Yet another city service primed to get more love now that Rahm is gone, is the Chicago Public Library. With new Mayor Lori Lightfoot the top position at the library system is changing. Per the Sun-Times, Lightfoot has chosen ‘career librarian’ Andrea Telli as the system’s new commissioner.
From the beginning of his tenure, Emanuel antagonized the library with the proposal of draconian cuts to hours, funding and staffing. Former Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey resigned in protest of these cuts and the city council bargained for a lessening of the cuts. Outgoing library commissioner Brian Bannon, appointed by Emanuel, leaves just after a critical report of library services by Chicago inspector General Joe Ferguson.
Even though Emanuel’s administration presided over some branch library successes, such as the Chinatown Branch and mixed-development Roosevelt Branch, the library system as a whole has the opportunity to thrive if Lightfoot, whose partner is a librarian herself, follows up the signal of her new appointment, with the resources the library system needs and deserves.
Schools, affordable housing, equitable neighborhoods, and thriving libraries: these are the services that help the vast majority of citizens, the ones Rahm Emanuel and the corporate democrats he represents have ignored for too long.