2023 Chicago Election Voter Guide

Candidate Q&A

Why are you running?

I am running because I, Emma Mitts am an independent, results-oriented, progressively focused elected official who consistently delivers. I, Emma Mitts, also believe that diverse coalitions of committed citizens can work together with proven dedicated elected officials like myself and other local leaders to bring about extraordinary civic, economic, educational, housing affordability and public safety change in the 37th Ward and across Chicago.

I am a fiercely devoted elected public servant — and as an advocate and strong community supporter I remain ready, willing, and able to work together to make the positive change to further my mission, continuing as the next 37th Ward Alderperson. As a veteran Alderman and longtime resident, I have the skills, ability, and experience to understand exactly how our community operates — and should function in the future. As a committed church member, I bring a compassionate and collaborative approach to addressing various neighborhood challenges. I am running to further elevate the responsive and results-oriented local leadership the 37th Ward community continues to receive under my focused governance and equally important, expand resources which it richly deserves.

My candidacy exemplifies a qualified citizen and current elected official prepared to continue fighting, working for and with the people, local officials, and police to keep our communities safe. I am a community leader who has worked to make Chicago’s Greater Northwest side areas of Austin, West Garfield Park and West Humboldt neighborhoods safer and affordable housing destinations of choice and opportunity. I also serve as the Chair of the West Side Black Elected Officials (WSBEO) a group comprised of City, County, State and U.S. elected officials committed to exemplary service based in Chicago. I will continue my well-documented, highly successful work to foster good business development, support our youth and schools, and generating access to affordable health services, housing, sustainable jobs, and economic opportunity. I live, work and worship in the 37th Ward. I have dedicated my life to public service and giving back to our West side community areas. I want to inspire our youth to believe in positive life outcomes so they know that they can make a difference. I am committed to providing our seniors and families the safety they need and deserve. I enjoy creating new environments for emerging and existing business entrepreneurship to thrive. When I am re-elected, I will use my extensive experience to move our community forward to be the safe, welcoming, equitable place we all deserve in the 37th Ward.

My platform includes the following:
• Stimulating Expanded Economic Development
• Reducing Crime by Working in Partnership with the Community and Police
• Advocating For Increased Funding of Community Youth and Senior Programs
• Improving the City’s Education System for Our Young People
• Pursuing Focused Funding Resources For Literacy Programs
• Ward Cleanliness and Beautification
• Improve the quality of life for all residents of the 37th Ward

I, Emma Mitts, possess an innate servant’s heart — which is the reason I have spent the central part of my career in public service, courageously and unapologetically serving the citizens of Chicago and the West side for more than 23 years, working hard across numerous 37th Ward communities. More important: My work is not yet done. I am inspired and will continue to serve the people, businesses, schools, social service, cultural and religious institutions, and will fight for a bright future for today and tomorrow.

What does this office do well, and what needs fixing?

The office and role of a city of Chicago alderman is civically, legislatively, professionally  and strategically neighborhood-focused, intensive, and a multi-faceted position of public service. In addition to representing the interests of our individual ward residents, businesses, organizations, schools, and worship facilities, together each of us 50 aldermen comprise what is commonly known as the Chicago City Council. We, as the 50 members of the Chicago City Council, serve as the City of Chicago’s legislative branch of government — which we do very well.

Aldermen are also, and I, Emma Mitts, am widely known as a valued, impactful public servant who has consistently demonstrated my longstanding commitment to quality, high-level service for my 37th Ward residents and citizens throughout Chicago. I am likewise humbly honored to be respected by my diverse constituents as a 24/7 worker, passionate local government representative, and advocate on behalf of the key issues, concerns, conceptual ideas, and needs of the entire 37th Ward.

What is the most pressing issue facing your constituents and how do you plan on addressing it?

The topic of crime and criminal activity is Chicago’s most urgently pressing issue today —  and every city ward and neighborhood is currently being impacted. Increasing public safety within the 37th Ward is a paramount priority.

I am deeply motivated to help and protect people, and that fueled my unrelenting goal to get the new $120M Joint Public Safety Training Academy. In the 37th Ward! 
Further, my drive toward excellence in civic, city of Chicago leadership always motivates me to host, as well as attend countless neighborhood organization, community, block club and other local meetings, where my staff and I both share and receive critical news and public safety information which impacts 37th Ward constituents.

