Executive Director's Column

Mayor Daley's decision not to run again hit us hard last week. Since 1989 when he came as mayor to our Annual Meeting in Charleston, he has given us all so much with his presence at our meetings and through his work and leadership on so many issues in the present great city he has produced _ Chicago.
He was surprised when I told him that year in Charleston he would be hosting our Annual Meeting the following June of 1990. Over the next few months I worked closely with him and his staff and the meeting was most successful and the beginning of his presence and participation that leaves us changed is so much for the better and stronger.
One of the first things he started questioning us about within the Conference of Mayors was the lack of presence of the business community and we followed suit by creating our Mayor's Business Council.
Another void was education as a priority. He challenged us all to focus on our public schools. He cautioned us not to have a shotgun approach on education but instead our task force was devoted to public schools K'12. He was our "Moses," our leader, and he put his political career on the line when he accepted the responsibility of the public schools passed down from the Illinois legislature like a hot political potato they didn't want. He relished the opportunity and soon our nation's mayors listened to him and followed him and while so many mayors don't run their public schools, we have all come to realize and to learn from him that without good public schools, citizens with children will flee and many companies with employees with children will not move to the city. Since his decision to make public schools an issue within our Conference, we have devoted so much time learning, sharing best practices and the public schools issue is still a challenge today and will be long into our future.
Brownfield development was brought forth by him at our Annual Meeting in 1995 in Portland. We did our famous brownfield survey showing America that there is an average of 30 brownfield lots in every Congressional district. We had problems with the federal government helping us approve the sites for development. Mayor Daley worked with the state of Illinois EPA to lead the way. Other states followed and the federal EPA has recognized our position and our need to develop the vacant lots into economic opportunities for our cities.
Mayor Daley, with his past experience as State Attorney, was also most helpful in our efforts to reduce crime in our cities. Together he worked with the Clinton Administration, and we pushed hard to implement the COPS program with 100,000 new offices without the red tape of other federal programs.
The issues go on and on over the past 21 years with his participation within our organization. And we are forever grateful for the time, his being with us to fight, laugh, and enjoy the life we live of running American cities. All the mayors will tell you this too about him. He is always respectful to the small and medium'size cities. He told me and he said it publicly that he himself learned from the small and medium'sized cities. He enjoyed it so much when our Conference President Paul Helmke took us to Fort Wayne for our leadership meeting. He relished the idea of being in a small city in the Midwest. He was never so big that he walked away or left when the smaller cities were sharing their best practices. No doubt he is a mayor's mayor.
I knew his father too. This year he will reach the day when he will have served in office longer than his father. Both of them believed in our organization. As a child, Mayor Daley came to our meetings with his father in the Summer. The culture was established years ago that mayors brought their children to our meetings.
Both Daley mayors were great mayors and the Chicago that the father built has been transformed into the world'class city of Chicago we know. Our Mayors Institute of City Design founder, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, tells us that it's not the speeches we make or the council votes we cast. Instead, Mayor Riley says that the design of the city, what you build and how you build, and what you leave 100 years from now is what will be remembered.
Nowhere in any other city on the globe have we seen Riley's words come in to reality as much as in Chicago in 2010. Mayor Richard M. Daley is the world'class mayor of today. He has transformed the Richard J. Daley Chicago of concrete, steel, and highways into a totally different city.
No doubt, Millennium Park is the most spectacular use of public space in America. It stands for all. People of all ages, and families and children of all races come there for 25 acres of public space to witness behold and enjoy. They confront "The Bean" and see themselves reflected in its polished stainless steel skin. Visitors come too for musical productions preformed in the bandshell designed by Frank Gehry.
Throughout the city visitors and Chicagoans see flowers, especially up and down Michigan Avenue. Mayor Daley simply says that flowers make people happy.
Through our Climate Protection Center we have shared Mayor Daley's greening of Chicago. Over 600,000 trees have been planted over the time that Mayor Daley has served. His leadership on green roofs was an example to cities worldwide. Currently there are seven million square feet of green roofs in the city.
When it comes to art, and especially public art, Mayor Daley has passionately led the way. The cows on the streets started in Chicago and others have followed. I walked with him once in Grant Park through a Botero exhibit and he bragged about how he competed against Berlin, Tokyo, and New York to get the exhibit. He's very proud of his leadership in the arts area. Sometimes people don't recognize this about him. When you see it you know he was involved in it, Chicago is his passion and he is indeed a hands'on mayor involved right down to the details.
Gallery 37, founded and created by Maggie Daley, has been copied all over the world. Maggie's vision came in a natural way when she said that the only thing of culture her children had was a rock concert. She felt that her children deserved more and she felt that all children in Chicago deserved more. The initiative brings children of all ages and all incomes to one place to experience and practice art. We have had many meetings with other mayors and it has been a gift to all of us since Maggie worked so hard to mentor, teach, and share her success with young people and the arts. Other cities are most appreciative of Maggie's hard work and dedication with one goal in mind _ to provide a positive arts experience for every child in the city.
Mayor Daley has been the mayor who has welcomed new techniques, and common sense approaches to humanize the city. Today people point to Chicago's leadership and Mayor Daley makes it his business to share best practices. It was his idea to devote hours at our Annual Meetings to share best practices. Mayors come to our meetings and hear of new ways of dealing with old problems, they then take the best practices home and all cities benefit. This culture in our organization, of sharing best practices is alive today and will continue thanks to Mayor Daley's leadership on this issue.
His philosophy about our bipartisanship is very strong. We all know how he detests and has spoken out about the Democratic and Republican Mayors Caucuses. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, a Past President of the Conference said, "There is not a partisan way to fill a pothole." While Mayor Daley can be strong in supporting Presidential candidates, he has stood strongly against the division that will take place if the partisan caucuses are not in their appropriate role as organizations. And today we are probably the last bastion of bipartisanship left in America.
While I hate to see him leave being mayor, I am personally happy for him because along side his passion for politics and his city of Chicago is his passion for his family. Our thoughts are with him and Maggie as she lives with cancer.
The buzz is all around about who will take his place. No one will ever take his place. There will be a mayor who comes after him just as sure as the sun goes up and the sun goes down. But no one will take his place. This organization is blessed to have had him and the nation's mayors learned from this leader who led by doing things, by getting things done. Yes, today we have a Chicago that never was until he took over and showed the world his courage, his heart, and his passion. No, no one will ever take his place.
No doubt in the coming months we will honor and thank him. I, for one, will pause around Christmas and recognize that he served longer than the first Mayor Daley I worked with when I came here over 40 years ago. I will also think of the future too, when another Mayor Daley will be elected and whoever he or she is, I will be here ready to serve knowing that this family understands city people, how to use power, and how to move city people to act as good as any political family in the history of our nation.