Leadership skip v2

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True Leadership Takes Charge In Elmwood Park Illinois!

VILLAGE OF OF ELMWOOD ELMWOOD PARK PARK VILLAGE

Angelo "Skip" Saviano, Village President By; Andrew Guzaldo Amici Journal

On April 9

PARDON OUR DUST DUST

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2012, the public and those of us in the media who follow politics could not really determine who would be better to lead Elmwood Park. With skeptical minds, many went to the polling places with huge doubts about the future of Elmwood Park. With an outgoing longtime serving village president, the future was uncertain. The people of Elmwood Park were presented with ambiguous choices. “Who was the better man to lead Elmwood Park as Village President? Do we elect someone who never held public office and was a complete newcomer? Or on the other hand, residents thought how can a former State Representative that held no executive office lead a smaller community? Historically in Elmwood Park, the village president has been the driving force behind village politics. In Elmwood Park, municipal government, as defined by the village code occurs within a system of president, board of trustees and with an appointed manager. The president and trustees are elected as single members as the result of an at-large election. The village manager serves as an appointee of the Village President and board of trustees. But despite this seemingly workable system, our worry was not about the management of village business, but rather the leadership of our hometown. Leadership isn’t management. They are not synonymous. A good manager does not necessarily lead, however Leaders lead, and managers take orders… Manager’s makes plans, measure, monitor, coordinate, solve, hire and fire. However leaders lead people. Although Elmwood Park had a manager that could easily be replaced, it would soon be without a leader, which was a significant undertaking, need for the village! So what is leadership? Some say that it is a way to use influence to maximize the efforts of others towards achieving a goal. Political influence usually has been associated with the “expenditure of political capital,” as if political leadership is the spending of money you received as political contributions. Nonetheless, when political influence is used to maximize the efforts of government to achieve a beneficial goal for the people, this is “true political leadership.”


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