Wednesday Journal 102324

JOURNAL

of Oak Park and River Forest

Oak Park trustees debate nancing, deferring projects in capital plan

The 5-year plan could be taxing for sta , but the board has spending options

By LUZANE DRAUGHON Staff Reporter

As major construction projects begin to stretch resources, Oak Park trustees are debating how to pay for their capital improvement plan and whether other projects may need to be delayed.

Trustees have been working to approve a five-year plan for fiscal years 2025 to 2029, a 240-page document available online.

The Oak Park Avenue Streetscape, remodeling Village Hall and building a new police station are some of the big-ticket items that are part of the package. But paying for them won’t be cheap, and village staf f said the numerous projects could spread employees too thin.

For funding 2025’s projects, Oak Park has some options: spending down reserves or issuing bonds.

Oak Park has a significant unrestricted fund balance, sitting at about $45.8 million. It grows, Interim Chief Financial Officer Donna Gayden explained, when more revenue comes in than expected or expenses are lower than expected.

Essential Civics

Democracy, Accountability, Equity, Connection, Civility

At Growing Community Media we work every day to keep building dynamic and sustainable local newspapers. That’s because local news that is trusted, accurate, rooted is so vital to each of the villages and neighborhoods we cover.

And as we keep growing our reader supported newsroom we keep the focus on five key values which we call the essential civics.

Democracy

Democracy is not just about contentious national elections. We nurture democracy in a dozen different ways in each town we cover. Communities with genuine newspapers have more active citizens, higher voter turnout, a place to share thoughts and debate complex issues.

Accountability

Our four newspapers – Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest, Austin Weekly News, Forest Park Review and Riverside-Brookfield Landmark – have reporters on the ground, covering local government and schools, following tax levies and capital projects, local elections and referendums. We are always there watching.

Equity

We believe in equity. Each of our communities, and this news organization, need to strive to build and rebuild systems which have historically, and today, limited and denied opportunity to people with whom we share community. This belief in equity is reflected on our editorial pages and it shapes our news coverage.

Connection

Our newspapers have been described as the glue which holds our communities together. We’re not boosters but we do love these towns and neighborhoods in their glories and in their foibles. Read us in print or digitally and you will come to better understand the community you call home.

Civility

In our reporting, in the dozens of letters to the editor we publish, in the conversations we launch, we strive to foster a civil tone. Disagreements are good. Accusations, misinformation, mean spiritedness are not good or acceptable in our pages. We all need to do better.

If these values resonate with you, we ask that you find ways to support our efforts. Renew your print subscription. Support us financially at any level that works for you. Talk us up to a new neighbor who may not know there is a legit local newspaper in their town.

What is the OP Township referendum question on the ballot?

The advisory referendum could push concerns directly to Oak Park’s village board

By LUZANE DRAUGHON Staff Reporter

The Oak Park Township has an advisory referendum question on the ballot for local voters: “Shall the people of Oak Park have the initiative right to amend and propose ordinances by voter petition and enact those ordinances by voter referendum?”

This question asks voters if they would like to make changes in the village more directly. The advisory referendum is on the ballot through the shared ef for ts of Jacob Drews, an Oak Park native and sophomore at Columbia University, and Pat Quinn, a for mer Illinois governor who has spent his long political career supporting citizen initiative ef forts.

T he idea is that if there’s an issue residents feel strongly about, they could organize a petition with a certain number of signatures to bring an ordinance before the village board. T he board would then, in theory, have the opportunity to vote on the ordinance. If passed, it would be enacted. If not, the ordinance would be placed on the next ballot for voters to decide through a referendum, under majority rules

This November, the referendum is an advisory question. That means the village will just get an idea of how Oak Parkers feel about this possibility. To be enacted, the village board would have to put the question on a future ballot as a binding referendum. Or another taxing body could implement it through a referendum, too. Then voters would officially decide. There’s no guarantee that will happen.

Any citizen who gets at least 15 signatures from registered voters on a petition can go through a process to get an advisory referendum question placed on a ballot through the Oak Park Township.

“People should also be able to vote on issues, not just on candidates,” Drews said. “Oak Park has long been a progressive leader. We’ve long been pushing the envelope … I think we should do the same with this.”

What

are the bene ts to passing the referendum?

The main benefit, Drews said, is the empowerment of voters. If elected officials are not listening to the people of Oak Park, or not acting on a critical issue, voters would have options. Right now, they’d have to wait to vote trustees out to see change.

The current village board has been receptive to issues, Drews said, but in the future, that might not be the case

“[This change] will be another tool that the people of Oak Park can use to get the change that the community desires,” he said.

Voters can also use this method to tell the candidates how they feel about an issue, Quinn pointed out. While the referendum on the ballot this November is not binding, it’s a good way to test the views of Oak Parkers, he said.

“The best way to get the village board moving on this subject of the voter initiative power is to at least give the voters at large a chance to advise the village board that this is the best way to go,” Quinn said.

Oak Park Township Manager Evan Michel said the township has no official say on the benefits of the referendum.

It’s up to voters to decide.

What issues could residents bring forward?

The issues brought forward through this method are generally local ones, Quinn said. It could be related to the environment, affordable housing, economic growth, ethics or whatever else voters feel strongly about.

The village board decides most issues, Quinn pointed out. But there are issues that come up that people might want to decide for themselves. The voter initiative can give everyday people a bigger voice in gover nment, he said.

“I believe in direct democracy, and I think most voters feel same way,” he said. “From time to time there may be an issue that the village board can’t agree on or doesn’t pay enough attention to. And then the voters have a … way to put something on the ballot.”

How did the question get on the ballot?

After gathering at least 15 signatures from re gistered voters, the citizen interested in getting a referendum on a ballot submits the petition to the township clerk. The

referendum is placed on the agenda for the township’s annual meeting, typically held the first Tuesday in April.

Re gistered voters in attendance at the meeting vote on if the referendum should be placed on the ballot. If passed, the township clerk submits it to the county clerk to be placed on the ballot. The township board and officials do not vote, only ensure the process follows state statutes, Michel said.

Drews accomplished these steps in April 2023.

“[Drews] believes in this ability of people to discern issues and most importantly to vote on issues,” Quinn said. “[This can] also inspire other communities in the western suburbs or any other place in Illinois that this can be done. And it can be done by young people.”

How soon the voter initiative could be implemented depends on if another taxing body, like the village board, chooses to put it on the ballot in a future election, Michel pointed out. Any “regular” election, including primary, general or municipal elections, could have a voter initiative ordinance on the ballot.

“I hope that when Oak Parkers turn out to vote, and hopefully approve this overwhelmingly, that the village board of Oak Park will look at it and say, ‘You know what, Oak Parkers want this,’ and maybe they’ll pass it,” Drews said.

The weekend before Election Day, Drews said he plans to come back to Oak Park to encourage early voters to vote “Yes” on the advisory referendum.

Do other places give voters the power to pass ordinances?

In Arlington Heights, voters do have this ability and are currently the only municipality in Illinois to have implemented it. Other states have this provision, too.

“Oak Park can really be a trailblazer here in getting this done for the people of Oak Park but also showing an example to other voters in other municipalities that this is possible,” Quinn said.

Drews said he hopes this can turn the tide in Illinois and gather momentum for the voter initiative to be passed elsewhere. It’s just another check and balance, he said, and empowering people is healthy for democracy.

Election Day is Nov. 5 and early voting opens Oct. 21.