Today more than ever, the proactive involvement of everyday citizens is an important, necessary component of reducing crime, and focusing on enhancing anonymous local resident reporting, and homeowner, neighborhood street video security mechanisms is a key facet in helping solve crimes more quickly and efficiently.

My ongoing working relationship experience with the  11th, 15th and 25th Districts of the Chicago Police Department includes initiatives aimed at protecting life and property, preventing, and suppressing crime, enforcing laws and ordinances. And once the new Joint Public Safety Training Academy opens this year, the 37th Ward will play an even more important leadership role in local community policing, training, and educating other police officers, recruits, emergency responders and others in the Academy as well as on the streets. I am committed to continuing to work with the residents, schools, business and religious leaders, community organizations, the Mayor’s Office, and the Chicago Police Department to develop new Crime Reduction Programs and Youth Engagement Initiatives for the 37th Ward.  Further, as 37th Ward Alderman, I have initiated and performed many diverse roles throughout my 37th Ward Public Service Office’s tactical partnership with the Department, and this cross-collaborative approach including local constituents will continue in the foreseeable future.

Economic investment and public safety are intertwined. I will continue the legislative and public policy battle to allocate more resources for street, domestic and youth violence prevention, improving transit safety, and enhancing Chicago crime victim support measures. We must employ creative solutions to fill the officer vacancies because safety is  critically important where we, as well as our families and friends live, go to school, work, worship, and play.

Residents and  businesses must feel safe to invest in our area neighborhoods. Business and property owners, as well as renters reap considerable gains from decent, affordable housing and safe, inviting commercial corridors. Our ‘Soul City Corridor’ on West Chicago Avenue is one shining example where commerce and the community are returning, bringing enhanced retail, food, consumer service choices and revenues, while reviving this quality business district. Housing is another pivotal component. I understand because I know residents who’ve personally experienced the benefits of equitable and affordable housing. It’s vital that we have reasonable housing options for residents of all income levels so that we maintain the diversity that makes the 37th ward so special. Together, we must expand resources to dramatically reshape the narrative, and drastically reduce violent city crime. 

What specific steps would you take to ensure your office is accessible and responsive to your constituents?

Throughout my entire Aldermanic career, my hard-working, extremely-accessible, professional, capable, pleasant staff and I have maintained an exceptionally high standard of Availability, Concern, Communication, Engagement and Superior Service, called our 37th Ward ACCESS Initiative™. Our 37th Ward Public Service Office is just that: An office with provides quality public service for local residents.

First our 37th Ward Public Service Office is open Daily M-F during regular working hours (including one Saturday each month); with onsite staff assisting residents, local organizations via walk-ins, appointments, calls, emails, and direct handling of emergency requests. Also, with Weekly Ward Night evening drop-in and/or ZOOM sessions; Monthly Ward meetings either in the office, via ZOOM during COVID-19 and around the community; and regular Block-Club sessions, where 37th Ward staff and I go out to specific neighborhoods to meet directly with constituents. 

In addition, our 37th Ward Public Service Office  conducts  a year-round events calendar, hosts summer Gospel Fest and Service Fair; Thanksgiving Turkey giveaways and Christmas toy giveaways for needy local families. Other ongoing outreach includes neighborhood information sessions, like the recent well-attended property tax seminar held  in my 37th Ward Public Service Office with local elected officials.

Further, the 37th Ward Public Service Office stays in constant contact with our constituents via a variety of mechanisms: e-newsletters, a weekly newspaper column, mobile text alerts, robocalls, and email/web/Twitter messages.

The 37th Ward Public Service Office  is always looking out for new and exciting ways to keep our constituent’s informed, engaged, invested, assisted, and involved.

Do you believe in the tradition of aldermanic prerogative, which gives each City Council member the final say on issues in their ward?

Yes, I firmly support and believe in the importance of Aldermanic Prerogative. The reason is simple. We are each elected in 50 different wards across Chicago, to represent, serve, and be responsible for resident citizens, housing, business and commercial enterprises, community organizations, health, law enforcement, and school facilities constituents, as well as preside over major infrastructure, park, sanitation, light and street repair, and modernization initiatives. Although Chicago Wards share borders and some limited similarities, everyone knows that no city wards are exactly alike. Therefore organizing and delivering city services along ward lines and boundaries is a longstanding and an effective way of city governance.

