Now That The Mayor’s Race Is Over, Cook County Board President Gets Back To Business

After returning from her run for Mayor of Chicago, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (pictured) has set her focus on creating equitable opportunities in the county and preparing for the 2020 Census.
After returning from her run for Mayor of Chicago, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (pictured) has set her focus on creating equitable opportunities in the county and preparing for the 2020 Census.

Now That The Mayor’s Race Is Over, Cook County Board President Gets Back To Business

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

After a long, crowded, and historical mayoral race, Toni Preckwinkle is back to business as the President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners and has lost no momentum on implementing the recently released Policy Road Map and preparing for the 2020 Census.

The Policy Roadmap is the first comprehensive plan for the Offices Under the President since the administration’s transition plan in 2011. The Policy Roadmap was created with significant input and participation from community members, local industry partners, and other valuable stakeholders and outlines key policy priorities and strategic initiatives that address the challenges that County residents are currently facing. The Policy Roadmap also details the administration’s vision for creating safe, thriving, and healthy communities.

“We spent a year and a half on a planning process to create a Policy Roadmap and what came out of that was that we should focus on equity and we should look at what we’re doing through an equity lens so that’s going to be our focus going forward,” said Preckwinkle.

In addition to focusing on the elements that are detailed in the Policy Road map, Preckwinkle and the rest of her administration are preparing for the 2020 Census which she said is critically important for securing federal funding and maintaining the state of Illinois’s congressional power.

“The census is critical not just for the county but for all of the units of government in the state, many of which depend on federal support which is based on a per-capita calculation. We have to be sure that we get all of our residents counted in the census and that’s always a daunting task. We devoted $2 million of our annual budget and considerable staff resources to try to be supportive of this effort to have a complete count,” said Preckwinkle.

In addition to influencing the federal dollars that come into the county

and the state, the census results also can have an effect on Illinois’s representation in Congress.

“Should we lose population, relative to other states in the country, we will

lose members of our congressional delegation and of course that diminishes our power in Congress so the census is really critical,” said Preckwinkle.

President Preckwinkle was one of two female African American candidates

to go into the recent runoff in Chicago’s mayoral election. Although Preckwinkle was not elected to be the next mayor, she did have the opportunity

to reconnect with Chicago’s residents and that is a learning experience that will follow her back to the county.

“We ran a campaign focused on being sure that working families could

survive and thrive in Chicago and we emphasized growth and opportunity,

not just downtown but in all of our communities,” said Preckwinkle. “As I

went around the city, one of the things that really impressed me and struck me

was how much people in every community care about their neighborhood.”

To learn more about the Cook County Policy Road Map visit www. cookcountyil.gov.

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