WEDNESDAY

of Oak Park and River Forest

Editor Erika Hobbs

Digital Manager Stac y Coleman

Digital Media Coordinator Brooke Duncan

Sta Repor ter Luzane Draughon

Viewpoints Editor Ken Trainor

Real Estate Editor Lacey Sikora

Contributing Editor Donna Greene

Columnists Marc Bleso , Jack Crowe, Mary Kay O’Grady, Kwame Salter, John Stanger

Shrubtown Cartoonist Marc Stopeck

Design/Production Manager Andrew Mead

Editorial Design Manager Javier Govea

Designers Susan McKelvey, Vanessa Garza

Marketing & Adver tising Associate Ben Stumpe

Senior Media Strategist Lourdes Nicholls

Business & Development Manager Mary Ellen Nelligan

Circulation Manager Jill Wagner

Special Projects Manager Susan Walker

Chairman Emeritus Robert K. Downs Publisher Dan Haley

Sunday, Oct. 27, 4 p.m., Columbus Park Refectory, 5701 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago

C21 Women’s Ensemble, an Oak Park-based choral group, will perform its latest concert, “Play on Light,” at 4 p.m., Oct. 27 at the Columbus Park Refec tory

C21 is a progressive, auditioned choral ensemble, whose musical programs combine classical and contemporar y compositions on themes of social justice and women’s rights. Ticket Prices: $25 general admission, $15 seniors and students, tickets also available at the door

Special Collections Halloween Open Hours

Wednesday, Oct. 23, 12-5 p m., Oak Park Public Library

Explore the spooky side of Oak Park ’s histor y at the Special Collections Halloween Open Hours. Visit the third- oor Reading Room to uncover strange facts about historical gures and Halloween in Oak Park. Enjoy treats, spooky surprises, and costumes are encouraged. 834 Lake St., Oak Park

BIG WEEK

Oc tober 23-30

Día de Muertos Community Ofrenda

Friday, Oc t. 25, All Day, Oak Park Public Library

The Oak Park Public Library is creating a Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) community ofrenda in the Main Librar y Idea Box. The ofrenda will be on display from Oc t. 25 through Nov. 6. You’re invited to contribute by sharing an image of your loved ones who have passed away. Submit your photos at // oppl.org/share through Oc t. 31. 834 Lake St., Oak Park

Fear Itself

Friday, Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.,

The Nineteenth Century Charitable Association

Join us for Fear Itself, a showcase of classic scary stories that will send chills down your spine without the gore. Veteran actor and storyteller Mike Speller brings dark humor and horror to life. Rated PG-13, this show is recommended for ages 12 and up, with parental permission. Tickets: $25 in advance or $30 at the door

Learn more and get tickets at The Nineteenth Century Charitable Association website or call 708-386-2729. 178 Forest Ave., Oak Park. Parking: SP+ Parking garage, 150 Forest Ave.

For This Joy: A Concert of Choral Music

Friday, Oct. 25, 7 p.m., St. Edmund Church

Join us for a choral concert featuring the music of Susan LaBarr and other composers per formed by Consonance, the Chicago Choral Ar tists, under the direction of Michael D. Costello. 188 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park

Fall Family Fun in the Hemingway District

Saturday, Oct. 26, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., Hemingway District

Families with young children are invited to join a costume parade around Scoville Park, led by Village President Vicki Scaman, star ting at 10 a.m. After the parade, head into the Oak Park Public Library to explore y, 26, 9:30 p.m., Madison Street

Join us for a sing-along of the cult classic Rocky Horror Pic ture Show. Bring your friends and belt out favorites like “Dammit Janet” and “Time Warp.” Costumes are encouraged, and prop bags will be available for $5. Tickets are available at: https://tinyurl.com/4nyz2yta. 1010 Madison St, Oak Park

Compiled by Brooke Duncan

SUSAN LABARR

The Oriana Singers: Monteverdi ’s Other Vespers

Saturday, Oct. 26, 7:30-9 p.m., First United Church of Oak Park

The Oriana Singers, under the direction of William Chin, kick o their 45th season with a per formance of Monteverdi’s Other Vespers. This special concert features eight virtuoso singers and period instruments, celebrating the exuberant and expressive works of Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries in the beautiful setting of First United Church of Oak Park. Tickets available on https://tinyurl. com/28k49snd. 848 Lake St., Oak Park

Hephzibah Halloween Fun Run/Walk

Sunday, Oct. 27, 9 a.m. (Warm-up) and 9:30 a.m. (Race Start), Constitution Park

Holy Ghost Bingo: God, Goblins & Games

Sunday, Oct. 27, 3 p.m., Madison Street Theater

Join Sister Mary Margaret O’Brien for a night lled with fun and laughter as she answers some pressing questions like: Who is the patron saint of werewolves? Which saint died and went to hell, then came back to life? Which two saints practiced black magic before switching to Catholicism? Enjoy a box of wacky prizes, Halloween candy, and a lot of Catholic humor during this interactive bingo game

Join the Hephzibah Oak Park Auxiliary for the annual family-friendly Halloween Fun Run/Walk. This event is an opportunity to gather your family, friends, and neighbors for a Halloween experience while supporting a great cause. Enjoy pre-race activities like group warm-ups and stick around for a post-race ra e and treats. Costumes are encouraged. Proceeds from this event will bene t Hephzibah’s Prevention Services, helping families in crisis stabilize and thrive in our community. Join us as we walk and run the beautiful tree-lined streets of River Forest. Sign the waiver https://tinyurl.com/87m7e8ax. Entry Fees: Kids: $10; Adults: $20; Family of 4: $50. 800 Ashland Ave., River Forest

From Vicki Quade, co-creator of the hit show Late Nite Catechism, this is a night of entertainment you won’t soon forget. Tickets available at: https://tinyurl.com/3c5mjsfx. 1010 Madison St, Oak Park

League of Women Voters: A Century of Community Engagement

Monday, Oct. 28, 1:15 p.m., The Nineteenth Century Charitable Association

As the League of Women Voters of Oak Park-River Forest celebrates its centennial, historian Mary Ann Porucznik will share stories about the women who shaped our communities through their work with the League. Admission is free, but donations are welcome. 178 Forest Ave., Oak Park

Forest Preserves of Cook County

NATURAL FUN

Walk, bike or run: With 350 miles of trails, this is where to get outside and get healthy. LEARN MORE: fpdcc.com/trails

PHOTO BY BETH ALBRECHT

CAPITAL PLAN

However, it’s advised to keep the fund balance between 10% to 20% of the normal prior year expenditures from the general and enterprise funds. For Oak Park, that would be a minimum of about $11.2 million based on 2023 expenses, she said.

In 2025, village staff budget capital projects to cost $25 million. About $20 million of that is for the Oak Park Avenue Streetscape project. According to Village Engineer Bill McKenna, that includes the initial $14.5 million estimate as well as $5.5 million for water and sewer work

“Customarily, you would likely be issuing debt on a project of this size,” Village Manager Kevin Jackson said.

The board also set aside $3 million for the design phase of a new police station and remodeled Village Hall. Another $2 million is set aside for other projects, including street resurfacing and alley improvements

The board could issue a $25 million bond to help pay for those projects

Issuing a bond, Gayden explained, is similar to a resident issuing a mortgage. But the village doesn’t have to put money down for a bond like an individual might for a mortgage. Interest rates, typically fluctuating between 4% to 5%, would vary depending on when the bond is taken out, she said. They are typically paid over 20 to 30 years.

Trustee Cory Wesley leaned in favor of this. He pointed out that however the board chooses to fund projects in 2025 will influence how they choose to fund other projects, like the new police station and Village Hall remodel. That expensive endeavor could cost $132 million to $138.3 million based on latest estimates.

“If we can bond all of it, then we should just bond all of it,” Wesley said. “Capital improvements are long-term improvements Typically, we want them to be paid for over the course of a lifetime because the people who will obtain value for them are people in the future, so the people of the future should be also paying for them.”

Trustee Brian Straw also agreed it could make sense to issue bond debt for significant capital improvement projects like the Oak Park Avenue Streetscape.

But the trustees didn’t all agree.

“It’s large numbers and it’s a consequential decision,” Trustee Ravi Parakkat said, adding that his gut feeling is to not take on more debt

It’d be most convenient to take from reserves to cover upcoming projects, Trustee Lucia Robinson said, but the village is also over budget on a couple projects, so they have to “see how it all shakes out.” But she said she would prefer not to incur more debt

Trustee Susan Buchanan said she’d like to spend the reserve funds over issuing debt, too.

“I can’t think of a reason why we are letting it sit there,” she said. “A lot of [this money] has to do with the levy and people are paying taxes. And to have it just sit there and not be used back for the residents feels ir responsible.”

Village President Vicki Scaman also said she’d rather pay from reserves than issue debt that could outlive them.

Some trustees said they would be interested in a hybrid option of issuing some debt while also using some of their reserve funds.

Gayden said she would look into whether issuing two bonds at once — one for 2025 projects like the Streetscape and one for the Village Hall remodel and new police station — while maintaining a high fund balance would give the village better interest rates.

