Top four mayoral candidates – Rahm Emanuel, Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle, and Carol Moseley Braun – participated in two live debates during this last week of the campaign season, and only days before Chicago voters go to the polls.The first debate was held on Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day – on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. Carol Marine moderated the forum and fed the candidates questions as they sat around the Chicago Tonight “round table.”

Opponents met for the second time on Thursday, just five days before the polls open, and the final day of early voting. Hosted by ABC7 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre, ABC7 Political Reporter Charles Thomas and Univision Chicago anchor and reporter, Paula Gomez, joined moderator Ron Magers in questioning candidates as they stood behind separate podiums.

In both debates, candidates discussed their stances on city worker’s pension funds, residency requirements, education reform and plans to balance the city’s budget.

All mayoral hopefuls support a city gaming license to help fund pensions that are likely to run out in the next ten years. Chico is the only candidate that supports city workers moving out of the city, while Emanuel, del Valle, and Braun, claimed that ending the residency requirements would be detrimental.

“Can you imagine the police officers and teachers and firefighters who are allowed to live outside of the city while we, the property tax payers in the City of Chicago are paying their salary,” Del Valle said. “I’m strongly opposed to it, it just won’t work.”

“If our teachers and firefighters and policemen leave the city of the Chicago we will lose our tax base,” Braun added.

Candidates also addressed that the next mayor and city hall members must make sacrifices in their own pensions and salaries, including powerful aldermen like Ed Burke, 14th, who requires a six-car police escort, paid for by taxpayer dollars.

“I think the city council needs to share the sacrifices and residents will be sharing the sacrifices, which means if Ed Burke has six police officers then it will be discontinued. The mayor needs to make sacrifices,” Emanuel said Monday. “Everyone needs to contribute. If people feel there isn’t this sense of shared you don’t have everyone contributing and participating willingly in the sacrifice.”

Emanuel went further to say that if elected, he would not take a pension and members of his staff will face salary cuts. Chico said if elected mayor, he would take a 20 percent personal pay cut.

Chico and Emanuel, who are the two front-runners in this race, both deduced that the solution for improving Chicago schools is lengthening the school year and day. Del Valle wants to focus on the neighborhood schools, and lengthen school days by establishing after school community learning centers and enrichment programs. Braun seeks to simplify the complicated public school system and that class sizes, learning environments, and school lunches all need to be improved.

Balancing the budget, scarcely mentioned at Monday’s debate, was at the forefront of Thursday’s forum, and an attacking point between Emanuel and Chico.

At Monday’s press conference, Chico not only called Emanuel a “pathological evader of the truth,” but also called his proposed sales tax decrease, accompanied by a levy for “luxury” services such as Botox treatments and elite health club memberships, a “slap in the face” to Chicagoans, and vowed to campaign against Emanuel’s program until Feb. 22.

And Chico kept that promise. In this homestretch of campaigning, Chico purchased several television ads targeting Rahm’s plan, stating that Emanuel has failed to discuss at length specific goods and services that fall under this proposition.

Emanuel clarified on Thursday his plan for three separate tax cuts in the employee head tax, natural gas tax, and a sales tax reduction of 20 percent. He points to single mothers, who stand to benefit from this method, and believes that services like “mango facials for dogs” should have higher taxes to alleviate the burden others face with Chicago’s current sales tax, which is the highest of any urban city.

Chico bashed the suggestion, stating that no one in the city will be eligible for what he gleefully calls the “Rahm-tax,” and that it will only benefit those who make over $600,000.

“You may take this 20 percent off but you will feel the nine percent pinch,” he said.

Braun stated that if mayor, there will be no new taxes, and proposed that the city’s budget should be available online in order to make government spending more transparent.

Del Valle thinks Emanuel’s plan may sound good in theory, but believes most people won’t see the difference, and instead, he wants to address the property tax he believes is drowning people in the city. He also called for residents’ need for a runoff, so that issues can be thoroughly looked over.

Emanuel was the only candidate not pressing for a runoff, probably due to his advancing lead in the polls.

“I think the voters will decide if we have a run off,” Emanuel said. “The key thing is everyone has individuals with or without a runoff need to help serve our city because we have a lot of challenges.”

“This has been such a shortened campaign season,” said Chico who is just behind Emanuel in the polls. “I think the city desperately needs a runoff to allow more time for us to really delve into these complicated issues that are affecting everyone in the neighborhoods.”

Early voting officially ended on Thursday, with 73,251 votes cast, three times the number in 2007, and absentee ballots will be counted on Monday, Feb. 21.

Though ahead in the polls, Emanuel’s victory is not certain until voters file into their designated polling places on Tuesday, Feb. 22, to determine which way this historical election will sway.