At first it seemed like such a good idea, maybe the best the Daley administration had had in a long time. The city was proposing an ordinance that would require all grocers to take a one-day, seven-hour, $20 course on the rules and regulations of operating a grocery store.
“There were some concerns expressed,” says Shoenberger, choosing her words carefully. “It’s the nature of the democratic process to present ideas in public forums and give people a chance to express their points of view.”
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The proposal was the product of a task force of city officials, merchants, and business professors put together by Shoenberger to deal with a wide range of complaints, particularly in poor areas of the city, where residents have only a handful of grocery stores to choose from. In the shelves and coolers of some stores in those areas, city inspectors had discovered traces of roaches and rodents as well as cartons of dangerously old, nearly rancid butter, milk, and eggs.
“Not having good community and customer relations can lead to disputes, complaints to city agencies, bad publicity, boycotts, and most importantly lost business,” reads the guide, which goes on to suggest that merchants know local residents on a personal level, hire local residents as much as possible, learn as much as they can of the language residents speak, and help sponsor local youth or social service groups.
Di Santo says the proposal underscores the city’s intolerance to neighborhood grocery stores. “Sometimes I think they want to drive us out of business,” he says. “Mayor Daley took the $150 cigarette license and raised it to $300. Then the state adds a 14-cent tax on cigarettes. I’m four blocks from the Indiana state line, where they don’t have that tax: tell me I’m not going to lose any customers. Then Daley institutes a beverage tax, which is a penny on every can. And you wouldn’t believe my property taxes. The taxes in this building used to be $600 a year. Now they’re $2,400. Next thing you know they’ll be $3,000–for this old, wooden-frame building? Ridiculous.”
“It’s amazing what you can learn through a process,” says Schulter. “In this case, I learned how a wonderful idea can turn into a massive undertaking. Things were pointed out to us. Should we offer the courses in languages that the grocers understood, like Korean? Should we offer them in the neighborhoods? And maybe we could condense them. It doesn’t have to be seven hours long.”