Jackson, however, pointed out it’s best to issue debt as close to construction as possible, and the latter project is still in the design phase

In a separate request, Gayden also asked the board to consider issuing a roughly $3.2 million bond for the water fund to bring it

up to a reasonable balance for emergencies. McKenna said water and sewer improvements associated with the Oak Park Avenue Streetscape will almost deplete that fund

Possible deferred projects

Village staff also compiled a list of capital improvement projects that could be deferred or reduced without serious consequence.

It includes projects like street lighting replacement, the North Marion Street Streetscape project, fire and police vehicle replacements, new electric vehicle charging stations at Village Hall and some fire station renovations

Wesley argued that he’d still like to prioritize the fire station renovation if it’s a question of finances, not staffing. Straw and Scaman agreed

“If we’re going to be building new things, we should be taking care of the things that we have,” Wesley said.

Another potentially delayed project would be traffic calming and signal retiming efforts intended to benefit pedestrians attempting to cross streets. Straw said he strongly opposed deferring this because of the long-overdue safety need. Wesley agreed

But Robinson said trustees might be giving village staff mixed signals

“We say we want to reduce spending, and then staff comes back with recommendations to reduce spending, and then we say ‘No, we don’t like the reductions in spending,’” she said.

Village staf f also recommended completing the design for the Percy Julian Streetscape work in 2025, but deferring construction to 2026. McKenna said this was a more realistic timeline.

The village board will continue to review options in upcoming meetings, and is expected to adopt a final, five-year capital improvement plan Nov. 7. Trustees are also expected to adopt the fiscal year 2025 budget on Dec. 3.

JAVIER GOVEA

e Heming way District on Oak Park Avenue, south of the Metra tracks

Dandelion Bookshop to open on Oak Park Avenue

Jamie and Kurt Ericson hope to welcome locals and readers in December

By LUZANE DRAUGHON Staff Reporter

Locals mourning the loss of The Book Table on Lake Street can get excited about a new place to find a favorite book; Oak Park residents Jamie and Kurt Ericson are opening the Dandelion Bookshop at 139 S. Oak Park Ave.

Jamie said she and her husband hope to open the store by December, in time for holiday shopping. When they heard The Book Table was closing, after Centuries & Sleuths in Forest Park, they came up with the idea to start their own.

“Having a bookstore here was big draw when we decided where to move,” said Jamie, who moved to the area more than four years ago. “Losing a bookstore means a big hole in the community.”

The couple chose Dandelion as the name for the bookstore because dandelions “represent hope, resilience and playfulness, and they’ re tied to the ideas of wishes and growth,” Jamie told Wednesday Journal. They’re also stubborn and good inspiration for a new venture, she said.

The new bookshop owner said she also writes children’s books and has worked in publishing throughout her career. Connections from past jobs and support from the community have made it possible to open the new store.

The couple also has a 9-year-old son, Teddy, who loves to read and often spends time at the library or local bookstore. Jamie said while she plans for the bookstore to have all sorts of books, she’d like to place an emphasis on children’s books, too.

Jamie taught Teddy to read, and she said it was fascinating. Teddy said he likes realistic fiction and that his favorite book series is Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

“[Reading] is fun because it brings me into a new world,” he wrote.

Teddy said he’s excited to look at books in the new bookstore and do his homework

there after school. He said he thinks other kids will enjoy having the chance to read their favorite books, too. Teddy also said that he’d like to help his parents shelve and scan books. One day, Teddy would like to write and do illustrations for non-fiction books about vehicles and realistic fiction.

Kids nowadays spend a lot of time on screens, Jamie pointed out. But reading is so important.

“Our empathy comes from reading,” she said. “Just putting yourself into someone else’s shoes and another world that you probably can’t easily step into … It just opens so much up, and I think we need that more than ever.”

The Dandelion Bookshop will acquire books from Ingram Content Group, a book distributor, and later from publishers rectly. The business license Jamie and Ku acquired requires them to sell new books, not used ones. Jamie also said she’d li the shop to carry other book-related items like gifts or merchandise.

Shelves are ordered, but it can take up to 12 weeks to get them, Jamie said, due to building, painting and shipping needs. If Jamie and Kurt are unable to open fully in December, she said they might li ke to do a popup store in the same space in the meantime.

Jamie also said she hopes the Dandelion Bookshop will be a place for local writing groups or others to meet and connect.

“Bookstores are such a connecting point,” she said. “This is the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway; we have to have one here. I really want it to be community focused.”

Locals can fill out a survey at dandelionbookshop.com to tell Jamie and Kurt more about what they’d like to see at the bookstore and what hours they are most likely to shop.

“We would really just like to make sure it’s a place for everyone,” Jamie said.

In the meantime, The Book Table is still selling its inventory as it gears up to close.

Wednesday Journal, LLC, owns the building that 139 S. Oak Park Ave. is in.

The publisher and one board member of Growing Community Media are partial owners of Wednesday Journal, LLC. Growing Community Media is also a tenant in the building.

Breakfast House to ll the Cozy Corner vacancy

New diner is expected to open in December

By RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR Contributing Reporter

Breakfast House, a Chicago restaurant chain, will open its first location outside of the city at the corner of Lake and Marion streets in Oak Park

The plan is to be open for breakfast and lunch by the end of the year in the storefront that was for merly the home of Cozy Corner.

Owner Jaime Jara opened his first Breakfast House in December of 2012. Since then, his breakfast empire has expanded to a total of seven locations across the city of Chicago. The Oak Park restaurant will be his eighth.

“I like Oak Park because it’s nice and quiet neighborhood with families. And for me, my day off is when I’m going to Oak Park to relax,” Jara said.

It was on one of those days off this past summer when Jara noticed the closing sign in the window at Cozy Corner, which had anchored that corner for more than 35 years. According to Jara, it was a perfect location for him to expand Jara came to the U.S. from Ecuador in the late ‘90s. He started working in restaurants and after more than a decade learning the trade, he opened his first location at Grand and

Western Avenue in West Town.

What distinguishes Breakfast House for Jara for the food, passion for service. Making a welcome to the customer. We are like a family in each breakfast plac

The menu offerings are the same throughout the Every few months, new items roll out.

“Like right now we have our creation that is the dicts and its’s selling well,” Jara said. “We cial. If it works, we keep putting on the menu.

The menu covers all the usual diner basics with detail. The orange and grapefruit juices ar Best sellers include chilaquiles, chorizo hash, and chicken & waffles.

T he plan is to eventually have a liquor license to amp up brunch and cocktail of ferings

Jara said he intends to make decorative u and is waiting for permits before work gets underwa ed that he hopes to be open in December, so that the new Oak Park location can celebrate 12 years in business with the of the Breakfast House locations. Whene pleasing the customer that is Jara’s main goal.

“I don’t talk much. I just want to improv vice in each restaurant,” Jara said. “I think that’s the most important thing, if I do a good service and customers talk about the restaurant, about the food, I think that’s the most impor tant for me.”

More Info: breakfasthousechicago.com

Robert’s Westside celebrates Halloween with music festival

The 2-night event features unique contests with prizes

By ZOË TAKAKI Contributing Reporter

For the first ever, the live music venue and cocktail bar Robert’s Westside is hosting a two-night music festival.

Weekend @ Bobby’s is a Halloweenthemed music festival taking place Friday and Saturday that will feature 11 bands across two stages and multiple contests.

“We want our community to experience something new. We’re building new traditions here at Robert’s. So, it’s really just a public invitation to come out and discover new artists,” said Donnie Biggins, founder and owner of Robert’s Westside.

This is Robert’s Westside’s first Halloween after it opened in late November last year.

The majority of the artists playing at the festival are Chicago-based, including Angelenah, The Curls, Nasty Snacks, Meg and the Wheelers, and Wolfman. The Shams, The Staleys, Hoover & Harley and The Boys are Oak Park-based. Biggins is a musician and is part of The Shams.

a look-alike costume contest based on the 1989 comedy “Weekend at Ber nie’s.”

“I wanted to kind of pay tribute to the film,” Biggins said. “But I also think it would be funny to look out in the audience on Friday and just see a bunch of Bernie’s. And maybe other people could dress up as other famous Ber nies.”

The first-place winner for the look-alike contest will receive $100 and four free tickets to a Robert’s Westside concert. Second place will receive $50 and two free tickets to a Robert’s Westside concert.

There will also be a Ghost of Rockstars Past lip sync contest and costume contest in which attendees are encouraged to dress up and perform as artists who have died.

“My staf f created some tombstones in the spaces of some of our favorite artists that have passed away and have influenced us over the years,” Biggins said.

