Below are candidate-submitted answers to a biographical survey Wednesday Journal sent out to candidates running for public office this year.
Age: 53
Previous political experience: None
Previous community experience:
I was the Assistant Village Attorney and the Acting Village Attorney for a combined total of 14+ years. I have represented the Village of Oak Park as an attorney since I first began practicing municipal law in 1991.
I am currently on the Board of Directors of Housing Forward and the chair of its Nominating and Governance Committee. I am a former member of the Board of Directors of Prevail and helped negotiate the merger of those two organizations. I also provide pro bono legal services to low income clients through the Pro Bono Network. I recently served on a team to help the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation reformulate the Community Leadership Program.
Occupation: Attorney
Education: 1986 -B.S. in Business Administration from Marquette University
1989 – J.D. from DePaul University
2016 – Certificate in Mediation Training from the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Chicago
Residential real estate development is a major issue in the village with the recent completion of Vantage Oak Park, new developments under construction (Elevate Oak Park, District House), and several proposed developments (Albion, Oak Park and Madison by Jupiter Realty, and the Harlem and South Boulevard development by Lincoln Properties). Please address your thoughts on all of the aforementioned developments and proposals. Do you support or oppose these proposals and why? What are your concerns for each project as they relate to traffic, shadows, affordability, density, impact to schools and other community resources, impact on the tax base, the changing nature of Oak Park or any other issue you would like to address?
Design and Scale
I support the concept of New Urbanism, community development that is human scaled, transit oriented, livable and friendly. I would like to see developments that are beautiful and context sensitive in design and scale. I would like our community to provide a balance of public and private spaces to enhance livability and aesthetics. I would like private developments to include landscape design, public art, and to otherwise enhance the quality of Oak Park’s architecture and built environment. Increasing the tax base should not be the only goal. We should be focusing on enhancing the culture of our community to make it more livable, beautiful and enjoyable.
Process
I am committed to citizen-based participatory planning and design. The community has yet to have a meaningful, public opportunity to weigh in on the general idea of establishing large scale, 20 story high rises in downtown Oak Park. Instead, meetings, such as the failed Albion community forum at the 19th Century Club, did not allow for any citizen input whatsoever. This was a missed opportunity which made citizens feel cut off and disrespected. The predictable result of this is anger and opposition. We can do better. Though this newspaper has labeled those voices as cranky NIMBY naysayers, there is a legitimate debate about the kind of development Oak Parkers want to see in their town and that debate and those voices need to be heard.
Housing Choices
I am committed to maintaining the Village’s diversity. Our rental buildings, including the high rises, should be marketed through the Oak Park Regional Housing Center to maintain the integration of our community. I support asking our developers to include affordable housing, either by a contribution to a fund or by a specific set aside of units. I also support Village assistance to help fund another stand-alone affordable housing development similar to the Grove Apartments. Finally, I support development that meets the needs of the empty nesters. Too many people have told me that they are moving out of Oak Park because their children have graduated from OPRF. We need affordable, quality housing for those who do not want to bear the expense of maintaining their larger homes yet do not want to leave the community they call home.
Madison Street
Twenty-five years ago, when a friend suggested I would love Oak Park, I drove here from the city, exited on the Austin ramp and turned left onto Madison. When I saw the sorry state of this obsolete commercial strip, I just kept going. It wasn’t until many months later when I gave Oak Park a second chance that I saw how beautiful our village is and made the decision to make Oak Park my home. The point is – Madison is not a welcoming entry way to the Village and it desperately needs revitalization. Madison Street is great opportunity for New Urbanist design. It needs to be made more pedestrian friendly, beautiful, vibrant and livable. The viability of the current Madison Street improvements depends on the costs to relocate underground utilities, traffic signals and the like, the return on investment for those costs, and how funding these improvements will impact taxpayers who are being asked to fund a large increase in District 97’s levy. This project also needs to be vetted by the public in public forums, not in private meetings with citizens in their living room. We need to make sure our processes are followed and that we gain the public’s trust about this project.
