Candidates hoping to get on the ballot for Chicago's mayoral election can begin circulating petitions next week.

Well, the election is still more than 6 months away.

A number of candidates have already announced their campaigns.

Entrepreneur.

Liam Stanton is one of them and he says Chicago is ready for a different perspective.

The raw just park native hit the gas platform prioritizes making the city more affordable, safe and small business friendly.

And Liam Stanton joins us now to talk about his campaign's Frank.

Thanks for being here.

Thank So you're coming at this.

You know, not from a background as a politician.

Much like the last couple folks elected mayor of Chicago.

What do you see is, as you know, your qualifications for leading the city?

Yeah, I think I you know, I grew up and Rogers Park in life and Chicago in the youngest today from a huge Gaga family and a long line of public servants.

So my grandfather came as an immigrant Queen Street cars.

My dad's service, Chicago police officer.

>> So I kind of that that rooted in the neighborhood values thing, which I think is it's key for this next mayor to have that perspective.

And I think it brings some interesting comes from outside of politics.

started and run small businesses.

run large global organizations.

And I think that that mixture of being rude, our neighborhoods and having sort of the sense of urgency in creativity and executive to run large businesses organizations is really key for the city right now.

So, you know, among the items on your platform, you support term limits for older people, reducing the size of city council.

How do you plan to convince all the people to put themselves out of a job?

Well, I think there's it's an issue thing.

I think that I've been asked this before common sense and it will rain.

And ultimately think there's ways we can do phase it in where you say, hey, listen, you know, grandfather in the current ones over time, we can do it.

ultimately we need to look at changing reforming city government because not delivering enough for for Chicagoans right now.

So I think those are ideas that we have and we have plenty more that will improve lives.

The city, the city's most recent forecast 1.1, 6 billion dollar budget gap next year.

You've said you know, property tax increase should be off the table.

How would you tackle that deficit?

Yeah.

I think if you look at I would back up and look at our budget process.

It is right now and I think we have a fundamentally broken process to to address our budget.

You look at last year we had a lot of information that wasn't being shared across the city council.

So the mayor had access to report.

He didn't rip right release it to city council.

They redact and release it.

So the first thing is we need to have a collaborative process with our budget.

We can't get in a situation where the mayor and city council have competing budget every year.

That's not productive and it doesn't improve lives for for Chicagoans.

So Nick, we would look at, you know, how do we first find savings?

You know, we look at procurement.

We look at a news office space.

We look at different things.

We can find immediate savings in this budget but do it in a collaborative way to in partnership with City Council instead of against them.

Do you think that I mean that that's significant budget, you know, gap to come up with it just from sort efficiency savings cuts, are there additional revenue streams that there are other things you like to see happen there?

Yeah, I think we need to start focusing on growth.

So I think there's I like I like the phrase cheap and cheerful.

So there's a lot of things we can do.

They're cheap and cheerful to bring more revenue to city.

You know, I like the idea making Chicago the small business capital, the world.

I think we have 100,000 small businesses in the city employee.

About 60% of our workforce.

I want to make it easier to start expand and grow small business here.

And I think when you do that, you get large.

Employers are going want to relocate here.

Getting larger pores want to expand here.

So that's one idea in terms of growing the other ideas.

We want a rematch in the The loop forever been a place where it's just designed for profits.

Workers.

I want to see more tourists there.

I want to see more Chicagoans spending time there.

We've got a lot of ideas about how to do that.

And that's a virtuous cycle.

If you get people spending time downtown spending tax dollars are spending money, middle generate revenue for us.

There are things you can do to start growing.

You know, some candidates and elected officials are calling a for the city to, you know, buy back the parking meters as a as a source of revenue.

Where do you stand on that issue?

I think we need to look at what, what, what the return is on that.

I think alderman actually had a pretty interesting idea recently on this about potentially using the pension funds as sort of assets that to back acquire those back but ultimately need to look what is the best deal for taxpayers and doesn't make sense for us.

I would really take a good hard look at I don't have a lot of faith in this current mayor to be honest, needed to make a great deal there.

But I think the council and I think hopefully others can make sure that we make a firm deal that isn't taxpayers best interest, your public safety platform includes a call to bring back the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system.

There's a recent analysis from you, Chicago that actually found officers responded to 9-1-1.

Calls in a dozen south and west side neighborhoods.

4 minutes faster after ShotSpotter went offline.

Why do you think it's something the city needs with?

That study was completely flawed.

It compared cold winter weather months with warm weather months for to more crime.

It didn't include actual gunshots and shootings in that analysis.

There's other things were just totally apples and oranges and made to look at the way it was.

I think ultimately shot spotter.

technology should get resources to people who need them when they need them.

If you look at shot spotter, it's ultimately about if there's a gunshot in the city, we want officers to get there to be able to to respond to that.

And that's ultimately what it's about.

We had an incident this this Saturday where, you know, it 40 minutes from the time of gunshot to the time responding officer.

And I think that's just not not appropriate in the city.

You've also called for improving safety on the CTA.

According to recent Chicago Police State, a serious crime on the system is down and there is an expanding security presence.

Our current efforts not going far enough.

I think there were the right direction from when the sheriff spend more time on the That's fantastic.

we're seeing a more focus on that because ultimately CTA is a tremendous tool for affordability.

>> The CTS way for a lot of people on our city to see friends, to get to work to all these things.

And I think the next step is for It's so if you look at fair Vision, Gates and what's happened in San Francisco, they've really done a great job driving down incidents, driving down cleaning hours and actually increasing revenue, citing fare evasion games.

We would actually push to about those up.

You've also advocated for universal child care or Chicagoans.

How would you fund that program?

Great question.

You childcare is one of the things I have.

2 young kids.

Childcare is a huge expense for You know, I think through savings and other things we can we can find pilot money for that.

Just because we want to fund new programs doesn't mean we can't find the money else we have to do.

We can this mindset of we can't do anything new.

We have to have the approach that we need to find the savings to fund new programs.

So I think that's a good one to start with.

You've also called for taking another look at the safety Act, particularly the pretrial release system.

You know, state lawmakers have had some discussions about those so far.

No significant progress toward amending the law.

How would you try to work with, you know, the governor and legislators to make those changes, you know, coming in fresh to Springfield without prior relationship.

I think it's all about collaboration that's across board.

I think if you look at not only with Springfield but with council, the mayor's office has totally changed from 10, 2050, used to be rubber stamped, you know, to come in council do or sprinkle it is the times change.

I think it's time for a collaborative leader.

Someone come in and build relationships and can do that.

I've got a lot of experience my career doing that.

So I think having relationships and investing in Springfield, investing with counsel, I think would be would go a long way these days.

Yeah, we've got a little under a minute left, but you mentioned, you know, some of the fraught relationship between Mayor Johnson, members of the city council.

What worked you think needs to be done to repair those relationships?

I think we need to refocus ourselves away from ideology on execution on getting things done for Chicagoans and getting, you know, making improving lives.

Right now.

There's so much talk about ideology and this and that what actually improve someone's life.

How do you get people enough?

People together in a coalition to effect an outcome?

And that's really what I'd be focused on.

Alright, Chicago mayoral candidate Liam, stand to thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for him.

And additional candidates running for mayor have also been joining us on Chicago