Favor fave
Alderman Gardiner has overridden city officials in order to deliver political favors to some of his biggest supporters. This is exactly the kind of Aldermanic privilege Mayor Lightfoot campaigned to stop, yet Aldermen’s power remains unchecked.
1. Residential Permit Parking for Jacquelyn Hathaway
Jacquelyn Hathaway (admin of an anti-5150 Northwest Highway/Affordable Housing Facebook page to rally the troops in John Garrido’s NIMBY crusade which then morphed into the Six Corners Neighbors disinformation page and totally innocent “area resident” who fabricated a bird flipping story) was a vocal supporter of Alderman Gardiner’s and long-time anti-Arena anti-affordable housing community agitator. Hathaway had previously lobbied to designate her block of 4700 W Hutchinson residential permit parking. She made little progress under former Alderman Arena, presumably due to the fact that block does not meet the legal requirements for permit parking, however her fortunes changed under Alderman Gardiner who will not be stopped by pesky city laws or city officials who try to follow them. Gardiner introduced an order on July 24, 2019 to designate the block for permit parking.
The city ordinance requires five criteria to designate a street residential permit parking and all five must be met:
An application, along with a petition containing signatures from 65% of the block residents who own a vehicle and have a city sticker, must be delivered to the Comptroller.
The zone must be at least a block.
At least 80% of the length of the street must be residential.
A study must determine that at least 45% of vehicles parked on the block are non-residents.
A study must determine that at least 85% of block is generally occupied.
This request failed to meet four of the five required criteria, yet Gardiner over-rode the city and designated it permit parking anyway, forcing everyone on this block to purchase permit stickers to park on their own, generally unoccupied block.
Running through the above criteria, here is what we found:
The Comptroller’s office has confirmed they received no application and no petition signatures.
The zone applies only to 4700 to 4721, clearly not a complete block.
Using the most generous assumptions, at best 65% of the street is residential and fails to meet the 80% requirement.
Check - The city’s study found that, of the few (six) cars parked on this block, most (five) were not registered to addresses on the block.
The city’s study determined that only 30% of street parking was occupied.
Given all of this, the Department of Finance sent a letter to Alderman Gardiner indicating permit parking “is not recommended” because it did not meet the requirements. He did it anyway.
UPDATE 9/16/2020 - The Department of Finance has confirmed that they received no response to this letter from Gardiner. He just ignored it.
2. Residential Permit Parking for… former Alderman Levar
A resident recently raised questions about permit parking on the 4400 N block of La Crosse. On October 16, 2019, Gardiner introduced an ordinance to designate this block as permit parking. We are still awaiting additional details, however it’s clear this action was also taken against the city’s recommendation otherwise Gardiner would not have had to introduce an Override Order on November 13th to make this happen.
UPDATE 9/16/2020 - Incredibly, when contacted about this, the Alderman told residents that this was out of his control and denied that he had any power here while in reality he introduced and signed an override order to make it happen.