Crime is at historic lows in Oak Park, but there is a perception that the village is unsafe. What are your thoughts on safety in the village and the perception of safety? What initiatives would you pursue to improve safety in the village and improve the perception of safety?
Under the current administration, 22 sworn members of the Oak Park police department have left the department, including 3 out of 4 commanders, 5 sergeants and the Chief. In addition, 10 non-sworn members of the department have left for a total exit of 32 members of the Oak Park police department. [1] The Resident Beat Officer program has been diminished so that now only about ½ of the neighborhoods have a beat officer who actually resides in the neighborhood. Calls for service have doubled and this newspaper has reported more serious crimes on a more frequent basis, including violent crimes happening in broad day light. The latest data available from FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Agencies’ Index Crime Offenses lists Oak Park as one of only four municipalities in Cook County which failed to provide complete, verified crime reporting data, a distinction we share with the communities of Dixmoor, Merrionette Park and Riverdale.
Meanwhile officers report intentionally not sitting for promotional examinations so they stay under the radar. These are serious internal issues which cannot help but affect public safety. These facts are worth investigating.
Transparency has been repeatedly noted by candidates and residents as an issue with the village. Do you believe Oak Park has a transparency problem, and how would you address it?
Yes. We have transparency problems. This is a topic I feel very strongly about and I will address several areas of concern.
Transparency in the Development Process
The Oak Park EDC, for all its success in bringing business to the Village, is inherently non-transparent. Because it is not a public body, it is not subject to the Open Meetings Act, to FOIA or to any of the checks and balances which ensure good government under the law. Because this is a closed process, the public has no opportunity to know whether ethical negotiating practices are being followed. That leads to a lack of public trust in the process as we see with the otherwise positive Madison Street proposal.
Under the Village Manager form of government, elected officials should set policy and staff should carry out that policy. For Village owned parcels, the elected officials should determine the type, scale and vision for development, staff should then issue an RFP for proposals consistent with that vision, bring the general nature of the proposals back to the board and to the public for selection, and then leave it to staff to negotiate deals. Once negotiated, the development proposals should be vetted through the Plan Commission and then approved with any amendments by the Village Board. Development projects should not be negotiated by the Village President. By doing so, he is usurping the authority of the Village Board to set policy because once a deal has been worked on for months by the Village President, the trustees are pressured into accepting it or risking division on the board. All the elected officials should get the same information at the same time to prevent this.
Financial Transparency Related to TIF and Non-TIF Incentives
The Village provides significant financial incentives to developers, both with TIF funds and through other funds, such as in the sales tax sharing agreement with Pete’s. The public and the elected officials should be tracking whether and how these incentives pay us back and provide that return on investment analysis to the public on an annual basis. For residential mixed use development deals, we should test the original pro forma estimates of costs and benefits against the real data once those developments have been in place for long enough to have real numbers. Using data like that to make investment decisions is just good business.
Lack of Transparency in the Budget and Spending
The budget lacks transparency because it is presented in a different format every year. This prevents citizens and elected officials from being able to track the use of public dollars on a longitudinal basis.
The budget sets out spending by narrative description, yet budget amendments are presented by account chart string. There is no public document indicating what fund the chart string numbers represent so as to allow the public to tie the narrative to the numerical designations set out in the chart of accounts.
The Village’s Capital Improvement Plan also lists funding for improvements by chart string without describing what the account is.
Interfund transfers are not reported the same way from year to year.
There should be an overall budget summary document that provides simple, clear information on a single page or two.
Village Board Agenda and Meetings
The agenda is posted with only the bare minimum 48 hour legal notice. This prevents citizen engagement by not allowing the public time to review the materials, to adjust their schedules, or to organize groups to appear and advocate to the board.
There is an overuse of the consent agenda resulting in the board having no discussion or debate on items of significance.
