the issues
Chicago is the greatest city in the world
We have the people, the lake, the neighborhoods, the talent, and the economic strength to thrive. What we need is a City Hall focused on the work residents experience every day. John Kelly is running for mayor on five fundamentals — the basic responsibilities city government owes every Chicagoan, in every neighborhood, without exception. These are not aspirations. They are the job.
safe streets
Chicago’s residents don’t feel safe.
That is the reality, and no set of statistics changes what people experience on their own blocks, at their train stations, and on the way home from work. Carjackings in broad daylight. Armed robberies on commercial streets. Families afraid to let their children play outside. Workers paying twenty dollars for a ride-share because the platform after dark doesn’t feel safe. That is the Chicago too many people are living in right now.
A city where people don’t feel safe cannot attract new businesses or new residents. It cannot keep the families who are already here. Every other challenge the city faces — rising property taxes, empty offices, declining schools — gets harder to solve when the foundation of public safety is not there. Safety is not one issue among many. It is the condition on which everything else depends.
John Kelly will make safe streets the first priority of his administration. That means well-trained, well-resourced police officers working as genuine partners in the neighborhoods they serve. It means investing in violence prevention programs that have demonstrated real results. It means holding City Hall accountable for the daily experience of residents, not just the numbers in a press release.
Chicago’s 2025 homicide numbers showed the city can move in the right direction. John Kelly will build on that progress and supercharge it — because the goal is not better than last year. The goal is safe.
Cut Property Taxes by Growing the Tax Base
Property taxes in Chicago have risen sharply and residents are rightly frustrated and angry.
Worried how they are going to afford to pay their monthly mortgage when the taxes just went up $500 a month. Residential property taxes jumped nearly 12 percent last year. On the South and West Sides, the increases were even larger. Families who have owned their homes for decades are getting bills they cannot pay.
At the same time, the city’s commercial tax base is collapsing. Downtown office vacancy has hit an all-time high, more than one in four offices sitting empty. Commercial strips throughout the city site half vacant from Rogers Park to Roseland. When businesses leave, the tax burden shifts to the homeowners and small businesses who remain and the cycle accelerates.
John Kelly’s approach is not to simply cut spending and call it relief. The path to lower property taxes runs through a stronger economy. That means filling empty offices, attracting employers, supporting small businesses, and making Chicago competitive again. Every new job created, every office that fills, every business that opens expands the tax base and spreads the levy across more payers. That means each homeowner carries less of the burden.
This is also an equity issue. Property tax pressure falls hardest on longtime homeowners on the South and West Sides who do not have the resources to absorb these increases. Property tax relief is a neighborhood stability issue, not a luxury. John Kelly will make it a governing priority.
Kids Who Can Read
Every child in Chicago deserves a school where they can learn to read, do math, build confidence, and prepare for a real future.
That is the basic promise public education makes to every family. Right now Chicago is not keeping it.
Chicago spends over $27,400 per student, roughly 75 percent above the national average. The results tell a different story. Only 18 percent of third through eighth graders perform math at grade level. Only 31 percent read at grade level. Forty-one percent are chronically absent. Meanwhile Chicago Public Schools has added thousands of staff in recent years even as enrollment has fallen by nearly 90,000 students in the last 15 years.
The problem is a matter of focus. The leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union has shifted its priorities away from the classroom and toward adult employment, political influence, and cultural agendas that have nothing to do with whether a child can read. Teachers in Chicago’s classrooms work hard every day. They are not the problem. The system around them has lost sight of its fundamental purpose.
Compare Chicago to Cicero, right next door, or to U-46, the second largest school district in Illinois serving a comparable student population — at significantly lower cost per student with better outcomes. The structural excuses don’t hold. The difference is focus and accountability.
John Kelly will use the mayoral bully pulpit to return Chicago’s schools to their fundamental mission: every student learns to read, write, and do math. Decisions about curriculum, staffing, and resources must be made in service of that outcome — not in service of any political organization or ideological agenda.
Safe Transit After Dark
For many Chicagoans, the CTA isn’t working.
Buses and trains that don’t run on time, stations that feel unsafe, and a system that too many residents have simply stopped trusting. The problem is worse after dark. Many working people depend on transit to get home. CTA’s failure to keep riders safe has a real dollar cost.
John Kelly calls it the Safety Tax. The moment the sun goes down, working people start doing math. A waitress can ride the CTA to her dinner shift for seventy five bucks a month She cannot use her monthly ticket to ride home safely after midnight. So she pays twenty dollars for a ride-share out of tips she spent eight hours on her feet to earn. That is not a transit problem. That is a tax, imposed on working people by a failure of city leadership. It falls hardest on the people who can least afford it.
Forty-five percent of CTA riders say they feel unsafe on the system. Four people were shot and killed on the Blue Line in separate incidents in a single month. Ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels even as the operating budget has grown. The system is costing more and delivering less.
John Kelly will make the CTA a two-way ride — safe going to work and safe coming home, at every hour of the day. Safe transit after dark is not a luxury. It is a basic part of affordability, public safety, and a world-class city.
A Modern City Charter and Accountable Government
Chicago’s outgoing Inspector General concluded that the city “operates at a deficit of legitimacy.”
Most Chicagoans would agree. City Hall spends too much time on national politics and not enough on potholes, snow removal, flooding, and the basic services that make daily life work.
Part of the problem is structural. Of the 15 largest cities in America, Chicago is the only one without a city charter — a municipal constitution that establishes the rules, authorities, and accountability structures of city government. Without one, the city’s governing obligations are largely unenforceable. Elected officials can ignore rules, shift accountability, and change course without consequence, because no citizen can go to court to hold them to their own commitments.
A City Charter changes that. It rebalances power between the mayor and the City Council, gives the Council access to executive branch information so it can actually do its job, establishes ethics and procurement rules with real legal force, and creates performance standards that residents can hold their government to. It is the operating system reform that makes every other fundamental deliverable.
Getting Chicago a charter requires the Illinois General Assembly to pass authorizing legislation. That effort has growing bipartisan support from scholars, business leaders, former officials, and community organizations. John Kelly will lead that effort from his first day in office.