By Jason Crane
An Aurora mayoral candidate forum Monday, through the Zoom video conference platform, allowed viewers to learn more about the three candidates seeking the job as mayor of Aurora for the next four years.
An election will be Tuesday, April 6.
League of Women Voters Aurora Area Mayoral Candidate Forum was on the League’s Facebook page.
The candidates are Aurora mayor Richard Irvin, Judd Lofchie, and John Laesch.
Moderator was Barbara Young from the LaGrange Area League of Women Voters.
The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization founded in 1920 that encourages informed and active participation by citizens in government.
They do not support, or oppose, any candidate, or any office. The League sponsors such events, so voters are informed on issues.
Here are the first three questions and answers by the candidates:
What do you feel are the most important non-budget and non- tax related city wide issues you want to address if elected?
• John Laesch: “That’s an excellent question. We need to repair the relationship between the community and the police. That’s not going to happen over night.
“What we want are public employees to be part of our community. We want police officers being positive role models in our community and in schools.
“Some of this is going to take a little budgetary moving around. I think one quick and easy way I’ve talked to the police union president about, is to fund some non uniform events where police attend block parties and community events and get to know the community.
“I also think we need to recruit from our high schools with the cadet program so that the next generation of APD (Aurora Police Department) looks like the City of Aurora and it reflects that diversity.
“Second topic, we’ve seen a recent increase in crime. So we need to revisit past successful efforts to bring positive community mentors, pastors, troubled youth, together to carve out a path forward that doesn’t involve gang membership, or street hustle.
“Now the City’s role in this is creating more economic opportunities bringing living wage jobs to our city.
“Finally, I want us to be a welcoming city that celebrates our diversity at every corner. This is not a budgetary thing, it’s an atmosphere and attitude. Thank you.”
• Judd Lofchie: “Thank you. I would say public safety. Shootings are up 40%, murders have basically doubled if you take out the Pratt shooting.
“People need to feel safe in Aurora. They need to feel safe to come downtown and need to feel safe in their neighborhood. If we could make people feel safe, there would be more people willing to open a business in Aurora.
“We need more community policing. I would like to see the community policing staff increase. We have 17 community-oriented policing officers. These are people that are supposed to get out of the car like officer friendly. We need more of those. We definitely need more of those to interact with the public. We need to create stronger partnerships with the neighborhood groups, churches, non-profits, community activists.
“We need to have more job fairs. Sheriff Ron Hain said he had one in Summer of ’19 and placed 450 students and crime was down that year.
“I’d love to see weekly interactions between the police and residents, whether it’s basketball, biking, bowling. Some sort of sports thing, party, group event, just to get to know them. If you get to know them that will take a lot of the angst away.
“I think that’s what’s really important, to get to know each other. Thank you.”
• Richard Irvin: “I think there are three things that we have to focus on that are non-budgetary, budgeting, and non-taxable, issues.
“One, image and perception of the City. Consistently work on changing that we are that small town, old factory city that we were so many years ago.
“We became even worse than that in the ‘80s with the drug-dealing, drive-by, shooting, gang-banging, kind of town.
“We’ve got to consistently work to change that image by raising the profile of Aurora by attracting more economic development, which we have been doing the last four years.
“Working with our school districts to improve the school districts which we’ve been doing the last four years.
“Working with our police department and public safety officials across the board to ensure that there’s a better relationship with our police and our firemen and everybody that is front-facing out to the community. We’ve been doing that over the last four years.
“It’s important that we do focus on where the issues are coming from. We know that most people that commit crimes are young people. So, non-budgetary, create more relationships, which we did.
“Identify more mentor groups. We’ve identified 30 around Aurora that can assist our young people.
“Connect our young people through educational facilities with these mentoring groups so we can get our kids off the street, out of mischief, in school, and in productive programs that will help them not just now, but into the future.
“We’ve been working on that, as a matter of fact, we’ve established the peer mentoring group here in Aurora which identified 30 new organizations.”
How would you foster cooperation among City Council members to achieve consensus on critical projects and if you could, please give us an example?
• Judd Lofchie: “That’s a great question. Like I said with the police, we need to work together. We need to build relationships. I personally don’t think we have that with the City Council.
“I can think of, in four years having dinner with all the alderman one time. We do good at ribbon cuttings and things like that, but we don’t really get together and talk. I think we need to do more of that.
“I think we have the Open Meetings Act, so we have to be careful how many of us can talk to each other, so we don’t make any back-room deals kind of thing. So it makes it difficult.
“I think when there’s an important issue that comes up, usually the City Council does work together, and we do what’s best for our residents.
“I think we talk to our residents, and then we talk to the aldermen individually, one on one, then we try to do what’s right for the residents of the city.
“As far as one example, we’ve had a couple of loan programs for the restaurants that were hurting we came up with a loan program for businesses for restaurants, they don’t have to pay for their liquor license.
“The City Council came together quickly to be able to help the residents. We had a rent relief program that helped the residents who couldn’t pay their rent.
“So we all came together to do what was right for the citizens.”
