Over a hundred people packed the Evanston City Council chambers Saturday morning to hear the city’s five candidates for mayor publicly stake out their positions on topics ranging from police accountability and community relations, the need for jobs, affordable housing and economic development to strategies to stem the tide of gun violence.
The candidates spoke as part of a mayoral forum held in the run-up to the city’s Feb. 28 primary election and hosted by the League of Women Voters of Evanston, a local chapter of the national, nonpartisan political organization.
Dozens of attendees were initially turned away from the candidate forum because the room booked for the event, which is located in the basement of the city’s civic center, could only hold a maximum of 49 people, per fire department regulations. The event got off to a late start after organizers scrambled to move the crowd to City Council chambers.
The candidates, Jeff Smith, Steve Hagerty, 6th Ward Ald. Mark Tendam, 9th Ward Ald. Brian Miller and Gary Gaspard presented opening and closing statements and responded to five questions posed by the forum’s moderator, Valerie Krejcie, a Skokie resident and a member of the League of Women Voters.
Miller, an Evanston native and chief of staff for Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-13th District, said police accountability and the establishment of an independent police review board in Evanston were among his top priorities as mayor.He called for instituting an outreach model based on Chicago’s CeaseFire program to help mitigate gun violence. Additionally, Miller said Evanston should use its authority as a home rule municipality to set the standard for gun control in the nation.
That’s in addition to addressing the city’s longterm financial challenges with regard to pensions and capital improvement planning, he said.
Miller said out-going Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl’s Summer Youth Employment Program “isn’t enough” to address the issue.
Tendam, the city’s first openly gay alderman, said he’s particularly concerned about the local job market and a lack of affordable housing stock. He said the city should help seniors in the community remain in their homes and provide assistance when that’s no longer a feasible option.
Additionally, he said, he’d like to do something to tackle substance abuse and mental health disorders afflicting Evanston residents.
Tendam praised Mayor Tisdahl’s Summer Youth Employment Program and implied that because of it, “there was actually no youth violence or almost none to speak of in the city of Evanston last summer.” He said jobs and housing were also critical to addressing gun violence.
A longtime resident and founder of an emergency management consulting firm, Hagerty said the city needs to focus on “sensible economic development” with dwindling revenues from the state looming . Like Tendam, he also cited the need for more jobs in the community as well as an opportunity for the city to attract businesses due to its already-thriving downtown.
On gun violence, Hagerty said the city and local organizations are “on a good track” in their collective effort to curb the bloodshed.
He said he’d work to integrate disparate local efforts in a bid to “figure out a way to reduce the number of young adults we have in a box,” he said.
“Those are the young folks carrying around guns who don’t know how to solve their problems,” Hagerty said.
Gaspard, a city resident for over three decades and former Evanston Township supervisor, said he’d focus specifically on helping low-income Evanston families get on a path toward “economic self-sufficiency.”
Additionally, he said, he’d like to foster better relations between the city’s police department and its residents — particularly the city’s black youth.
“We cannot fight violence with violence and we cannot fight crime without economic development,” Gaspard said, adding that job creation and workforce development are key to mitigating gun violence in the community.
Smith, a local attorney and community activist, said the city should work to “set a national standard” for environmental leadership and stewardship “because we have climate deniers in the White House.”
Like Miller, he also said it was necessary for city officials to take on Evanston’s financial challenges, including its pension liabilities and the fiscal health of its tax increment financing (TIF) districts, in addition to leveraging and preserving the city’s assets.
When asked about gun violence, Smith said the city’s youth should be viewed as individuals “not as data or some social problem to be solved.”
He said the community needs to focus on why the violence is occurring and work to provide the city’s youth opportunities for growth on an individual basis.
The five candidates are on the ballot for the Feb. 28 primary. If one person captures 51 percent of the vote then, they become mayor.
If not, the top two voted-getters move to the April 4 general election.
Evanston residents are “really fortunate to have five candidates, five really qualified candidates running for mayor,” Krejcie said as the forum wrapped up.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelancer.
