Aurora mayoral candidates, all except incumbent Richard Irvin, shared their viewpoints on a variety of questions ranging in topic from ethical behavior to working with small businesses at Thursday’s League of Women Voters Aurora Area candidate forum.
The mayoral primary election is set for Feb. 25.
The forum, held at the Aurora Police Department on East Indian Trail, was attended by Aurora mayoral candidates Jazmine Garcia, Karina Garcia, John Laesch, Judd Lofchie and Ted Mesiacos. Irvin previously said he had a scheduling conflict that prevented him from attending, and that he had unsuccessfully tried to get the forum’s date changed to work with his schedule.
In the forum format, a moderator asks a question, then all candidates in attendance get a chance to give their answer before the moderator asks the next question. Candidates cannot directly respond to each other’s answers like they would in a debate, and the audience is not allowed to applaud, cheer or boo for certain candidates.
While a variety of topics were discussed during the nearly two-hour event — of which a recording can be found on the League of Women Voters Aurora Area Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LWVAuroraArea — each candidates’ answers along with opening and closing statements helped to build an overall picture of their campaigns and messaging.
Jazmine Garcia was the first to speak at the event, following last-name alphabetical order.
She said during her opening statement that, despite having a bachelor’s and master’s degree in urban planning, she personally has to rely on food stamps and Medicaid, is struggling to pay back her student loans and finds it “impossible” to find affordable housing while “do-nothing career politicians and developers fill their personal pockets.”
Throughout her answers, Jazmine Garcia advocated for rent control and more affordable housing, including saying that she will “abolish homelessness” in the city if elected, and suggested that vacant city-owned land could be used to build tiny houses for people experiencing homelessness.
Another topic Jazmine Garcia brought up a number of times throughout her answers was ethical and civil behavior at the Aurora City Council. She suggested that all city officials should sign ethics and civility pledges, plus said she wanted to stop city politicians from taking campaign contributions from city vendors or others who do business with the city.
The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Jazmine Garcia said she loves how diverse Aurora is, but that those diverse communities do not feel welcome within the city currently. If elected, she would strive to make Aurora welcoming to all and would push to turn Aurora into a sanctuary city with clearer guidelines than those at the state level, she said.
Karina Garcia, who herself was undocumented for a time after she came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 9, said undocumented people shouldn’t feel scared to leave their homes, so she also supported the idea of Aurora becoming a sanctuary city. The city has a large Latino population, but people of other ethnicities are also undocumented here, she said.
“If they’re here to work, and they’re paying taxes, and they’re providing for the community, and they’re giving back, they should feel safe to be here in this city,” Karina Garcia said.
Supporting Aurora residents over those who live outside the city was a common theme throughout Karina Garcia’s answers, whether she was talking about turning downtown into an entertainment center, focused mainly on attracting Aurora residents, to creating housing that people in Aurora can afford rather than trying to attract buyers from outside the city. She is the part-owner of a house-flipping business that keeps its finished homes affordable for residents, she said.
Karina Garcia is also the president and CEO of the Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, so many of her answers also tied back to supporting local businesses. She pledged to make funding more streamlined for all businesses and to provide better resources to those looking to start a business within the city.
John Laesch, who is currently one of the two at-large aldermen on the Aurora City Council, said he is running for mayor because it seems to him that there are “two Auroras,” one that works “incredibly well” for developers, campaign donors and the politically connected but another for “the rest of us,” who have to “play by the rules” by waiting for things like building permits and pay higher taxes to “subsidize” the city’s other side.
He pledged that, if elected mayor, he would “be a voice for all of us” by listening to residents and fighting for things like living-wage jobs, working-class housing, the environment and ethics reform.
These themes were present in nearly all of Laesch’s answers, from saying that financial incentives for large developments are driving up rent prices and that the city should instead invest in local businesses or those that could bring in living-wage jobs, to proposing a city-wide listening tour so all residents can hear his goals and share their concerns along with a newsletter to better communicate with residents.
Laesch also said he wants to move the city more toward home ownership and away from apartments or other rentals. The city could tap into existing state and federal funding to help build more environmentally-friendly homes, he said.
Judd Lofchie, an attorney and commercial developer who formerly sat on the Aurora City Council and currently sits on the East Aurora School Board, brought up in his comments how difficult it is to start a business in Aurora.
He said he has helped around 50 businesses open, and permits sometimes take six to 12 months for approval when they should take two to three months, according to Lofchie. He said the city needs to be more business-friendly, give business more support and make things easier.
Aurora also needs to do a better job at planning where it is going, such as with a master plan, Lofchie said. For instance, he said Aurora needs to figure out what types of businesses that stakeholders throughout the community actually want to see downtown, and the city needs to start looking at potentially finding sources of drinking water other than the Fox River as other cities along it consider removing their dams.
Lofchie suggested that his proposed master plan would also consider affordable housing, which he said should be worked into the deals Aurora makes with residential developers. In exchange for the economic incentives the city would give to the development, the developer should be required to set aside a percentage of units as affordable housing, he said.
Ted Mesiacos, who currently serves on the Aurora City Council as the 3rd Ward alderman, said Aurora’s current stock of affordable housing is similar to nearby cities, so Aurora should “be careful to avoid outpacing the towns around us in creating additional housing.” However, the city should look into partnering with builders to put new houses on empty residential lots the city currently owns by using existing federal funding, he said.
Similar partnerships were proposed throughout Mesiacos’ answers, such as a possible agreement with Aurora Township to expand its existing Ride in Kane transportation program. He also said the city should look into bringing back an Amtrak train station and Greyhound bus station to downtown.
Aurora’s downtown has seen “short-term successes,” according to Mesiacos, and while he hopes it continues, the city needs to consider how it will move forward “in an orderly fashion,” he said. Aurora’s downtown, neighborhoods and parks need to have design standards, and the city needs to bring in a larger variety of developers to work on downtown projects rather than just the handful that currently do projects there, he said.
Public safety was another common thread throughout many of Mesiacos’ answers. He said that people and businesses need to feel safe, so police need to be more visible both at community meetings and in public places.
Early voting began Jan. 16 for the primary election on Feb. 25, which includes the Aurora mayoral primary. The top two finishers in the mayoral primary will move on to the April 1 consolidated election.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com