While rarely receiving deserved credit, or at least acknowledgment for doing so much to ensure that their Aldermanic Offices are at the center of doing what is right, timely, and needed for the residents of their Wards, City Council members like me embrace the transparency embedded into the process, yet feel it’s a vital part of ensuring that Ward services are equitably distributed according to needs and wishes of those who elected us into office.

Aldermen and Alderwomen regularly work to address local ward-specific constituent requests such as tree-cutting, street, alley and sewer-cleaning, pest-abatement, block-party and driveway permits, building conversions and more. Despite the emergence of grid-system city service work — when things don’t go as planned or requested — it’s the alderperson and their office staff who hears, and ultimately bears the brunt of criticism from the irate residents. Alderpersons typically know their Wards and the concerns of their constituents best — and therefore should be allowed to establish and manage their areawide priorities.

Asking Aldermanic prerogative to be removed or diminished is short-sighted public policy, and an insulting assault for City Council members. This concept further erodes the ability of us as elected officials to successfully address the issues facing our electorate, leading to unnecessary impediments negating our stated missions of providing exemplary public service. And further, it is similar to asking police to deter crime in our city’s 50 Wards and 77 neighborhoods — without squad cars and guns!

Should the $1.9 billion budget for the Chicago Police Department increase, stay the same or decrease?

The Chicago Police Department budget should remain at the current $1.9 billion level. To improve neighborhood safety, we need more police on the streets in community areas of the city that need them the most. Community policing expansion is another key protection needed today for Chicago residents.

Should the city raise the Real Estate Transfer Tax on properties sold for more than $1 million to fund programs to help unhoused Chicagoans? 

In today’s economically and socially divisive discourse, hardly anyone wants to propose property tax increases of any manner. However, the dangerous financial dynamics facing far too many struggling, hard-working Chicago families and seniors require leaders, however reluctantly, to re-evaluate new innovative approaches to proactively address the growing housing crisis in the nation’s third largest city. Faith-based philosophies require us to answer the question: "What Will You do for the Least of These Amongst You?" Therefore, I believe that because we appear to have an increasing array of urban issues, compounded by somewhat limited choices in the current post-pandemic economic climate, we need to find difficult, yet necessary other options.

Exploring new social funding initiatives should be developed to directly benefit unprivileged, homeless people, rather than increasing the real-estate transfer tax, specifically on high-value properties over $1 million. We can assemble existing and new public, federal and private financing to create sustained affordable housing funding efforts to eliminate poverty-related homelessness in Chicago’s central loop and surrounding areas citywide.

Today various estimates indicate that between 16,500 and 34,980 Chicago individuals, seniors, U.S. veterans, and families with children are homeless and/or housing insecure each night, living in their cars, in abandoned buildings, on the streets and under viaducts. The slightly more fortunate are doubled-up with sympathetic relatives and friends or praying that they will be able to make enough money to cover rapidly rising rents, but even this is generally only a short-term, temporary solution. Many low-and moderate-income renters will be unable to absorb these costs. This is inhumane, cruel, and wholly unacceptable for a great, world-class,  urban metropolis like Chicago. So, although I am against raising the real-estate transfer tax, we still must change this devastating dynamic. And if it requires finding innovative approaches to generate long-term sustainable funding resources for those current Chicagoan's and  housing insecure city residents who unquestionably need and deserve support, as a humanistic gesture, then I am inclined to stand up for the least of these in our midst. 

Should the city open and operate mental health clinics to provide free care to Chicagoans?

Definitely. Mental health issues, to some degree among all levels of city residents, are reaching a crisis level in Chicago. Access to mental health care in the United States in general, and today specifically in Chicago for underserved, low-income populations — especially in the city’s high-poverty areas — is severely limited and in light of the closures of the city of Chicago’s mental public health clinics almost non-existent. Long wait lists for services, a profound lack of available service outlets, financial challenges and the stigma associated with mental illness further create barriers to treatment. However, the need persists. In Chicago, an estimated 31% of people need or seek free or low-cost mental health services annually. Most are currently significantly under-served or worse, not served at all since the eradication of these city of Chicago mental public health clinics.

More support groups and direct mental health services are desperately needed for drug and alcohol abusers, and the families of addicts, as well as adult women and men, girls and boys of all ages who have experienced sexual, domestic abuse and trauma, in addition to the myriad mental health-related challenges confronting isolated, lonely seniors in low-income housing facilities and more.

