The veteran bureaucrat chosen to lead the Chicago Department of Transportation sailed through his confirmation hearing Wednesday, but William Cheaks Jr. still got an earful from City Council members about everything from speed cameras and potholes to ill-timed bridge closings.
It’s a good thing Cheaks has spent a lifetime in city government working his way up the ladder from laborer to manager of major infrastructure projects in the Department of Water Management and in CDOT.
He’ll need that experience and the relationships built along the way to run a $1.83 billion department that touches every one of Chicago’s 50 wards in a way that can make or break the local alderperson.
Cheaks got a taste of those political stakes during a meeting Wednesday of the Council’s Transportation Committee.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) started the gripe session by complaining about five “overlapping bridge closures” that caused traffic headaches on the Near North Side and downtown.
“This was entirely foreseeable and avoidable and it was a reckless decision … to go forward without a sufficient congestion mitigation plan,” Hopkins told Cheaks.
“It’s cost real estate sales. It’s costing people to be late for their appointments, be late for their jobs. I would even argue it’s causing an increase in road rage incidents because people get so frustrated by being stuck in traffic that they begin driving in an aggressive manner.”
Cheaks said Hopkins is “not the only one who has voiced displeasure” with the traffic nightmare on Cortland, Grand, Kinzie and Halsted caused by those bridge closures.
“I have been meeting with my team and we’re gonna look at what happened there so as not to repeat that in the future,” the new commissioner said.
Ald. Ronnie Mosley (21st) represents a South Side ward with “more public right-of-way” than any ward in Chicago. But every Council member gets the same $1.5 million in so-called “menu money” to spend on projects of their choosing.
“What do you see as your role to bring forth equity to those wards that, if things continue as they are laid out, won’t see the [same] improvement in quality of life as someone that lives in a smaller ward but still sees that same $1.5 million [where] it’s able to go much further and have a greater impact?” Mosley asked.
Cheaks said he hopes to work with “outside agencies to see if there’s a way to secure better funding that can be dispersed equitably across the city.”
“I understand there are concerns about equity in the menu program and we’re looking to do collector streets which don’t actually come from the menu program,” the new commissioner said.
“That is a way to kind of balance things out in the city. We’re looking at different avenues to see if there are more opportunities to do projects like that.”
Mosley said some of his constituents have lived more than 40 years on streets built by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. Those residents have never seen improvements to those streets, some of which lack curbs and sidewalks.
“How can you work to reinvigorate and work to expedite that program so that residents, in their lifetime, can see a completed street?” the alderperson said.
South Side Ald. David Moore (17th) said he, too, has “streets that haven’t been done in 20 years and they don’t even look like a street anymore — or alley.”
Cheaks pleaded for “a little time” to “delve into the program” and, as he put it, “see if there’s something I can expedite.”
He’s already met in recent days with his counterparts at the Illinois Department of Transportation to “figure out ways to get larger areas paved,” including major thoroughfares, such as 95th Street.
No gripe session would be complete without complaints about the more than 200 speed cameras that snare motorists around schools and parks and slap them with $35 to $100 fines.
Cheaks said speed cameras are installed “after studies are done to mitigate speeding.”
But, he said, he’s “willing to work with alderpersons” who at least want to see the revenue generated by their local speed cameras spent on improvements in their wards.
“I would like to come back to you … with a better answer and a plan,” about spending speed camera revenue, Cheaks said.
The full Council is expected to give final sign-off to the Cheaks appointment next week.