Belia Rodriguez
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Belia Rodriguez ran for election to the Chicago City Council to represent Ward 49 in Illinois. She lost in the general election on February 28, 2023.
Rodriguez completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Belia Rodriguez was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her career experience includes working as a business owner. As of her 2023 campaign, Rodriguez served on the advisory council of Housing Opportunities for Women.[1]
Elections
2023
See also: City elections in Chicago, Illinois (2023)
General election
2023
Video for Ballotpedia
Video submitted to Ballotpedia
Released February 26, 2023
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Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Belia Rodriguez completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Rodriguez's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am a first-generation Mexican American who was born in Chicago. My parents raised me in Little Village, where we not only celebrate our heritage, but we protect it. My parents taught me traditional values, to work hard, be a good person, and to always vote.
I am a business owner and homeowner in Rogers Park. I taught myself IT to help small businesses and nonprofit organizations and my business, Chicago Info Tech, now also serves as the IT department for small independent schools in the city. My wife and I made Rogers Park our home 12 years ago. We moved here for the diversity and the beach life.
In 2016, I decided to volunteer my time to help my community. I served on the board of the Rogers Park Business Alliance for 6 years, resigned in my second term as President in order to run for city council. I have spent hundreds of hours volunteering my time to help our local independently owned small businesses. I was especially concerned with our minority-owned businesses are usually the ones at risk of gentrification. My mantra has been, the way to fight gentrification is to strengthen the existing businesses.
- I believe in working together. I am a uniter not a divider. I listen to people and look for the common ground. My pragmatism and listening skills are why my campaign has supporters from the entire political spectrum.
- I want to establish teams across our ward, consisting of community stakeholders, and develop actionable plans to tackle our ward issues. We can accomplish more if we put committed people with experts at the table, and we all work towards common goals.
- I believe our government’s primary role is to keep us safe. We need to do a better job in the city and our ward because people tell me that they don’t feel safe. The second role of government is to ensure people have resources to help them. People need help right now.
Featured local question
What it said to me, is we are not prepared for serious crises. We need to operate with the understanding that this can, and will, happen again. We should be ready.
Featured local question
I look at the city's crime data regularly. Many crimes, such as shootings, are increasing in our ward. The numbers clearly reflect that. One observation is that we track shootings, we track fatalities of shootings, but we do not track the reports of shots heard. That is a data point that might provide use with more data to know if we a shooting is imminent. It is an important data point that is missing from the Violence Reduction dashboard.
Featured local question
A healthy downtown has high occupancy rates because it means businesses are thriving. Downtown needs to have a vibrant entertainment industry. If we are a city tourist want to visit and we want to highlight our downtown, people need activities, they need restaurants, they need attractions. More tourism, more revenue. It is also what employees want and people want shorter commutes so if we want employees working downtown, we want employees living downtown, and vice versa.
Featured local question
The job of government is to serve the people. Government works best when the people are actively involved in the process. I plan to form committees based on different pockets of the ward, based on different topics such as schools, safety, economic development, urban planning, immigrant needs. The staff of a ward office is not sufficient to serve the people well enough. But the ward office can help bridge gaps and bring people with ideas together to help form actionable plans. My vision is to be able to champion our needs, our plans to the city to find support, resources, funding in order to launch actions to improve the ward, to truly serve the people in ways that improve the daily lives of the residents in the community.
Featured local question
As an owner of an IT support business, I am a big fan of databases and tracking. I would look to have young students from our local universities intern with the ward office to see what bright minds think we should introduce based on new technologies to help automate and improve processes to ensure prompt responses, tracking to completion, follow up, reporting and sharing of results so that people have access to see what is in motion. That transparency would also allow residents to understand that some things take longer but ideally it would be illustrated what all the processes that initiatives have to go through before they are materialized. There are issues in the ward that should move quicker, and there are issues that absolutely need to take longer to ensure that all consequences are being considered to avoid mistakes and disappointment.
Featured local question
Crime and public safety is not being prioritized. I plan to do that. We need a two-prong approach, address current and past crimes through policing, and prevent future crimes through investments in people. CPD is overwhelmed and short on qualified officers. Policing is not about prevention, it's about deterrence. We need to hold criminals accountable for the current and past crimes that are being committed.
We need to introduce proven gun violence reduction practices into our ward. We need to provide youth with resources, attention, opportunities. We need to invest in people and help people with treatment for trauma, with treatment for addiction. We need to offer job trainings for good paying jobs. We need to help people so that crime is not a choice anyone has to make in order to survive.
No matter what side of the fence you are on, we need to ensure the safety of people, property, and businesses. Featured local question
I am not for gentrification. Can't say that enough times. The most inaccurate statement made about me during this campaign. I am proud that I am first-generation. The immigrant experience is my childhood. I lived in Uptown for its diversity. We chose Rogers Park for its diversity.
Featured local question
With the involvement of stakeholders from the community, with engagement from online and in person surveys. There would be a great deal of input opportunities as that would be part of the work the different committees would be tasked with, to ensure our values are being met.
