CHICAGO CITY HALL (WBBM Newsradio) — The man Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to oversee roads and bridges in the city had a mostly smooth ride at his City Council confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Transportation Commissioner-designate William Cheaks Jr. has spent four decades in public service, including a previous tour of duty as CDOT’s managing deputy commissioner. He’s been serving in an acting capacity since Mayor Johnson nominated him last month.<\/p>\n
During his appearance before Wednesday’s committee hearing, Cheaks told aldermen he was dedicated to improving efficiency, safety and communication in the role: “My focus has stayed the same: Delivering safe, equitable and accountable infrastructure improvements that strengthen Chicago’s neighborhoods.” <\/p>\n
Council members largely praised Cheaks’ work, with Northwest side Ald. Felix Cardona (31st Ward) noting he’s already seen changes with inspectors detailed to his ward: “It’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” he said, laughing, “and I thank you for that.”<\/p>\n
But Downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins brought up the traffic nightmare caused last summer, when unrelated improvement projects closed numerous bridges over the Chicago River at the same time: “This was entirely foreseeable and avoidable.”<\/p>\n
Ald. Hopkins (2nd Ward) called on Cheaks to move toward a “cultural change” at CDOT, adopting a version of the physicians’ Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.”<\/p>\n
“We have caused harm,” said Ald. Hopkins. “It’s possible to maintain our bridges, to go forward with scheduled projects, and also minimize the inconvenience.”<\/p>\n
Cheaks said he got the message: “You’re not the only one who’s voiced displeasure. I have been meeting with my team and we’re going to look at what happened there.”<\/p>\n
His appointment now goes to the full Council, which is likely to vote on it May 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO CITY HALL (WBBM Newsradio) — The man Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to oversee roads and bridges…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":794313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[287148,960,5386,1818,47195],"class_list":{"0":"post-794312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-all-local","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-illinois-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}