Psalm One is a Chicago based rapper who will be performing.

“Psalm one is one of the most influential rappers from Chicago, and the fact that I have Psalm performing at Roberts, I think, is a legendary thing, and so I’m very excited about that,” Biggins said. “A lot of the people on this lineup are artists that I have worked with spanning over 10 years of my career. It’s a real showcase of great local and re gional touring acts as well.”

In addition to the music, there will be

The first-place winner for the lip sync battle will receive $150, second place will receive $100 and third place will receive $50. For the costume contest, first-place winner will receive $100 and four free tickets to a Robert’s Westside concert. Second place will win $50 and two free tickets to a Robert’s Westside concert.

The festival begins at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct.25 and continues Saturday, Oct. 26. You must be 21 or older to attend. Buy tickets at: https://robertswestside.com/listing/ w eek end-at-bobbys-charlie-pa rr- the-staleys-meg-and-the-wheelers-wolfmanhoover-harley-and-the-boys/

Mars Wrigley plant receives landmark status

After the factor y closes this year, McCa er y Interests will develop the land while preserving the building’s facade

By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter

The Mars Wrigley plant, which has manufactured Snickers and Three Musketeers since opening in 1929, received City of Chicago landmark status Oct. 9.

The decision comes as the factory at 2019 N. Oak Park Ave. will shutter its doors by the end of the year and, last month, announced McCaffery Interests Inc. will develop whatever goes on the 20-acre plot next, while leaving the facade.

The front exterior of the candy factory will be protected, along with a depth of about 133 feet of roof line extending around the facade. The designation will

also preserve the iron gate and brick posts at the front of the building.

In July, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks — run by the city’s Department of Planning and Development’s Historic Preservation division — recommended the Mars Wrigley plant receive historical designation. The vote was later sent to the city council.

In order to become a landmark, the Mars Wrigley plant had to meet at least two of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks’ seven criteria. Below are the criteria that the factory meets:

Criterion 1 - A critical part of the city’s heritage

The Mars Wrigley Chicago plant housed the company’s headquarters for decades. It was also the main production facility, partially because of its centralized location in the country’s railroad network. Goods could be easily delivered to the factory because it’s next door to train tracks.

Criterion 3 - Associated with a signi cant person

In 1911, Frank C. Mars founded his candy company and started making Milky His son, Forrest Mars Sr., helped create M&Ms, Snickers and Three Musketeer

Criterion 4 - Important architecture

The plant was built in the Spanish Revival architecture style. Some of the building’s key elements that will be preserved in its facade include arched entryways and windows, a clay tile roof, and gable roofs of different heights.

Criterion 5 - Important architect

The Austin Company constructed the original building. The design and construction company was well known for its innovation and offering design, construction and engineering services under one firm, according to Urbanize Chicago. C.F. Murphy Associates, a respected architecture firm in Chicago, designed the factory’s addition, which was completed in 1960 at the back of the building. The plant’s facade has only been updated to replace doors, windows and roof tiles.

What comes next

Mars Wrigley announced it would close its Chicago plant in early 2022 and plans to do so before the end of this year

In September, the company chose McCaffery Interests, Inc. to take over the site after it closes up shop.

e Mars Wrigley candy factor y in Galewood.

Mars Wrigley factory. McCaffery will release its building plan in the next few months

When the community first started looking for a developer, Chicago organizations convened a series of five meetings to hear feedback from residents about what they’d like to see on the lot after the plant closed.

One of the groups who helped org anize these discussions, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Chicago, compiled the meetings’ main takeaways. One was for a part of the current building to receive a historical designation. Another, that the space be mixed-use.

If McCaffery Interests, Inc. builds a mixed-use space, the lot will need to be rezoned by the City of Chicago, which could take at least a year after the developer applies to change zoning, according to Anne Vela-Wagner, the executive director of the Mars Wrigley Foundation. The city’s zoning process will be public, which is important to Mars Wrigley.

“Transparency has been key,” Vela-Wagner has told the Review in the past. “We’ re coming at this really grounded in mutuality. It’s one of Mars’ principles and how we work. So it’s not just about what’s good for Mars, it’s about what’s good for everyone.”

While the developer was selected after a long search, it’s still uncertain what kind of structure will take the place of the iconic

“We feel we’ve been good neighbors,” she added. “We’ve been surrounded by good neighbors, and we want to continue that in the years to come.”

Pete’s seeks artist for temporar y construction mural

The winning artist will receive a stipend of $10,000

By LUZANE DRAUGHON Staff Reporter

Pete’s Fresh Market and the Oak Park Area Arts Council are looking for artists to produce a temporary construction mural to be displayed along the chain link fence at 644 Madison St

The new grocery store at 640-728 Madison St. is now under construction. In July, the Oak Park village board approved a 16-month extension for the project that’s been over six years in the making. It should be open by December 2025.

But in the meantime, Pete’s developers made a $22,000 donation to the Oak Park Area Arts Council for temporary artwork to be displayed at the site

“Anything we can help you with, we will,” Eugene Grzynkowicz, the project manager,

told the village board at its Oct. 1 meeting.

The selected artwork will be printed on to a mesh material on the chain link fence surrounding construction. Artists have until Nov. 1 to submit a design, and the winner will be chosen Nov. 11 and notified by email.

Each artist, who must be 18 years or older, can submit up to three original designs along with their completed application to the Oak Park Area Arts Council. To qualify, the artwork must be able to be printed on to a banner that’s 10 feet wide by 6 feet high.

The stipend for the mural is $10,000. The winning artist will receive half after signing a contract and before printing the mural, and the other half after completion.

According to the guidelines, the work must be original and cannot have wording other than the Pete’s Fresh Market logo.

A panel of judges will review the applications and designs based on artistic merit, appropriateness to public presentation and originality.

PHOTO CREDIT

Construction fencing along the planned Pete’s Fresh Market development at 640-728 Madison St.

rk Art League suppor ter Rhona Taylor at the pumpkin table on Oct. 19.

Creepy horse’s head (r ight) and skeletons (below) in the Haunted House at the Oak Park Art League Garden of the Ghosts.

Brian P. Horan and his photography.

Artist

Jacqueline

Rueckert Lakely displays her art.

PHOTO S BY TO D BANNOR

Publican Quality Bread promotes Knead to Read for kids

Free pizza also a draw

By ZOE TAKAKI Contributing Reporter

Publican Quality Bread’s Oak Park location has launched a yearlong book reading program called Knead to Read to celebrate the company’s tenth anniversary.

When kids 13 and under read ten books, fill out the Knead to Read book form and bring it into Publican Quality Bread’s Oak Park location, they receive a free cheese kids’ pizza, a drink and a cookie. The program started Oct. 7.

“We just want kids reading,” said Katie Karpowicz director of marketing and communications for One Of f Hospitality, the restaurant’s parent company. “I grew up with the Pizza Hut program. And we realized that there aren’t a ton of readingbased restaurant promotions anymore. I always felt really cool when I would go to Pizza Hut and have my book list that my teacher or parents signed and get my spe-

cial little kids meal. We wanted to give kids that opportunity ag ain.”

This is the second time One Off Hospitality has done a reading program. It did one earlier this year at the Mexican restaurant Big Star called Taco Bout Books. Karpowicz said the program was so successful they decided to bring it to Publican Quality Bread

One Of f Hospitality has distributed an estimated 2,000 Taco Bout Books forms, and 1,500 Knead to Read forms. At Big Star’s Wicker Park location, 325 Taco Bout Books for ms have been redeemed.

Though the Taco Bout Books program will be coming to close at the end of this year, Karpowicz said, “‘I’m not ruling out a possibility for it to continue at this point.”

The for ms are free and can be picked up from Publican Quality Bread’s Oak Park location, as well as a number of libraries and independent bookstores in the area, including the Oak Park Public Library, The Looking Glass and One Stop Comics.

“The libraries have been super responsive to it. School districts, PTO groups are

“I always felt really cool when I would go to Pizza Hut and have my book list that my teacher or parents signed and get my special little kids meal. We wanted to give kids that opportunity again.”

KATIE KARPOWICZ

Director

of marketing and communications for One O Hospitality

excited to pick it up. We are working with Irving Elementary School, and they’re going to distribute it to their kids as well,” said Karpowicz. “They can be books from your home collection. It’s great if you want to grab some books while you’re at the libraries or a participating bookstores. But there’s

no need for purchase to participate.”

