like Mike Brady said, "Caveat emptor."
Buyer beware.
To kind of piggyback on what Coleman was talking about,
we have a lot of properties where we call you guys
and you guys shut down for not having the proper permits
and things like that.
I have property that we shut down
like three and four years ago
and they haven't come back to do anything.
Is there some timeframe in which we give 'em?
And I know I talk to you guys so much,
I don't even know why I've never even asked that.
That we give 'em in order to come back
or there's some course of action that the city can take.
No, not really, I mean, if there's an open court case
for work without a permit, that's that,
but if they walk away from it, you know,
they walk away from it.
Then what can we do?
'Cause like I said, I got several properties that we've,
Marlene, John and I have worked on
and they just not have, they just didn't come back.
But they're maintaining the grass.
Well, that's something at least.
Right.
They won't come back and fix 'em, so.
We can't force people to, you know,
rehab their buildings or to sell them or to lease them.
As much as I would like to.
Even if we have fines and fees on 'em, potentially?
They would've to pay the vacant property fee,
they would've to pay the vacant property fees
so if they get tired of doing that.
Okay.
The demo list.
So it has gone, it's around Chicago with the,
like the development community that, you know,
they wanna do single family homes and things like that,
that the city has this demo list and that these properties
are available 'cause I know me and a couple
of other alderman I talked to, we get people come in
our office and say, "Hey, can we see your demo list
for the properties in your ward?"
'Cause they want to try to acquire 'em and they think we
have access to 'em and actually can convey
the rights to them.
Number one, is there really a true demo list?
I know where we get a list that says it's in demo court,
but there's there a true demo list?
It there's not one that's published.
So it's, you know, we have the running list of demolitions
that we have court orders on the Law Department has it,
but there's no public list of...
'Cause they're walking around like this.
I mean it's, you know, somebody's, yeah.
Now, just because, this is for clarity,
just because a property stays in demo court does not mean
that property will ultimately be demoed
or would be deemed in a prime property to be demoed
based on your experts.
Absolutely, I mean, that a demolition order is one tool
we have to hopefully try to force that non-responsive owner
into transferring it to somebody that is gonna do something
with it, and it's a tool and if it can't be salvaged,
we really do not wanna knock that building down
'cause then you then you got a vacant lot.
Yeah and that's not always a bad thing.
Yeah, well, you know, but-
Me and Marlene would debate about that.
I wouldn't want too many vacant lots.
No, so, okay, obviously I can ask more questions offline
and I appreciate you guys for always being there for me.
You guys know the makeup and the dynamics in my ward
and I absolutely appreciate you guys always working with me
and the shout out to Carl Byrd, my community organization.
He has worked with them on a number of things
on my South Deering area and they absolutely love that man.
Always talking. We do too.
Yeah, but thank you. Thank you.
We'll be having our continued meetings talking about this.
Thanks.
Thank you, Alderman Mitchell.
I have a couple items myself
and then I also have a couple items from Vice Chair Lee.
I noticed in the budget in the corporate fund
that you all have 41 new positions in the department.
Can you give us an idea of what your plans are with that?
So we actually have two new positions.
We have two new plumbers.
Those other positions are moved from CDBG from last year
over to the corporate fund.
Ah, okay.
That makes a lot of sense, I'm like.
And that's where you'll see a lot of our line items,
are non-personal line items are also grown, but those are,
that's transferring $8 million over from CBG.
Well, then that leads me to another question,
which I thought your vacancies pertain to this,
but your vacancies are just regular vacancies.
You had 57 to 59 vacancies in the list.
So what do we just about,
I think about 20% of your overall head count.
What are we doing to fill those in?
So we're working with DHR,
we were already onboarded three.
We have offers out to several others.
We've got interviews scheduled for a number of others.
We've got a lot of postings going up in November.
So, you know, when we put postings out now,
we e-blast those to all of our partners.
So all of the trades will get notices of those positions.
All of like Black contractors and Owners and Executives
will get it, ICA gets it.
We e-blast that out to,
so we get a very good candidate pool
'cause what we wanna do is even if we only have
three positions, we wanna get a pre-qualified list
of, you know, as many as we can.
So as our inspectors retire,
we don't have to then start from ground one
and repost all that.
We can pull off of the list and I think we're gonna be able
to pull some of these vacancies.
I think we're gonna be able to pull off of the PQC list
so we can get those those filled right away
and not go through all the,
this multi-month long process of posting and waiting
for a referral list and interviews, so,
you know, that's something we're working very hard on.
What's a PQC list?
Pre-qualified list, so, you know,
if I put out for three electricians
and I get 10 qualified applicants,
I can only offer positions to three,
but those other seven can then be placed on the list.
Oh, okay, I can get.