• Richard Irvin: “I’ll give you an example out front before I talk about how we continually foster relationships. For example, the programs that do this, my fellow candidate/opponent was talking about were actually programs that my administration created and then took to the alderman to vote on. My administration, my team and I, created the STABLE (Standing Together with Aurora Businesses Local Emergency) fund program which gave 1.4 million dollars to small businesses for support during COVID-19.
“That wasn’t enough, we created the CERF (Coronavirus Emergency Relief Fund) program which is our emergency fund to continually assist which works out to be about 3.5 if you put all the programs together 3.5 million to help our businesses.
“We also created my administration to take in front of the aldermen for them to vote on, created the idea to assist people with their rent to make sure that even though this pandemic is going on and they’re losing their jobs, they still are going to be able to afford the place they live in, as well as making sure they get food in their stomachs by having a number of food giveaways that we’ve had throughout the Summer. The administration did this.
“The most important thing that I do is I meet with my aldermen all the time to talk about their issues in their ward and what we need to do to make Aurora a stronger city together.
“I meet with most of them and they’re happy to do it and we come up with great ideas on what we need to do to move Aurora forward.”
• John Laesch: “I’m going to start by talking about something that we did on the (East Aurora) School Board that worked to bring us together because like I mentioned, there was some controversy.
“We had gone for two years with temporary administrators and it was something that I harped on for a long time, that we needed to have a long-term person in place with a contract and we needed to reduce turn over if we wanted to have a strategic plan and carry something out.
“It was this process that was closer to the end of my term on the Board that brought us together because the process we used is one very similar as to how I would launch my administration and do in the first 100 days, is we came together and we set out our goals and we took input from the community and we took input from staff.
“We laid out our goals and we said this is what we need in an administrator.
“I want to do the same thing when I take over in City Hall in May.
“I said within our first 100 days, that I’ll hold a city-wide, goal-setting, meeting that brings together staff, elected officials, and the community, to carve out and write our own blueprint and have our own goals.
“This is a way to have two-way dialogue between myself and the aldermen. I would want to meet them and get to know them over lunch or dinner, either socially-distanced or after COVID to make sure that I knew each one of them and what their goals were and make sure that we’re including those goals.
“It’s this idea of coming together I think is what America wants to see right now as we’ve gone through a very divisive federal election. Thank you.”
What potential conflicts do you foresee between your interests and the City’s and if you are elected or re-elected, how will you address them if and when they arise?
• Richard Irvin: “I don’t foresee any conflicts. However if there are conflicts, I immediately notify the other folks in my administration to determine whether or not I’ve got to recuse myself from participating in a particular matter. However, as mayor, I don’t vote on most of the issues that come before me. Matter of fact, I only vote if I break a tie.
“The aldermen vote and usually it’s their conflict that we have to address and not the mayor’s, however, if a conflict did arise, I’d have absolutely no problem recusing myself and letting the mayor pro-tem, or other senior aldermen, step up in my stead. But again, that hasn’t happened that I’m aware of in the last four years.”
• John Laesch: “I don’t see any potential conflicts. Overall I think Americans are sick and tired of the broken pay to play system that’s corrupted Washington, Springfield, and even our local government.
“I think taxpayers, when they see a company like Builder’s Asphalt making an $11,000 donation to a political campaign and then that company receives 13 million dollars in contracts from the city of Aurora. I think they see something is wrong.
“Most people look at it and call it corruption, bribery, broken government, pay to play.
“We’re all sick and tired of constantly opening up our wallets to dole out more money for no-bid contracts and corporate bail-outs like the 16 million dollars in tax payer money that went to Fox Valley Developers, a politically-connected donor working here in my neighborhood.
“Reform starts in the campaign. Our campaign is not taking any donations from people who do business with City Hall, people who want to do business with City Hall.
“I’m proud to say that we’ve raised $50,000 with small dollar donations. We’ll be very competitive and when we win on April 6, I’ll be constantly fighting for a government and economy that works for everyone, not the politically-connected few.
“Within my first 100 days, we’ll pass an ethics ordinance that caps campaign contributions. We’ll use a competitive bidding process that opens up City contracts to everyone including minority-owned, and women-owned, businesses. Thank you.”
• Judd Lofchie: “Well, I do think that there is too much money in politics. Early on I asked if we could get an ethics ordinance passed and I helped draft it and submit it.
“So, we do already have an ethics ordinance. I did ask for caps to be put on it but after the newspaper called out some donations and the committee didn’t feel that we needed to do that, but I absolutely do think we need to do that. I had suggested $3,000.
“You know, if you do business with the city of Aurora or Cook County, if you do any business or get a variance or a contract, you can’t give a candidate more than $1,500 over an election cycle which would be four years in our case. I proposed doubling that because Arlington Heights does a $1,000 and we are about three times the size of Arlington Heights.
“A $3,000 cap I think would be good because I do think big money can have the perception of pay-to- play politics and it’s not right. We don’t need that in Aurora. We’re better than that!
“I also think that there are issues that as mayor, might be a conflict like recently we voted on a raise. I voted against the raise!
“As mayor, I would have said no. I wouldn’t have said I’m not voting for or against it, I would have just voted against it because I think that’s a conflict, to give yourself a raise.
“I think when we give ourselves raises and things, we probably shouldn’t vote on them. I see that as a conflict. Thank you.”
The Voice will have more campaign coverage in the next several weeks.