Featured local question
We have pushed too many police officers out. Crime in the city is rampant and there does not seem to be any control or any indication that we are improving. We need more qualified officers coming out the academy. We need more people going into the academy. That needs to be a priority. We need to not penalize officers that left, are eligible to come back and want to come back. We need more surveillance, as a deterrent but also to help police make arrests. We need to invest in smart violence reduction programs and organizations. We need to invest in people and give people other opportunities so that crime is not the only option left for people to provide for themselves or their families.
Featured local question
I feel that we have much more work to do and that this needs to be prioritized. The change that I would make to the policy is start taking action.
Featured local question
We have plenty of transportation in our ward, it's one of our strengths. Yet those services need upgrades, need maintenance, need attention, need optimization, need to be safer, so that more people are using public transportation. If we want to add density and reduce our impact on climate, then we need to see more people choosing public transportation over individual cars.
Featured local question
At this point, a change in leadership seems in order. I would love to see someone hired from within the ranks. For one, that reduces the learning curve. But more importantly, that shows respect to the current leadership within CPD. Why wouldn't we want to see people promoted for their good work? It sends the wrong message when any organization promotes from outside and CPD is no different.
Featured local question
The administration did the best that they could during something so unexpected. I would love to read any reports that the city conducted after the fact to see what we can improve upon.
Climate change is an area where I feel we’ve not done enough. We need to prepare for what the future holds for us. It is urgent. We are out of time to think, we need to do.
We have a housing crisis. We need to figure out a way to work with private investors to build housing with support from the city. We need to build density near transportation, and we need to be creative. It must be a partnership between private and city dollars because 100% tax dollar development is not a sustainable model.
We budgeted for much needed social services and yet people are not seeing an improvement.
There are many people suffering from drug addiction, trauma, mental health issues and they need qualified care. If we do not address it, society pays the price one way or another. We need to partner with private healthcare providers, but we need to see results. Hard working taxpayers want to see results and not simply hear about how much we are borrowing.
We need to grow Chicago. We have seen population drops, families are leaving the city, and it's hurting our schools. It is getting more and more expensive to stay in Chicago and yet less safe. We need to improve our safety, encourage large employers to stay, we need to entice more employers to move here, and we need to support small business owners and make it easier to start businesses here in the city. We need to see population growths in our city because that is inevitably what funds all these programs we need. It is a hyperlocal position and that is what I like about the office. The role is very much about being engaged with your community and listening to people. An engaged city council member can take that information and understand what is needed from our government. They can connect with members from other wards and learn what they are doing to address concerns and if you learn that things are happening across the city, that's an indicator that legislation is necessary. If a council member has been doing the work with colleagues, then you have a higher likelihood of passing ordinances because you have worked collaboratively with other members.
Anything written by the Obamas. They are the couple that I reach for in my mind when I have a hard moment in the campaign. I think, what would Barack do. Then I think, but what would Michelle tell Barack to do. At the end of the day, look to the powerful woman. :-D
An important principle for an elected official, that I am not sure is common, is to put the people first. Politics is full of people with egos. It's almost necessary to compete in a campaign. However, that is not in my makeup. I have reasonable confidence in myself, but I am not the reason I am running for office. I am 100% running because I have the best interests of everyone in the ward in mind.
A good listener who puts people first.
The core responsibilities are to serve the people, to listen to and serve the needs of the people.
I do not have a lot of favorites. The Outsiders is probably the book that stuck with me the most from my school days.
"Waiting for a star to fall" by Boy Meets World.
Unrequited love in old songs sounds so stalkery these days but it's a part of youth. I'm glad I'm old and married.
After a number of decades, I can say that life itself is a struggle. I am first-generation, I am Latina, I am a woman, I am a lesbian. I have lost close family members. My life has had a series of struggles. Throughout all challenges, I try and stay calm, focused, introspective, and look for what I can control and do what stays within my value system. My parents taught me to be a good person, to never hurt anyone. That is what guides me. Stick to what is right, do what is right, even if it is hard, because it is what is right.
My wife has taught me this important lesson, breathe. She is my rock and together we get through the struggles.
The little-known power is the luxury of being able to listen and talk with more people on many levels. In the process of running, I have been able to have conversations with people I may not have otherwise and heard stories and sides that I would not have if I had not been campaigning. I have learned from people every day of this journey.
Sure, it is beneficial. It is beneficial to have relationships from government and politics. In my business career, who you know and who others know is a valuable asset. However, coming from outside of the industry also brings a fresh perspective, it brings the outsider perspective which has not been jaded by the inside yet. It is an opportunity for an intellectually curious person to dive in and learn, and maybe make some positive changes to the system, as well as to the people you serve.
I have three superpowers that I expect will help me through the learning curve and also make me a good civil servant. First, I am a good listener, and I do my very best to listen without judgement. Second, when I listen to people, I look for the common ground. That is vital in government because 100% consensus beyond 1 person in a group is not guaranteed. Third, I am a hard-wired troubleshooter. My brain sees a problem and immediately tries to understand it and look for pragmatic solutions.
Whatever my wife last said. She is very witty and makes me laugh multiple times a day. She can make me laugh in the most stressful situations.
I have not sought the endorsements of any organizations or individuals. The endorsements I care about are of the voters of this ward.
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See also
External links
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 27, 2023
