Demands for a full-blown Department of Environment, more funding for the homeless and mental health and hiring incentives to reverse a record pace of police retirements emerged Monday as pressure points during the first day of City Council hearings on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $16.4 billion budget.
Although the police academy has been revving up and the Chicago Police Department’s recruiting team has been hitting military bases and college campuses nationwide, Budget Director Susie Park acknowledged police officers are still retiring faster than the city can hire replacements.
To date, 693 officers have begun their six months of training — far from enough to keep pace with the 949 retirements through Sept. 30 this year — compared to 973 all of last year, and 625 in 2020.
Less than two months ago, the Office of Budget and Management reported 1,408 sworn vacancies and 814 retirements. If retirements continue at the same rate, they will reach 1,264 by year’s end — a new record.
Under questioning from Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), Park said the number of recruits going through the police academy this summer has “dramatically increased” in a “hard market” to recruit officers. The September class was 105, she said.
“If we hit 100 each month through the rest of the year, we will be at around 993 to 1,000 officers,” Park said.
She pegged the total number of “blue shirts” — patrol officers — at 8,729.
“So, at best, we’re gonna stay at that number,” Quinn said.
Park replied: “If all goes according to plan, we’ll be at 9,000 ... attrition is what’s gonna subtract from that. So, we’ll see.”
Quinn does not want to wait and see. He joined the chorus demanding signing bonuses, help with down payments on homes and even a change in residency requirements — all to counter recruitment efforts like those in neighboring Cicero.
“Their starting pay is $95,000. They’re not gonna cancel your days off. You can transfer up to five years of city of Chicago pension credit. And you don’t have to live in their town. How do we compete?” Quinn said.
“If you’re talking about competing on the Law Department and incentivizing them by a 10% raise, what are we doing to keep our officers?”
The city is spending “millions of dollars training” officers, Quinn said — “and then losing our talent … to towns like Cicero that are offering more.”
Last week, Lightfoot told the Sun-Times editorial board police hiring incentives would be “highly problematic” and raise “serious collective bargaining issues” with other unions.
Park didn’t use that argument Monday. Instead, she talked about convincing veteran officers to stay with upgraded facilities and state-of-the-art training facilities.
The budget director specifically mentioned $11.5 million for two new police helicopters; $6.8 million for equipment and supplies, including cell phones for 6,000 officers; $42 million from this year’s installment of the multi-year capital plan to upgrade police facilities, including $15 million for the new police and fire training academy; and $3.7 million to hire 35 new civilians to help implement the federal consent decree.
The demand for a full-blown Department of Environment — instead of a six-member, $640,000-a-year Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Equity, which Lightfoot has proposed — was repeated by at least half a dozen council members, though perhaps articulated best by retiring Ald. Harry Osterman (48th).
“All of us saw what happened in Florida. All of us saw what happened in Chicago with the rains. Those that live along the lakefront … are impacted by the lake levels that go up and down. It is only gonna get worse,” he said.
Osterman also wants even more funding to combat the “post-COVID” surge in people living on the street, some suffering from mental health issues.
“They are a threat to themselves and their health and well-being. They impact the community. They impact citizens that have to call the police. They impact small businesses,” Osterman said.
“While we are investing a lot of money … we are not meeting the moment for what’s going on.”
West Side Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) added: “Chicago has a huge problem now — not just mental illness on the street, but mental illness from folks like us sittin’ here in this room.”
The complaint about a “bloated bureaucracy” in the mayor’s office duplicating the work of city departments was yet another Day One theme.
Retiring Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) accused Lightfoot of creating a “whole separate layer of government.” She was not appeased when Park argued the growing roster of mayoral staffers oversee policy.
“What’s the policy behind filling a pothole? You’re making absolutely no sense,” Hairston said.
Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) noted a mayor’s office that had 60 employees under former Mayor Richard M. Daley has grown to 127 people under Lightfoot.
Daley had a press office of four people. Lightfoot has 16 people in her press office, 66 people doing “policy” and 25 employees in “operations.”
“What purpose does that extra layer serve?” Reilly said.
