Helen Shiller

Helen Shiller is alderman on the Chicago City Council of the 46th ward in Chicago; she was first elected in 1987.

Early life

Shiller was born in New York City and earned her high school Diploma from Woodstock County School in Vermont in 1965. She went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in history. Recently, in 2005, Shiller graduated from De Paul University’s School for New Learning Master’s Program where her focus was public policy.

Shiller moved to Chicago's Uptown neighborhood in the early 1970s and helped create the Heart of Uptown Coalition, an organization "which oversaw health and legal clinics, distributed clothes and meals to the poor, and freaked out older white residents by aligning itself with the Black Panthers."cite news
last =Joravsky
first =Ben
title =Helen's Voters
work =Chicago Reader
date =March 30, 2007
url=http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/uptown/politics/
accessdate =2007-05-09 ] The group ran Shiller, unsuccessfully, for alderman in 1977.

From 1981 to 1987, Shiller was President and CEO of Justice Graphics, Inc. Shiller also worked as a free lance photographer and writer from the mid-1970s until her election as alderman.

Aldermanic career

Shiller was first elected alderman of the 46th ward, which encompasses a large portion of Uptown, in 1987, beating an incumbent named Jerry Orbach by 498 votes.

Shiller soon encountered her "bête-noir" when Richard M. Daley was elected Mayor of Chicago in 1989. She earned the mayor's enmity when she was one of a handful of aldermen to oppose passage of one of his first budgets and when she ran for re-election in 1991, Daley supported her opponent, Mike Quigley. Shiller won with 53% of the vote in a runoff election, amid charges that Quigley was a carpetbagger.

Shiller won her 1995 re-election bid comfortably, with 57% of the vote.

In 1999, Daley, knowing that Shiller's support was strongest among blacks chose Sandra Reed, a black high school English teacher, to oppose her. However, intense involvement by the mayor and his allies in the race backfired and Shiller won with 55 percent of the vote in another runoff.

In the 2001 redistricting of Chicago wards, Daley had hoped to redraw the map so as to deprive Shiller of her most committed supporters in the 2003 city council elections. However, this backfired when none of the (pro-Daley) aldermen in wards surrounding the 46th wanted to contend with "her" supporters. Shiller and Daley, however, reached an understanding: the mayor supported her in the 2003 elections and also pushed forward development of Wilson Yards, a vacant lot in her district into a Target store and affordable housing. Shiller has consistently voted with the mayor ever since. In 2004, Daley gave her control over the Wilson Yard Tax Increment Financing District and the $26.5 million it generated.

Shiller's alliance with Daley paid off and she defeated Reed again in 2003, this time with 58% of the vote.

In 2007, still allied with Daley, she narrowly defeated James Cappleman, a social worker and community activist, with 53% of the vote. The alliance with Shiller benefited Daley in the election also, as he won 79% of the vote in the 46th ward, running ahead of the 72% he received citywide.

Shiller has been described as "committed to liberal causes" appropriate for the lakefront district she represents. She worked for the passing for the human rights ordinance, recycling programs and city responsibility for public health and safety in the Chicago Public Schools. She initiated an anti-apartheid ordinance in 1990 and added a budget amendment to triple to city’s AIDS budget in 1992. She co-sponsored the domestic partners ordinance which extends benefits for unmarried couples.

In 1989, Shiller sponsored a resolution creating a sub-committee on Domestic Violence. Since that resolution, the Chicago Police Department invested in a computerized domestic violence incident tracking system and the city now funds domestic violence counselling centers and programs for supervised visitations.

Shiller has recently worked with the Department of Housing to develop the Planned Purchase Assistance Program, which provides opportunities for home ownership to working families.

Criticism of Shiller in the 2007 election was largely focused on the lack of communication to ward residents, failure to obtain ongoing input from residents for zoning changes in the ward, her lack of involvement in CAPS meetings, and the many years of blighted retail in the ward. Some critics also charge that "she’s keeping Uptown a slum by making it hard for developers to put up their projects." (The 46th ward is sharply divided between wealthy residents who live along Lake Michigan and poorer residents who live west of Sheridan Road.) The columnist Mike Royko once charged that “Shiller’s main motive was that she was building a political power base which included as many winos as she could drag to the voting booth." She has not, however, been indicted for voting irregularities. She has been accused of "using the Wilson Yard project to cram the area with poor people to maintain her political base." The neighborhood of Uptown is home to two R.E.S.T. shelters, one Salvation Army shelter, one Salvation Army day center for the homeless, four Cornerstone shelters, a transitional shelter program from Inspiration Cafe, a transitional housing program located at 1207 W. Leland for active drug users with mental illness from Heartland Alliance, another transitional housing program located at 1325 W. Wilson from Heartland Alliance, four nursing homes for people with mental illness, and numerous large SRO buildings, many of them for people living with mental illness. When looking at the number of social services in the ward, its rate is approximately 5 times higher than what is found in other wards. In 2000, a CURL study cited that 18% of the housing in Uptown is subsidized. Other wards average around 5% of their housing as subsidized.

Shiller serves on eight committees: Budget and Government Operations; Buildings; Committees, Rules and Ethics; Finance; Health; Housing and Real Estate; Human Relations; and License and Consumer Protection.

References

External links

* [http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalEntityHomeAction.do?entityName=Ward46&entityNameEnumValue=91 City of Chicago Ward 46 website]
* [http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do?BV_SessionID=@@@@0138683928.1168004912@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccdaddjkfimdkjcefecelldffhdffn.0&contentOID=536897491&contenTypeName=COC_EDITORIAL&topChannelName=Ward&entityName=Ward46&deptMainCategoryOID=-10893&blockName=Ward46/Content&context=dept Official website]
* [http://www.aldermanshiller.com/images/wardmap.jpg46th Ward Map]