Items that do not need board approval, such as contracts for expenditures of less than $25,000, are placed on the consent agenda to effectively bury more significant items that should be pulled off and discussed.
Information provided to the public in the agenda packet is not adequate to inform the public and the elected officials of the relevant terms of the matter. For example, tonight, Feb. 21st, the Village Manager’s contract is up for renewal with neither the contract nor the relevant terms provided to the public. The agenda item consists of a single sentence, “As provided for in the Village Manager’s agreement, an amendment is being presented at the request of the President and Board of Trustees.” This single sentence does not provide the minimum information required by the Open Meetings Act and is thus a per se transparency problem. It also raises the question of why an outgoing Village Board would be secretly amending the Manager’s contract without providing a hint as to its terms.
Similarly, lawsuit settlement agreements are presented and approved with no information on the terms of the settlement, including the name of the case or the amount of money to be paid. This occurs with other contracts as well where the agenda will include a resolution approving a contract, but not the contract itself.
Some links to agenda items on the Village’s Granicus system have been disabled so that the material is no longer available.
Citizen Engagement, Boards and Commissions
The Public Art Advisory Commission was disbanded without ever explaining to them why or asking for their input.
Boards and commissions are not allowed to meaningfully vet areas under their area. For example, the Historic Preservation Commission was told they were “not allowed” to comment on Madison Street.
Board members are appointed by the Village President, as is his legal right, but against Oak Park’s long tradition of allowing any citizen interested in participating in government the opportunity to do so.
Citizen groups are not engaged in matters which affect them. For example, many months ago, I received a call from the Airbnb owners asked me to help them figure out how to predict when the Airbnb ordinance would be on the agenda. They were never engaged in the process of developing the ordinance and did not know what it was going to say, and staff would not provide them with information on when the ordinance would be placed on an agenda. They were left wondering how they were going to be regulated and left to check each board agenda. This left them 48 hours to determine if they needed to coalesce and make their voice heard. I have no objection to that ordinance, but it is an example of how we should be collaborating more with our community.
Citizens who wish to address the board have been told to “hurry up” or “make it quick.”
Lack of Transparency on the Village’s Web Site.
There are many opportunities to improve the content and layout of the Village’s web site. Currently, information is too difficult to find. Functionality, like reports of spending by vendor, should be made searchable. Plan development approvals, a link to the budget, and other information frequently sought by the public should be pushed to the front of the page.
Plan Commission hearings should be televised and available on the web site.
Control of Information Provided to the Board.
There is an other-worldly control of information provided to the elected officials. Some examples:
All Village staff have been instructed that they are “not allowed” to speak to the trustees. During my interview to be the Village Attorney, I was instructed that if I was selected, I must agree never to speak to the Trustees except in executive session. It was made clear that there would be absolutely no conditions or exceptions to this ‘rule’ even though the Village attorney represents the Village board.
Multiple citizens, including community stakeholders, have been told that they are “not allowed” to speak to the Trustees.
A private citizen who is a member of the DTOP board was asked to attend a Village Board meeting to answer board questions about DTOP. When he arrived, staff met him at the door and gave him a printed script of what he was allowed to say.
Currently, trustee candidates have been instructed in writing that they are “not allowed” to speak to Village staff. This wall of control is under the guise of providing the same information to all the candidates. This means that if I, as a candidate, have a question about the budget, I cannot call the Finance Director to ask. If I, as a candidate, want to learn what properties are owned by the Village, staff is not allowed to answer that question. I requested crime statistics from the police department’s statistician, to answer this WJ questionnaire, but I was only provided with a narrative report from the Village Manager’s office. Robert Greene, in his book, “The 48 Laws of Power” describes this false use of “equality” as a power tactic to redistribute rewards (information) in a way that they determine, rather than to allow candidates in a competitive election to succeed based on their own merit and efforts. The Manager’s office should stay out of the election process.
Apparently, trustees were told they were “not allowed” to attend the recent Albion gathering at the 19th Century Club, cutting them off from the voices of the citizens.
