Ward 6 Ald. Kristin DiCenso is not everyone's cup of tea. She is not, for instance, welcome on the Sangamon County Board of Public Health, which has offered strange reasons to deny her a seat, even though she's been one of only two city representatives on the panel that's supposed to run a public agency that largely serves city residents.
Smart money says they don't like DiCenso because she speaks up when she sees things she doesn't like, and she hasn't liked the way that the health department handles animal control – she's suggested having a nonprofit step in. She's also pushed, hard, for the city to help residents in her ward whose homes have been impacted by railroad work, vowing not to vote for property-acquisition measures to allow rail work until the city helps her constituents.
We were bemused when DiCenso asked whether boaters need permits to fly flags and toot horns while tooling around Lake Springfield – the question was sparked by a boaters-for-Trump rally over Labor Day weekend that seemed harmless enough, given boats were six feet apart – but no one's perfect. DiCenso is a regular on social media, weighing in on fireworks and traffic issues and other things that mean real things to real people, and then demanding answers at city council meetings. That's what elected officials are supposed to do, and to see a city council member fight for constituents like DiCenso does should give everyone hope for the future.
