Moving back to the city, I quickly learned that aldermen are our busiest mediators.Ald. Brian Hopkins serves my neighborhood in the 2nd Ward. We spoke about his job.“For me, in my role as alderman now, I have to be very conscious of two different levels of the public interest,” he told me. “I’m a public servant, so I represent the public. But there’s the immediate public on a given block in my neighborhood, and there’s the public of the city of Chicago. So for a ward like mine, sometimes …