The re-development of the city’s mental health network is crucially important. The city of Chicago should further establish professional relationships and provide funding for host site partnerships with medically-trained personnel and community volunteers could provide mental health services in conjunction with companion organizations such as schools, mental health centers and other nonprofit organizations to enhance their capacity to serve city clients with mental health needs.

How should Chicago build the 120,000 homes it needs for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans?

There are a variety of strategies, which, if used collaboratively, can illustrate creative approaches to developing representative and diverse options for substantial social change with respect to affordable housing. First the city of Chicago must commit to creating the major, catalyzing new kinds of public-and private-sector relationships that are rooted in racial equity and social inclusion for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans. In order to successfully build mutually-beneficial connections across different segments of Chicago’s 77 diverse communities, the primary focus of these efforts should be designed to establishing operating models that are scalable, financially sustainable, and multifaceted in their resourcing.

Chicago’s tragic, endemic, and well-known history of racial, economic, and social segregation has led to a city divided. Over the decades, this systemic multi-generational isolation has discouraged equitable investments in certain communities, and allows negative narratives to persist about these South and West side neighborhoods.

The ultimate goal in developing adequate amounts of affordable housing throughout the city is to first and foremost, to erase the biased social stigma associated with it by marketing the universal humanity of those populating affordable housing. This will hopefully encourage more major housing builders/developers to partner with minority and women-owned design, architectural and construction firms to turn longstanding affordable housing concepts into reality. The rapidly evolving new economic realities in today’s globally destabilized world is another emerging factor which could assist in this endeavor. A necessary civic re-imagining and marketing commitment which highlights that ‘Chicago will’ and ‘Chicago can’ is also in order. Additionally, a clear recognition that with the exception of the ultra-stable 2% very wealthy billionaire population, even many of those who feel securely financially-insulated today may find themselves at the other end of the spectrum at some point in the future, needing quality affordable housing. In Chicago, there’s an undeniable, direct correlation between socioeconomic status and housing. Many currently have good employable skills and talents, but they might encounter future unexpected or unforeseen barriers to stable employment that has a tremendous impact on their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Eventually they too may need comprehensive support. That directly personal reality will ultimately coincide with, and ironically fundamentally power a sudden uptick in demand for housing that is simultaneously sustainable, fashionably comfortable, and affordable.

In the immediate future, however transformational change is possible to truly build affordable housing residences to establish a stronger, more unified Chicago. Recognizing a significant gap in the availability of attainable housing to people in need, we must reinvigorated our relationships with commercial lending businesses to stimulate the catalyst for creating new jobs and transforming abandoned and vacant homes into quality, affordable housing.

In the first 18 months of implementing the strategy, this will help build a stronger economic foundation for under-resourced community areas and creates an environment that encourages additional affordable housing investment.

What do you see as potential solutions to address the number of shootings in Chicago?

Reducing targeted and random shootings and gun-related killings of Chicagoans must immediately become our number one priority. In fact, it is critical for our public service mission as Alders and our city’s future. Losing typically over 500 men, women, children, teens, young adults, and seniors annually is both unbelievable and unacceptable. These deadly shootings must stop. 

That’s why the first component of a key solution is for city elected officials to aggressively join the fight to keep the assault gun weapons ban, recently signed by Governor Pritzker (and currently itself under judicial assault) as Illinois law. Expanded use of technologies such as shot-spotters, outdoor pod cameras and car license plate readers are further important deterrents to criminal, life-threatening, and far too often deadly gun shootings. Returning to vital anti-violence measures such as increasing neighborhood CPD street patrols, revisiting some of our core, successful community policing public safety practices and working to increase positive interactions between the Chicago Police Department and local city residents across all communities are critically necessary to reduce shootings for today and the future.

What should the City Council do to stop the drop in the city’s Black population?

Helping promote the preservation of Chicago’s Black history and legacy of Black culture, activism and achievements, past and present, is an excellent starting point. Remember, a Black man of Haitian descent founded this great city and Black men and women have continually made significant impacts upon its phenomenal growth and development ever since. Establishing action-oriented city policies, creating enhanced small business strategies to encourage new minority- and women-owned shops and assistance operations in under-served neighborhoods generates new economics and new jobs, supports much-needed social service organizations for existing Black residents and steers new inhabitants to commit to making Chicago home for generations. Prioritizing public safety and youth-oriented educational initiatives also appeals to the basic needs of the Black community. This helps amplify the positive impacts of Black living and choosing to stay in the city of Chicago.