There is also no limit to the number of times you can participate

“I told the kids, ‘Keep going. There’s not a limit. The sky’s the limit. Keep reading, keep enjoying,’” said Keila Toon, Publican Quality Bread Oak Park’s general manager. She has seen the positive impact the program has had so far.

“What I love the most is that the kid is the one who’s walking up with their little pamphlet. You can see the sense of pride on their faces,” said Toon. “They feel very independent.”

“We’ re really excited to be in the neighborhood. And it’s really important for us that we are reaching all ages within the community,” said Karpowicz. “I don’t think the kids care as much about our James Beard Awards and whatnot. They want pizza, and Greg Wade’s pizza is fantastic. This is just a fun way to encourage families to come in and not just stop by for your morning coffee, but come in and grab a slice of pizza after school or after work.”

We’re

Free Flu Shots, Covid Shots & Boosters

By ROBERT ontributing Reporter

Citing positive response from community members who have already particiForest officials are expanding the reach of their neighborhood dialogues.

When the program was announced in gust, officials were targeting the south the village, specifically in the Madison Street and Lake Street corridors. Now, they are inviting residents from all areas the village to participate.

Under the program, village residents ree to host small group conversations that would include 10 to 15 of their neighbors in their homes.

Administrator Matt Walsh said four sessions have been held with one more scheduled. He said officials are hoping to schedule three more.

In a social media post, officials said discentered around economic development, restaurant recommendations, traffic, parking and landscaping.

Walsh said more than 40 residents participated in the first four sessions, with participants attending to as as 16. Two of the sessions were held in residents’ homes. One was held at the Community Center and another in a resident-owned business.

He said participants have expressed a desire to see “something they can use and enjoy” in the village suggested a w ide r ange of

and walkable such as a restaurant or coff ee shop.”

Leading the project is Rick Jasculca, owner of Chicago-based JT Strategic Communications, a public af fairs firm. Jascula has lived in the village for almost 50 years and has done work for the village in the past.

“We wanted to start with a blank slate,” Walsh said. “We wanted to hear general sentiments from residents and we wanted a good sample size of opinions.”

Participants’ length of residency in the village range from newcomers who just moved in last year to some who have lived in River Forest for decades.

“I’m happy to say it’s been a pretty good mix of folks,” Walsh said. “I’ve been very pleased with that.”

He said officials are hoping to wrap up the program by the end of October, noting that people are busier when they get close to the holidays.

Walsh said Jasculca will submit a re port to officials “hopefully by the holidays.” He said the re port will “include notes, offer recommendations and identify trends,” which will help identify the next steps.

Walsh and Jessica Spencer, assistant village administrator, have been attending the dialogues, but elected officials have not.

Residents interested in hosting or attending a session are asked to contact Walsh by email at mwalsh@vrf.us or Spencer at jspencer@vrf.us.

River Forest approves Public Works garage remodeling and purchase of new snow plow

Projects slightly above budget but other savings will o set costs

By ROBERT J. LIFKA Contributing Reporter

River Forest Public Works employees can expect to be working in a remodeled garage and with a new pickup truck early next year, following action at the Oct. 14 Village Board meeting

The four trustees in attendance voted unanimously without discussion to award contracts to Futurity 19 Inc. of Hinsdale for the remodeling project and to Sutton Ford of Matteson and Regional Truck Equipment of Addison for the truck. Trustees Lisa Gillis and Ken Johnson did not attend the meeting

The garage project will include remodeling the restrooms, offices and kitchen at a cost of $112,600. The garage houses all vehicles, equipment, road salt and unleaded and bio-diesel fuel. It also houses materials and supplies for the public works and water/ sewer departments. Supplies include stone, asphalt and topsoil. The project includes demolition and cleanup as well as carpentry, plumbing, electrical, drywall, paint, vinyl flooring, cabinetry and masonry.

Jack Bielak, director of public works and engineering, estimated the project will begin “in the next couple of weeks” with a target completion date of Feb. 28. He also said normal operations will not be disrupted during the project and that public works “will adjust and work around the improvements.”

Futurity 19, the second-lowest bidder, is a women-owned business that has done work for the village previously. In

a memo to Matt Walsh, village administrator, Bielak and Brian Skoczek, public works superintendent of operations, said the firm “perfor med well” in the salt shed construction project in 2023 and a tuckpointing project in 2018. He said multiple references were checked and “all provided positive feedback.” Bielak said staf f members recommended Futurity 19 over the low bidder after checking references

Bielak said the building was originally a United Parcel Service facility built in 1946 and purchased and retrofitted by the village in 1973. He said the facility improvements were recommended based on current conditions and a facility site assessment.

For the pickup truck, separate contracts were awarded to Sutton Ford for the FordF550 truck itself at a cost of $55,296 and to Re gional Truck Equipment

for the Western Pro-Plus HD Ultramount plow/dump body at a cost of $20,614. The total cost is $75,910.

In a separate memo to Walsh, Bielak explained that the truck is primarily a snow-plowing vehicle that also will be used for hauling materials. It will join a fleet of nine vehicles used for plowing and salting streets, alleys and parking lots throughout the village. He said he expects delivery “in the coming months.”

T he truck re places an old 2011 Ford pickup truck. It was originally scheduled to be re placed in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 but could not be procured due to supply chain issues, Bielak said. It will be recommended for auction.

Although costs for the remodeling project and the truck are slightly over budget, Bielak said savings from other budgeted items will be used to offset the difference.

Chamber Membership isn’t just for business owners, it’s for community members like YOU!

Introducing the membership: Community Contributor

The perfect membership level for those living in the area, but work outside of Oak Park, or enjoying retirement, or for those wanting to gain exclusive engagement opportunities with business owners and local thought leaders!

We created this level for individuals who’ve shown they are passionate about fostering a thriving community, even if they aren't business owners themselves. By joining, you become an essential part of our vision to create a cohesive and vibrant local economy, driving growth, connection, and opportunity for ALL.

Benefits:

Early access and membership pricing to Community Events (including Bite Nite and the Spotlight Soiree)

Access to our Chamber Advantage (a weekly electronic newsletter)

Member Pricing on our over 100 Events

Exclusive Volunteer Opportunities

Sign up today for a FREE ticket* to Bite Nite!

*Offer ends 10/31/2024

Grab a lock: 9 bike s stolen in Oak Park

At least nine bikes were stolen in Oak Park, according to a week’s worth of police re ports. It’s not clear if the incidents are related.

■ Between Oct. 11 and 14, someone broke into an Oak Park resident’s garage on the 400 block of North Elmwood Avenue and stole a bike. The estimated loss was $800.

■ Between Oct. 14 and 15, someone broke into an Oak Park resident’s garage on the 600 block of Lyman Avenue and stole a bike. The estimated loss is $400.

■ Between 7:50 a.m. and 3:12 p.m. Oct. 15, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike that was locked to a bike rack on the 200 block of North Scoville Avenue. The estimated loss is $565.

■ At 10:37 a.m. Oct. 16, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike and cable lock that had been secured to a bike rack on the 200 block of North Scoville Avenue. The estimated loss is $650.

■ Between Oct. 10 and 14, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike that was locked on a bike rack on the 1100 block of South Boulevard. T he estimated loss is $300.

■ Between 9:05 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Oct. 16, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike that was locked to a bike rack on the 400 block of Lake Street. The estimated loss is $470.

■ Between 5:45 p.m. and 5:55 p.m. Oct. 16, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike left unlocked and unattended on the 1100 block of Lake Street. The estimated loss is $150.

■ Between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Oct. 16, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike that was locked on a bike rack on the 400 block of Lake Street. The estimated loss is $599.

■ Between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Oct. 16, someone stole an Oak Park resident’s bike on the 400 block of Lake Street. The estimated loss is $300.

Oak Park officials have recommendations for safe cycling and deterring bike thefts online.

Armed robbery

Around 5 p.m. Oct. 20, a man concealed merchandise in a backpack in the Target at 1129 Lake St. He was approached by security who asked him to put the items back.

The man displayed a firearm and exited without payment, leaving on a bike. The estimated loss is $29.97.

