Honorary street designations are a way to curry favor with clout-heavy constituents that Chicago aldermen are reluctant to give up or even change.
That was obvious Wednesday when Transportation Committee Chairman Anthony Beale (9th) tried again to rein in the costly and time-consuming political perk, only to run into a buzz saw of opposition.
The ordinance, now shelved for at least a month, would have limited the number of annual honorary street designations to two per alderman and required aldermen to bankroll those signs with $1,000 from the $1.32 million in “menu money” set aside each year to each of the city’s 50 wards to spend on infrastructure repairs of the local alderman’s choosing.
The signs would sunset after five years and be removed unless the designation is renewed. No living individual could be honored.
“We named a sign in my ward this year for the 92-year old metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church. Why do you have to wait until he’s dead in order to show people that he is respected and an important part of our community?” said Lincoln Park Ald. Michele Smith (43rd).
“We are creating a whole lot of bureaucracy over something that gets in the way of honoring local heroes because of a couple controversies. This is just swatting a fly with a cannon. . . . This is a terrible thing to remove from a local community that wants to pay homage to someone who has made a big difference in their lives.”
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Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) took particular issue with the sunset that would require existing signs honoring living individuals to be removed after five years.
“We’ve honored people because of their work in the community . . . and after five years, we’re in essence saying that you have a term limit as to your designation and we’re not going to renew your sign because you’re living. So, please die real soon,” Taliaferro said.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) said the $500-a-sign price tag amounts to a “400 percent markup” on the $101 cost of creating an honorary street sign. He’s equally concerned about tapping menu money.
“With our menus being stretched as it is, another add-on to our menus in a year when we’re already adding on at least $10,000 [for public] art. This will make communities that are already struggling with resources struggle even harder,” he said.
Lopez noted that the $66 million-a-year aldermanic menu program is paid for with general obligation bonds backed by property taxes.
“We’re basically taking out a 30-year mortgage to pay for $1,000 worth of street signs. That fiscally doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Lopez said.
Under siege from all sides, Beale agreed to hold the ordinance he championed in his committee for another month. But, he warned his colleagues that something needs to be done to rein in a program that’s “out of control.”
“On a monthly basis, my staff and the department [of Transportation] is over-burdened with street sign designations to go up for someone who’s being honored. And we don’t have a cost associated with the emergency, stop-the-presses, I-need-this-sign-tomorrow-because-I-have-an-event-that-you-told-nobody-about [urgency] and you want this sign put up,” Beale said.
“There’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that have prompted the last three chairmen of this committee to [propose] some type of reform as it relates to honorary street signs. We all want to honor people in our communities. But the cost associated [with] these emergency signs that are going up is out of control.”
Earlier this year, Beale changed his tune about honorary streets signs honoring former gang member-turned-community activist Hal Baskin.
Two months after ordering the Chicago Department of Transportation to take down the Baskin signs on 65th Street, Beale changed his mind after the mayor’s office brokered a compromise with local Ald. Toni Foulkes (16th) that dramatically reduced the number of blocks covered by the honorary street designation and the number of signs required.
More recently, the City Council moved to strip President-elect Donald Trump of the honorary street sign outside his riverfront hotel and condominium.
The Trump and Hal Baskin Street controversies were just the latest in a series touched off by the City Council’s political addiction to honorary street designations.
In April 2000, female aldermen and women’s groups managed to defeat in committee an honorary street sign for Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whom they called the “world’s biggest pornographer.”
The next day, then-Ald. Burton F. Natarus (42nd) used a parliamentary maneuver to ram the designation through the full City Council.
Two years later, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown disclosed that a Peterson Park corner commemorates Hyman Tucker, the city’s poster boy for ghost payrolling.
In 2004, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s aunt and uncle and a former cultural affairs commissioner who was once a member of the Communist Party joined the parade of Chicagoans afforded the accolade.
By far the biggest controversy occurred when then-Ald. Madeline Haithcock (2nd) touched a nerve with — and was forced to withdraw — her proposal to rename a West Side street in honor of slain Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton. She was unwilling to divide the City Council along racial lines on a vote she was destined to lose.
In the wake of the Hampton controversy, then-Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Allen (38th) gave his colleagues a choice: either eliminate the honorary street designation perk or submit a biographical description of the honoree. That way, there won’t be any more Hampton-style “embarrassments,” Allen said.
Allen ultimately lost the political battle just as Beale did on Wednesday.