So like your,
what is it, like if I'm a entry-level building inspector,
what are the qualifications to be
an entry-level building inspector
or entry-level plumbing inspector
or electrical inspector?
So our inspectors are drawn from the trades,
their respective trades.
Wanna point out we're a little different
from other municipalities.
You don't take a two hour online video test
and then you're suddenly an electrician, a plumber,
a carpenter, an iron worker.
So we draw of all of our applicants,
usually have to have certain qualifications,
the primary one being completing a USDOL,
Department of Labor approved apprenticeship program.
So for instance, when we hire electricians,
they've been through an electrical apprenticeship program,
four years or even longer,
and then they've had experience in the field,
so on top of that, you have to have x number of years
of actually doing the work.
So our electrical inspectors are actual electricians
and they've been practicing that trade for several years.
That's why we had kind of an older department
'cause by the time we get the folks, they're,
a lot of times they're in their 30s,
so they've gone through the apprenticeship program,
they've gone through the actual working experience
like my father did,
and then they would be qualified to be inspectors.
So I raised it as I look at the starting salary
of a building inspector at approximately,
if this is correct, about $88,000.
That to me seems to be low in comparison
to what that individual would make
being a actual tradesperson.
If you're asking somebody to come in
with three to five years experience,
that means they're a journeymen level individual
may be making 45 to $55 an hour
and how do we get them to come work for us
for $88,000 a year?
So, you know, they do come in at that salary,
but then they get step raises, prevailing wage.
I'm proud of our inspectors.
Anybody here could be making more money
in the private sector, anybody in this room.
We do it because we care about our city,
our community, our public.
Our building inspectors are a very special breed.
They could go work, go down to Tennessee and build
a new Google facility, make a boatload of money.
But they choose to work in our city.
They choose to work in our communities.
They choose to help people.
Part of working for the government is that you've gotta have
the public service mindset
and we're very proud that they do.
I get that and I understand that, but we still,
folks got to be compensated for what it is that they do.
I wanna switch gears a little bit with you.
I know that people talk about the lack
of general inspections and looking at your 311 times,
which from a layperson's perspective,
may be a little long on some complaints.
Is that truly a function of not having enough personnel
to address those in a more timely manner
or is there some other process related issue that causes
a time delay in having those matters looked into?
So, that's a great question.
I think if we have an IT system that captures,
really captures the work of the Building Department,
which we currently do not have,
I probably can test some of those numbers
that are very high.
That said, we have a limited number of folks
that we have to respond to these, the 301s,
as well as doing permanent inspections,
as well as doing periodic inspections and other inspections.
We do the very best we can with what we have.
We prioritize where we need to prioritize,
especially for seniors and other vulnerable populations.
Anything of a very dangerous structural nature
we address right away, heat we address right away,
other complaints, a gutter that's leaning
that we are gonna take a little bit longer to get to those.
Has the department ever put any thought into like,
and I'll put on another hat that I wore prior
to being an alderman as a city manager,
the Code Department that we had in our village,
and it goes back to an earlier point that you made,
I don't think it was quite two hours,
but there was some level of training that existed prior
to that individual being put into service.
Now, some things may not necessarily require
a three-to-five year journeyman plumber
or electrical inspector to look at.
However, someone with a base level of building knowledge
that may not reach that level of expertise
may be able to go out and look at something to say,
wait a minute, we need to get somebody else over here.
Or say, you know what, this really isn't something
that's going to require a higher level of expertise
to review, but it puts us on scene,
it puts us in the know potentially as to what's happening
versus us having to deal with the personnel challenges
of not having enough what we deem to be qualified inspector
but maybe having someone that has some knowledge
go out and put eyes on something
to either verify something's bad or verify
that this can wait or verify that this is really nothing.
Have you all put any thought into potentially having
a entry-level individual with some base level of knowledge
that potentially can grow and to be a electrical inspector,
plumbing inspector, building inspector?
That's a great question.
It's something we probably have to discuss with, you know,
a bigger audience 'cause we are under the, you know,
are under 11 collective bargaining units
at the Building Department, and you know,
right now that is a bargain, that's their work,
and if we were to change that, we would have to go back,
I think negotiate those collective bargaining agreements.
I get that.
It just may be something to consider in order to,
I guess bring down the amount of time that it may take
for someone to get to a particular item.
Vice Chair, you ready?
Okay, go ahead and I'll come back.
Made it back in time. Thank you, Chair.
Thanks for hanging in with us.
First I wanna say thank you to you, Commissioner,
especially to the young lady sitting next to you here.
Marlene is amazing.
There's never a time she doesn't take my call.
There was a particular incident recently that it was through
her advice and counsel getting across several departments
to collaborate on what ultimately was a demolition of a home
that really needed, probably needed to come down
a long time ago with a woman who was in some distress.