Theft

Around 5:30 p.m. Oct. 14, a man was seen on video stealing from an Oak Park resident on the 100 block of Home Avenue. He stole a baby stroller, a baby seat, a princess headband, a princess costume necklace, black boots, a baby rattle, a chef jacket and hat, baby pajamas and a red belt from the front porch of a residence. The estimated loss is $1,399.

Arrests

■ A 51-year-old Maywood man was arrested around 5 p.m. Oct. 15 on the 500 block of South Maple Avenue for criminal damage to property that occurred Oct. 8 at West Suburban Medical Center.

■ A 37-year-old Oak Park man was arrested for domestic battery to an Oak Park resident at 1:45 a.m. Oct. 17 on the 1100 block of South Kenilworth Avenue.

■ A 37-year-old Chicago man was arrested for domestic battery to an Oak Park resident at 2:15 a.m. Oct. 17 on the 700 block of North Austin Boulevard.

■ An Oak Park boy was arrested Oct. 17 on the 200 block of North Scoville Avenue for a robbery that occurred Oct. 3 on the 100 block of Madison Street.

■ A 20-year-old Oak Park man was arrested for aggravated domestic battery to a Cicero resident Oct. 19 on the 300 block of South Euclid Avenue.

These items were obtained from Oak Park Police Department re ports dated Oct. 14 – 22 and re present a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in these re ports has only been charged with a crime and cases have not yet been adjudicated. We re port the race of a suspect only when a serious crime has been committed, the suspect is still at large, and police have provided us with a detailed physical description of the suspect as they seek the public’s help in making an arrest.

Compiled by Luzane Draughon

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St. Catherine-St. Lucy names rst president

Staunton Peck’s credentials include assistant athletic director at Fenwick

By DEBORAH BAYLISS Contributing Reporter

A Catholic grammar school serving the Austin community announced the appointment of its inaugural president.

Staunton Peck stepped into his new role Oct. 15.

“I am thrilled to be joining the incredible team at St. Catherine-St. Lucy School,” said Peck. “The school’s hallways exude an energy of service, optimism, and commitment to academic excellence. I look forward to shining a light on that transformative energy so that more students, families, and donors will be eager to join our mission – a mission to change lives one student at a time, one day at a time.”

In 2020, Big Shoulders Fund a nonprofit that works to ensur under-resourced areas have access to quality, values-based education, took over about 30 Catholic schools. Once that happened, “great things” star happening for the school tha required having a president tak over the fundraising reins, the school’s spokesperson Jennife Courier said.

St. Catherine-St. Lucy School, which serves grades PreK 3 to 8, is located in Oak Park at the intersection of Washington and Austin boulevards. It serves students from 10 zip codes, with 85% of its 227 students coming from Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.

“The school’s hallways exude an energy of service, optimism, and commitment to academic excellence,” Peck said. “I look forward to shining a light on that transformative energy so that more students, families, and donors will be eager to join our mission.”

he mission, he added, is to hange lives one student at a time, y at a time.

As president, Peck will oversee the school’s business operations ommunity partnerships, with a special focus on fundraising ves, and will working closewith the school administration, houlders Fund, the Archdioese and the local community.

“We are thrilled to welcome Staunton as our new President,” said Sharon Leamy, principal of St. Catherine-St. Lucy School. “His deep commitment to our mission and his impressive track record in fundraising will play a crucial role in advancing our goals and securing a bright future for our school.”

Peck’s duties include supporting existing campaigns and developing innovative strategies to address the school’s present and future financial needs.

“We are excited to have Staunton join the

team at St. Catherine - St. Lucy School,” representatives from The Big Shoulders Fund said. “We believe that this position will expand the school’s mission and help to provide the highest-quality education to the school’s students.”

Peck has served as director of development at Chicago Hope Academy, a Christian high school, where he led a team that raised between $6 million and $10 million annually during the past four years. Before that, Peck spent eight years at Fenwick High School, a strategic partner of the school, where he served as the head varsity basketball coach and assistant athletic director.

Founded in 1889, St. Catherine of Siena Parish was the first Catholic parish established in Oak Park. In 1974, St. Catherine of Siena was merged with St. Lucy Parish of the Austin neighborhood Chicago’s West Side (which was founded in 1911), forming the renamed St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Parish, according to information from the school’s website.

Fenwick names rst lay president

Retired Marine Corps Co Otto Rutt is an alum

By HOPE BAKER Contributing Reporter

A lay president has been appointed Fenwick High School for the first time in the Dominican Catholic institution year history.

Retired Marine Co rp s C ol. Otto J. a Harvard Unive rsity gr aduate and wick alumnus, will assume his new Nov. 4.

A nation-wide search for the school’ next president be g an in June, accordin to a letter addressing the Fenwick munity from Matt McNicholas, chairman of the high school’s board of director

During the first week of October, it was announced that Rutt had been selected In his letter, McNicholas said “having a lay president opens new opportunities for growth and collaboration, enabling us to blend the best of our traditions with contemporary insights and approaches while

whether it was in class, at practice or having lunch together.”

After high school, Rutt attended Harvard and graduated in three years with an economics de gree. He then joined the Marine Corps in 1982, at the age of 21, and became

“It was something I really er since I was a ther and rld

r II veterans.” During his time in the Marine Corps, Rutt rsian Gulf and Western Iraq. In behe attended Chicago, earning an MBA with dual concentrations in finance and business policy in 1993. After four decades of veteran from the recipient wards, including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Global rism Service Medal and the

ollowing his retirement, Rutt returned to Chicago and served as a Commandant in the Marine Corps Junior ROTC progr am at Marine Leadership Academy in the Lo g an Square neighborhood. He then pursued a lifelong passion, art, and got a master’s of fine ar t

in 2020 from F lorida Atlantic University. Since earning his MFA, Rutt has worked as a printmaking instructor at Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, F la. As his first day at Fenwick approaches, Rutt said he is looking forward to moving back to the Chicagoland area and immersing himself in the Fenwick community.

“After decades of building on the topnotch Catholic education I gained at Fenwick, through career stops in the military, the private sector and in public education, I am coming home,” he said.

Matt McNicholas, chairman of Fenwick ’s board of directors, said. Rutt’s diverse academic and professional background equips him to attend well to both the analytical and creative aspects of leadership of a modern colle ge preparatory school.

“From the board’s perspective, we were blessed to have him throw his hat in the ring,” McNicholas said. “We didn’t necessarily know what we would be getting into with re gard to choosing our first lay president, but Otto is such a fantastic human being and leader for the school. We just feel incredibly grateful.”

STAUNTON PECK

H H HHHH H H HH H

cookcountyclerkil.gov

OFFICIAL NOTICE OF ELECTION, SPECIMEN BALLOTS, REFERENDA/QUESTIONS OF PUBLIC POLICY & POLLING PLACES

Aviso oficial de elección, balota de muestra, referéndums / preguntas de política pública y lugares de votación

OFFICIAL NOTICE IS HERBY GIVEN, by Cedric Giles, Cook County Clerk

That the General Election will be held in Suburban Cook County on: que la elección general se llevará acabo en los suburbios de Cook County en:

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Martes, 5 de Noviembre 2024

The General Election will be held in election precincts under the jurisdiction of the Election Division of the Cook County Clerk's Office.

La eleccion general tomara acabo en precintos de eleccion bajo la jurisdicción de la división de eleccion del Cook County Clerk's Office.

The Polls for said General Election will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Locations are subject to change as necessity requires. Las urnas para tal eleccion general estarán abiertas de las 6 a.m. hasta las 7 p.m. Localidades están sujetas a cambio por necesidad.

At the General Election the voters will vote on the following contests and referenda questions. Referenda/Questions of Public Policy will be voted upon in those precincts of Cook County under the jurisdiction of the Cook County Clerk in which a Unit of Local Government has requested the County Clerk’s Office to place said referenda/questions of public policy on the ballot.

En la eleccion general los votantes votaran por los siguientes puestos y cuestiones de referendo. Referendos/Cuestiones de Política Pública serán votadas en aquellos precintos de Cook County bajo la jurisdicción del Cook County Clerk en la cual una unidad de gobierno local le ha pedido a la oficina del County Clerk que provea dicho referendo/cuestión de política pública en la boleta.

TOWNSHIP OF OAK PARK

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OFFICIAL NOTICE OF REFERENDA/ QUESTIONS OF PUBLIC POLICY

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OFFICIAL NOTICE OF POLLING PLACES

The voting will be conducted at the following polling places for each of the aforesaid election precincts selected by the Cook County Clerk.