Over 100 employees have left during the current administration yet this red flag has never been investigated, nor has this paper reported on it.
This newspaper never reported the story of a village employee who was terminated and was convicted of a crime after she stole credit card information from the citizens who paid their parking tickets and used those credit cards for her personal purposes. Either the Village did not provide this information as part of its routine crime reporting, or this newspaper allowed Village officials to unduly influence its reporting.
FOIAs have gone completely unanswered or improperly denied. This newspaper requested a copy of the Gallup study on employee morale, but it was denied. In the appeal to PAC, the Village described this document as a preliminary document where action would be taken. In fact, it was a completed study paid for with public funds.
An alleged whistleblower has filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and retaliation for whistleblowing about problems in the health insurance fund.
So, yes, the answer to your question is that there are pervasive transparency, accountability and citizen engagement problems.
What is Oak Park’s role as it concerns the Chicago neighborhood of Austin, if any?
Two weeks ago, I took part in a focus group directed at ways Oak Park and Austin should work together. One of the attendees was Deborah Graham and she made a very relevant comment: The Austin community does not want Oak Parkers to “fix” Austin or tell its residents how to improve their neighborhoods or their lives. Our role with respect to Austin should begin with respect for the Austin community and an open conversation with Austin residents and leaders to determine their perspective on this issue, rather than approaching Austin as a problem that Oak Park needs to fix.
Meanwhile, we should continue to find reasons to cross the border to get to know our neighbors and develop relationships. This is happening with the expansion of the Community of Congregations to include congregations in Austin, with the West Side Bridge, West Side Women and similar groups, and even with volunteer attorneys from the Pro Bono Network providing legal services to seniors through the Center for Disability and Elder Law. We can help Austin, but we should be mindful of what help the community is asking for and not presume to change it for our own purposes.
Residents frequently note the high property taxes in Oak Park and have argued that rising taxes are making the village less affordable and, therefore, less diverse. The village’s portion of the property tax burden is roughly 15 percent (the rest is from other governing bodies – schools, library and park district). How would you address the rising property tax burden and how would you work with other taxing bodies to reduce the tax burden in Oak Park?
I propose that the Village, the schools, the Park District and the other governmental bodies collaborate to develop a plan for community improvements. We are all elected by the same constituents who we ask to fund various improvements and initiatives. We need to respect the limits of taxation. We have the IGOV meetings and the COG. We should use these meetings for real action. A first step would be for the elected officials of each governmental body to adopt a set of shared community values around diversity, affordability and quality government services. The second step would be to understand each other’s timing and legal constraints on spending, including debt schedules, PTELL limits, the expiration of the TIFs, collective bargaining agreements, underfunded pensions, etc. Once we have an intergovernmental understanding of these constraints, we should develop a list of community improvements proposed by each body to see how funding those improvements affects the overall tax burden. Knowing the proposed improvements, and the constraints on timing, we can then collaborate to create a community improvement plan that prioritizes community improvements and balances them against the community’s ability to pay.
In addition, the Village needs to reign in unnecessary expenses. We buy a Cadillac when a Honda Accord would do just fine. Some examples:
The proposal to install blue stone pavers on Lake Street. Blue stone, while pretty, is too expensive and is not a sustainable choice of materials for a heavy pedestrian application. There are many other aesthetic choices which are cheaper and more durable.
The almost $1 million dollars to replace Village Hall furniture and carpeting. The old stuff was perfectly fine.
Last year, the board approved an increase to a contract with Christopher Burke Engineering to design two alternative proposals for Madison Street – one for $360,868 and the second for another $300,000. This approval went through even though the Village did not have the budget to pay for it.
Trustees are entrusted with the public fisc. I will preside over the taxpayers’ funds with the same prudence as I handle my own personal finances.
[1] This fact, as well as the exodus of staff at Village Hall has been unreported by the Wednesday Journal.