And ultimately it was a good outcome for the entire,
for all those involved.
The neighbors who aren't getting bitten by fleas anymore.
The 33 cats that were recovered from the property.
And the property owner who was going through,
was going through some things, frankly,
and wasn't able to keep up with the house,
and as a result of the actions, frankly,
that Marlene initiated the home went into receivership
and she's in a much better position now.
Everybody's safe on the street.
I wanna thank you for that and I know
that it's a challenging environment that we're all in.
I apologize in advance if any of these,
I'm sure some of these questions were asked already,
but where are you in terms of vacancies currently?
That might have been where I just need a number.
You don't have to-
That came up, 59 coming into the budget.
Your package at 59.
We're actually down at 56 now.
Three we're onboard and we're in the process
of bringing a lot more.
And about how long during the course of this year
were those vacancies?
Like, has it been about 50 all year?
It varies. It varies.
We bring folks on, folks retire.
Yeah, and as I'm learning, folks jumped apartments too.
They'll go to and fro to other places.
You're not the only department that experiences that.
And sometimes they go back too, so.
Sure, was your department one of the ones
that DHR did like a compensation analysis on?
Yes, it was.
So you're getting some adjustments then, I'm assuming.
Hopefully that will help in the recruitment
and retention of some more inspectors.
I know that's a place where we're very challenged.
If you had to, if you could just get into right now,
if you could improve response times for inspections,
what do you think is the biggest hurdle to that right now,
aside from just having enough people?
Really technology.
If we could coordinate our efforts,
not just amongst my own department, but other departments.
If we could identify, as Alderman Coleman said,
gut rehabs where we can address that
'cause it's not just an issue for the Building Department,
it's an issue for Streets and San and CDOT as well,
so the more we can all get on the same page
and be working off of one system, I think the, you know,
the better it's gonna be for us and you and the community.
Are there any technology projects underway now?
And I'm sorry if I should already know this.
We have one now, so we've had a multi-year project.
We're on Hansen seven, which was built in 2005.
Obviously does not meet our needs.
It's well past our time, we are moving to IPS 11.
But as I stated earlier, we are being very adamant,
we don't wanna like move,
we don't want to go from a, we don't need the new tide.
We need something that actually works for us.
Right, something that works for you
and that is anticipating what your needs are gonna be five,
10 years from now. Yeah.
And letting the departments collaborate with each other.
Great, thank you for that.
Is there someone on your team who's responsible
for finding and communicating the ownership of like,
abandoned properties or,
and my staff wrote inactive properties,
but I think their intent is really just buildings
that are sitting vacant or have been reported vacant.
Can you talk to me about
how that's being tracked and maintained?
So we have the vacant building registry,
so after 30 days of building being vacant,
you're supposed to register with the city.
That's so we know that it's vacant.
It's also very helpful to our first responders
to know that nobody's in there.
We have the Vacant building registry.
If we find buildings that are not on their register
that should be registered, we write them up
and there is a call in administrative hearings
to get them to register those buildings.
Thank you.
So we had a conversation earlier with MOPD.
Can you talk a little bit about how you're working with
the Mayor's Office of People with Disabilities
just on issues around accessibility?
Sure, so they're one of many departments
that reviews a building permit,
so even though a building permit
has the Department of Building's name on it,
there are several departments that touch that
and do the review so any accessibility review
for a building permit is done by
Mayor's Office for People's Disabilities.
This is environmental review done by CDPH.
Other departments that touches the zoning does,
obviously DPD does the zoning review.
So we work with MOPD.
If they've got any issues with accessibility,
we do not sign off on that permit
until they meet all those requirements.
Right, Chair, is it okay if I keep going?
I've got a couple more, thank you.
Is there currently like a database
around who just owns what properties?
No, that's been asked before.
All ownership records are with the clerk,
the Cook County clerk.
Yeah, that's always a little bit of a task for us
as we get complaints about buildings
and we don't know who owns the buildings.
If you call me and ask me who owns the building,
I go on the clerk's webpage and-
So you do the same thing we do.
You don't have some magical way to get to it faster.
We're gonna work on getting you some magical way
to get to that faster so that we can all get to it.
I'm gonna shift gears a little bit here and just,
I'd like to talk about decarbonization.
So the state legislatures outlawed
the use, sale, manufacturer, et cetera, of natural gas
beginning in 2040.
And as we know, majority of homes and buildings,
including downtown offices and multi-family places
use natural gas for heat, cooking and emergency generators.
And it's gonna be very costly to do this changeover
but we've gotta start looking at it.
Can you tell me where we are with respect
to building decarbonization in your world?
So I'm not aware that the state actually,
Illinois has banned that.
I know it's been discussed in other states,
but I'm not aware of Illinois having a natural gas ban.
Okay, was there any work being done
around decarbonization?
There is work being done.
There's been no ordinance as of yet.
There are certain legal issues that are involved too
that there have been some, a lot of challenges
in other states and there's,
you know, that they're looking at some
of the court decisions that have come down
from some of the other federal circuits.
I'm assuming that if and when that all does come down
our way, we'll be doing that work
and having to build budgets around
getting that work done across the city,
if that is in fact the timeline
that we're gonna be working with,
so thank you for your answer on that.
I got solar panels, so I'm doing my part.
Yeah, and how long did it take for your solar panels?
We talked about that earlier.
Longer than I would've liked.
That's part of the labor shortage we have to address.
Absolutely.
Then I've got a question some that's, you know,
I don't know if you can speak to this at all,
just real time with the stuff that we're seeing in the news
right now about the site at 38th and California.
Can you talk about the remediation that they're undergoing?
Are you involved with that?
No, remediation would be Department of Public Health.
Public health, so nothing with Buildings on that site.
Okay, great.
Chairman, that's all I've got, thank you.
Thank you, Vice Chair.
Alderman Mosley had a quick follow up question.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Just wanted to ask about when a property is reported vacant
and abandoned, how is it that we're still having,
or that property is having water service
and accumulating a water bill?
What's the connection,
communication between Department of Buildings,
Department of Water Management or Department of Finance?
Well, if the building is vacant and it still has water,
electrical services, that's not unusual.
So it'd be on the property owner to notify
if they did want the water service cut,
electrical service cut to notify the utilities
or Department of Water Management.
If it does get to the point where there's a demolition order
that's entered, then we work with the Water Department
to have those, have the cut and seal
done as part of the demolition.
I'm thinking maybe it's something we should look at
legislatively for this body, because again,
going back to squatters, if that water is active,
if that electricity is active,
then it's deemed that it can be a place of habitat.
No, I'm sorry, I stand corrected.
When they do register the building and that system notifies
Water to cut the service,
or at least to turn it off.
Got it, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Alderman Mosey.
Alderman Mitchell had a quick follow up as well.
Hey, Commissioner, when Chairman Erving was talking about
the staffing and plumbers and all that
made me think of something.
We have a big project, big initiative going on
with the Water Department to replace the lead service pipes.
In dealing within and learning how this process is gonna go,
I found that there's gonna be some situations
where they're gonna have to do,
actually, they have to come inside the house.
And when it comes to larger buildings,
it is a potential that the older buildings
might have asbestos and some other issues
in the area where they have to break into.
Now, if that is the case,
I'm assuming you would need permits from Buildings to do
some of the work for remediation and things like that,
and if that is the case, and going forward,
I'm assuming there would need to be some expediting
of permits in order for work to get done
so that it can be coordinated on other side for everything,
for the whole process to be completed.
One, are you familiar with that?
Yeah, so if it's minor work that has to be done,
I mean, those are very quick permits.
If there's asbestos in there,
I believe they probably also have CDPH would be involved
because there'd be remediation permits and certificates
that would have to be looked at by them.
Are you working any with or in discussions with
the Water Department, particularly Commissioner Cheng?
We discussed regularly.
So we honor the process of doing the lead line replacement,
we're partner in that.
Okay, all right, thank you, Chair.
Thank you Alderman Mitchell.
Commissioner, thank you for joining us.
I will say that you guys have a great team going there.
I think there are a lot of concerns around STF
and I get the need to do what you all do.
We have to, I guess, figure out how to strike balance
and also for those that have gotten the requisite work done
to a path toward compliance,
which ultimately from your aspect is about safety
that we want to see and I think that would help everyone,
you know, those trying to balance the interests
of public safety versus the interest of commerce,
but at the same time, we do wanna see things move
in a relatively meaningful manner.
But again, staff is always helpful to all of our offices
and we appreciate the work that you all continue to do.
Ms. Black and Marlene are always on top and a funny story,
you know, I met Marlene in an alley, so,
which was interesting.
She told me, the guy called me and told me there was nothing
wrong with his back porch and I just,
I couldn't imagine the Building Department
just dealing with a guy for nothing.
And she just, "Oh, well, come take a look for yourself."
And lo and behold I go back there,
there's absolutely no back porch,
so I kindly walked away and told Marlene,
"You do what you need to do 'cause I don't think anybody
could live without a back porch."
So, but again, you guys have always been fair,
I will say that, in relation to how you're dealing
with people so we just wanna make sure
that you all continue the work that you're doing,
have the resources necessary for the job that you need to do
and continue to work on behalf of the citizens of the city.
Thank you all and you all are excused.
Thank you, we appreciate you.
Our committee will stand at ease until 10:00 AM tomorrow,
beginning with the Department of the Environment.