Las votaciones tomaran lugar en cada de los antedichos precintos de elección seleccionados por el Cook County Clerk.

TWPPolling Place Name Township NameAddress City ZipCodeAccessible

8500001HATCH SCHOOL OAK PARK1000 N RIDGELAND AVEOAK PARK 60301 Y

8500002ST GILES GLEESON BUILDING OAK PARK1101 COLUMBIAN AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500003LONGFELLOW SCHOOL OAK PARK715 HIGHLAND AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500004HORACE MANN SCHOOL OAK PARK921 N KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500005HORACE MANN SCHOOL OAK PARK921 N KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500006GWENDOLYN BROOKS MIDDLE SCHOOLOAK PARK325 S KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500007OAK PARK TOWNSHIP OAK PARK105 S OAK PARK AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500008DOLE LEARNING CENTER OAK PARK255 AUGUSTA STOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500009PERCY JULIAN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLOAK PARK416 S RIDGELAND AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500010WHITTIER SCHOOL OAK PARK715 N HARVEY AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500011DOLE LEARNING CENTER OAK PARK255 AUGUSTA STOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500012PERCY JULIAN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLOAK PARK416 S RIDGELAND AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500013LONGFELLOW SCHOOL OAK PARK715 HIGHLAND AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500014ST GILES GLEESON BUILDING OAK PARK1101 COLUMBIAN AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500015J L HEDGES ADMINISTRATION OFFICEOAK PARK218 MADISON STOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500016ADELE H. MAZE LIBRARY OAK PARK845 GUNDERSON AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500017LINCOLN SCHOOL OAK PARK1111 S GROVE AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500018HOLMES SCHOOL OAK PARK508 N KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500019GWENDOLYN BROOKS MIDDLE SCHOOLOAK PARK325 S KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

850002019TH CENTURY CLUB OAK PARK178 FOREST AVEOAK PARK 60301 Y

8500021PERCY JULIAN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLOAK PARK416 S RIDGELAND AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500022OAK PARK PUBLIC LIBRARY OAK PARK834 LAKE ST OAK PARK 60301 Y

8500023OAK PARK PUBLIC LIBRARY OAK PARK834 LAKE ST OAK PARK 60301 Y

8500024OAK PARK RIVER FOREST HIGH SCHOOLOAK PARK201 N SCOVILLE AVEOAK PARK 60301 Y

8500025WASHINGTON IRVING ELEMENTARY SCHOOLOAK PARK1125 S CUYLER AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500026BEYE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL OAK PARK230 N CUYLER AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500027WEST CENTRAL CHURCH OAK PARK1154 WISCONSIN AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500028GWENDOLYN BROOKS MIDDLE SCHOOLOAK PARK325 S KENILWORTH AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500029WEST CENTRAL CHURCH OAK PARK1154 WISCONSIN AVEOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500030WASHINGTON IRVING ELEMENTARY SCHOOLOAK PARK1125 S CUYLER AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

8500031OAK PARK CONSERVATORY OAK PARK615 GARFIELD STOAK PARK 60304 Y

8500032BEYE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL OAK PARK230 N CUYLER AVEOAK PARK 60302 Y

NOTE: The letter (N) following the polling place address denotes that the polling place itself is not accessible to the handicapped although other parts of the facility may be accessible. An exemption has been granted by the State Board of Elections and signs are posted indicating if the whole building is accessible or if there is a special entrance.

NOTA: La letra (N) después de la dirección de un lugar de votación indica que el lugar de votación en sí mismo no es accesible para personas discapacitadas, aunque otras partes del edificio pueden ser accesibles. La Junta Electoral del Estado ha concedido una exención y hay carteles publicados que indican si todo el edificio es accesible o si hay una entrada especial.

Dated at Chicago, Illinois this 23rd day of October 2024

REVENUES BY SOURCE

Property Taxes 8,638,029, Utility Tax 614,471, Local Motor Fuel Tax 83,889, Non Home Rule Sales Tax 1,091,379, Other Taxes 465,871, State Income Tax 1,918,244, State Sales Tax 2,468,793, Motor Fuel Tax Allotments 514,609, Personal Property Replacement Tax 350,758, Cannabis Tax 18,453, Use Tax 441,934, Intergovernmental, Grants and Contributions 682,144, Licenses and Permits 1,113,398, Fines and Forfeits 488,222, Water Sales 3,601,083, Sewer Sales 2,111,998, Refuse 1,209,424, Parking Fees 172,183, Other Charges for Services 1,916,783, Investment Income 5,353,269, Miscellaneous 988,272, Transfers In 1,347,290, Bond Proceeds 600,000, Sale of Property 7,238, Employer Contributions 3,515,282, Total Revenue 39,713,016

VILLAGE VENDOR PAYMENTS

Abella, Joseph: 7500.00, ABS Electric, Inc: 3471.00, Absolute Software, Inc.: 4533.34, Active Internet Technologies: 9576.00, AEP Energy: 26782.21, Air One Equipment Inc: 47238.90, Al Warren Oil Co Inc: 46787.74, Amalgamated Bank of Chicago: 397175.00, American Traffic Solutions Inc: 93700.00, Amin, Ali: 7500.00, Andy Frain Services Inc: 156602.75, Anthem Excavation & Demolition: 215000.00, Artistic Engraving: 3203.50, AT&T: 6971.19, AT&T Wireless: 5705.27, Aurandt, Paul: 2500.00, Avalon Petroleum Company: 89048.97, AVI Systems Inc: 9650.04, Avramov, Michael: 2500.00, AXA Equitable Retirement: 128512.98, Axon Enterprise Inc: 242605.70, B&F Construction Code Services Inc: 87476.25, Bahena’s Landscaping Inc: 20925.00, Bathrick, Kerry: 2500.00, Baxter & Woodman: 6268.75, Beacom, David J.: 12375.00, Bernardo, Melinda: 4000.00, Best Technology Systems Inc: 4805.00, Bestco HARTFORD: 132201.59, Bochenek, Dave: 2814.92, Boyd, Quentin: 3219.60, Braniff Communications Inc: 39938.00, Bray, Heath: 5250.00, Bulat, Leonard M: 3660.00, Burke Engineering Ltd, Christopher B.: 51916.23, Callahan, Julia: 7500.00, CAMZ Communications Inc: 26710.00, Cargill Incorporated: 39370.88, Carolan, Lisa: 5500.00, Cassidy Tire & Service LLC: 4922.92, CDS Office Technologies Inc: 25450.23, CDW Government Inc: 5667.57, Center for Interent Security, Inc.: 7540.67, Centurion Plumbing Company: 19685.18, Chicago Communications LLC: 4941.00, Chicago Police Department: 3146.00, Chicagoland Paving Contractors Inc: 76594.10, CiorbaGroup Consulting Engineers: 20411.47, City of Chicago: 1811254.83, Clark Baird Smith LLP: 7135.00, Clear View Plumbing & Sewer Inc: 8570.00, ClientFirst Consulting Group LLC: 231964.05, ComEd: 16615.94, ComEd:

ANNUAL TREASURER’S REPORT

48705.63, Commercial Funding, Inc., FBO: Thomas Engineering Group LLC: 98264.90, Commercial Tire Service Inc: 3642.11, Copenhaver Construction, Inc.: 964297.37, Core & Main LP: 55915.16, Crivolio, August: 7500.00, Cronin Enterprises LLC: 16649.41, Cullinan, Patrick & Kristin: 7798.00, Currie Motors: 2914.07, D5 Ranges,Inc: 29447.50, DACRA Adjudication System: 13897.05, Datasource Ink: 10697.06, Davenport Group USA Ltd, The: 31677.18, Davis Tree Care Inc: 41388.50, Davis, Andrew: 2500.00, De Lage Landen Financial Svcs Inc: 5989.86, DeGroff, Chris & Rebecca: 7500.00, Dell Marketing L.P.: 130857.89, Denler Inc: 89148.60, Diaz Landscaping Inc: 8193.00, Digimation, Inc: 14595.00, Director of IL State Police: 8120.00, Division XI Mutual Aid: 20500.00, DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY, MAIN BOILER ROOM: 14760.00, Economy Iron Inc: 4725.00, Eden Brothers LLC: 6395.00, Elevator Inspection Services Co Inc: 3973.00, Elmhurst Occupational Health: 13005.00, Embree, Greg: 2500.00, Envirosafe: 13035.00, ESO Solutions Inc: 10732.48, Fernandez Tree Service: 43520.00, Fifth Third Bank: 142866.99, Fire Service, Inc.: 80053.07, First Fence Co: 55500.00, Fleet Safety Supply: 13389.89, Floor and Wall, Inc.: 3755.00, Flynn, Derek: 2500.00, Forest Park National Bank: 277612.50, Forest Preserve Distr of Cook County: 12000.00, Fredriksen Fire Equipment Co.: 3662.20, Futurity19 Inc: 48750.00, Gall, Christopher: 7500.00, Garland/DBS Inc: 164087.00, Genuine Parts Co Inc: 3428.41, Gewalt Hamilton Assoc Inc: 24436.00, GOVTEMPSUSA LLC: 23156.00, Grainger Inc, W.W.: 5386.46, Griffon Systems Inc: 160029.81, Growing Community Media NFP: 7991.00, Hastings Air-Energy Control Inc: 2605.70, Hawkins Inc: 4790.26, Hayes Mechanical: 6315.96, HFS Bureau of Fiscal Operations-GEMT: 604382.08, Holiday Sewer and Water Construction, Inc: 243382.50, Houseal Lavigne Associates: 14235.99, Husar Abatement, LTD: 59579.00, Ice Miller LLP: 6584.00, ICMA Retirement Corporation - 302614: 149680.96, Illinois Department of Transportation: 24871.73, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency: 917145.80, Illinois EPA: 5000.00, Illinois Fire Chiefs Association: 5820.00, Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council: 16158.00, Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund: 364051.91, ImageTrend: 5630.00, Intergovernmental Personnel Benefit Cooperative: 1550350.65, International Union of Operating Engineers: 13032.03, International Union of Operating Engineers: 2611.50, Interstate Power Systems Inc: 9361.69, IRMA: 583220.02, Jefferson Fire & Safety, Inc: 68604.00, Jenn Sales Corp: 3404.20, JG Uniforms Inc: 10210.04, Kankakee Nursery Co: 17550.00, Kelty Lawn Care: 4205.00, Keto, Erica: 4000.00, Kieselstein, Marc & Heidi: 4000.00, Kiesler’s Police Supply Inc: 3026.80, Kinetic Energy:

4738.00, Kinnan, Anna: 4500.00, Klein Thorpe and Jenkins Ltd: 122836.39, KnowBe4 Inc: 3926.88, Latinovich, Gina: 7500.00, Lauterbach & Amen LLP: 2600.00, Lazari, Paul: 7500.00, Leads Online LLC: 2563.00, Lee Mechanical, Inc: 11831.31, Legac, Kurt & Kirsten: 7500.00, Lexipol LLC: 35442.18, Leyden Lawn Sprinklers Inc: 6118.40, Lipschultz, David: 2758.00, Local 150 Apprenticeship Fund: 3640.00, LoopNet: 7858.80, LRS Holdings LLC: 1221693.61, LRS, LLC: 102480.07, Lyons & Pinner Electric Companies: 127193.84, McAdam Nursery & Garden Center: 10764.00, Menard Consulting, Inc.: 2800.00, Menards: 3197.68, Meta-Security Technologies: 32432.00, MGP Inc: 44928.66, MGT of America Consulting: 36400.00, Midwest Operating Eng-Pension Trust Fund: 20316.00, Minuteman Security Technologies Inc: 2961.00, MOE Funds: 177973.10, Monahan, Mary: 7576.00, Municipal Collection Services LLC: 3534.30, NG Plumbing Inc: 38700.00, North East Multi-Regional Training Inc: 15110.00, Northeastern Illinois Public Safety Training Acade: 2910.00, Northwestern University Center for Public Safety: 4400.00, Nova Collective, LLC: 17000.00, Nyweide, Matthew: 2800.00, O’Herron Co. Inc, Ray: 47278.52, Old World Brick Paving: 60024.84, On Time Embroidery Inc: 14971.50, Osage Inc: 5432.48, Osswald, John: 7500.00, Ozinga Ready Mix Concrete Inc: 10418.84, Paramedic Billing Services Inc: 17975.05, Parker, Tim: 7500.00, Patten Industries Inc: 6097.00, Paul Ries and Sons II: 4426.80, Peerless Network: 12463.72, Perfection Auto Inc: 3009.59, Pete’s Automotive Service Inc: 57423.09, Phillips, Rodney: 7500.00, Pizzo & Associates Ltd: 7990.02, PremiStar: 2957.50, Printing Store Inc, The: 4848.00, Pro-Line Door: 8365.00, Quadbridge Inc.: 10916.64, Regal Business Machines Inc: 5705.93, Resource Management Associates Inc: 6900.20, Riccio Construction Corporation: 12243.00, River Forest Public Library: 38649.94, Robert R. Andreas & Sons, Inc.: 23920.00, Roberts, Benjamin: 7500.00, SAFEbuilt LLC Lockbox #88135: 81886.41, SBRK Finance Holdings Inc: 36736.73, Schmahl, Andrew: 7500.00, Schroeder Asphalt Services Inc: 482492.51, Sebis Direct (Postage): 7603.56, Seven Generations Ahead: 6000.00, Severson, Thomas: 7500.00, Shaker Recruitment Marketing: 3862.04, SHI International Corp: 4798.84, Sicalco Ltd: 2824.38, Sikich, LLP: 36670.00, Skelton, Courtney: 5500.00, Smartsheet Inc.: 6000.00, Soppet, Stephen & Ruth: 5750.00, South West Industries, Inc.: 5359.50, Spinutech: 5785.00, Standard Equipment Company: 14141.98, State Treasurer: 398455.47, Stefl Inc, Tim: 6894.57, Strada Construction Company: 67363.50, Streicher’s Inc: 2984.84, Stryker Sales LLC: 3577.00, Suburban General Construction Inc: 14148.10, Suburban Laboratories Inc: 8477.90, Superior Road Striping Inc: 11699.50, Sutton Ford Inc: 104366.00, Swanson Jr, Alfred M: 7200.00, Taurus Garage Doors Inc.: 2915.00, Third Millennium Associates, Inc: 19168.10, Thomas Dodge: 117269.00, Thomson Reuters-West: 3971.85, Thrive Counseling Center: 20000.00, TKB Associates Inc: 9644.00, Tower Enterprises Inc: 7709.68, TPX Communications: 27848.29, Traffic Control & Protection LLC: 3645.35, Traffic Control Corporation: 2644.35, TriTech Forensics Inc: 3957.02, True North Consultants Inc: 11470.00, U.S. Geological Survey: 5650.00, Unique Products & Service Corp: 5004.48, United Rentals (North America), Inc.: 6504.76, United States Treasury: 1638485.45, US Gas: 3584.05, Vari Sales Corporation: 115609.35, Verizon Wireless: 8140.01, Vicarious Productions Inc: 74450.00, Village of Broadview: 3848.00, Village of Elmwood Park: 39495.88, Village of Forest Park: 3008.00, Village of Romeoville Fire Academy: 8310.00, VisuSewer of Illinois LLC: 127851.57, Vulcan Construction Materials

LLC: 6246.02, W.S. Darley & Co: 11172.78, Walnut Creek Nursery Inc: 18325.00, Ward, Parker: 7500.00, Warehouse Direct Inc: 8344.22, Watersmart Software Inc: 10609.00, West Central Municipal Conference: 16962.54, West Cook County Solid Waste Agency: 5200.00, West Suburban Consolidated: 383601.53, West Suburban Major Crimes Task Force: 2750.00, WEX Health, Inc: 249818.41, Wigit’s Truck Center: 10970.64, Wojack, Kimberly J.: 6000.00, ZOHO Corporation: 5620.00, Zoll Medical Corporation: 21690.82, VENDORS PAID UNDER $2,500: 252,813.25, TOTAL: 18,811,539.80

POLICE AND FIREFIGHTERS PENSION FUND VENDOR PAYMENTS

Chicago Ridge Police Pension Fund: 131731.08, Cook Castle: 10983.00, IFPIF: 17967.27, IPOPIF: 14737.84, IRS: 555707.32, Karlson Garza, LLC: 6306.06, Lauterbach & Amen: 66355.00, State Street Bank and Trust: 2350000.00, The Northern Trust Company: 2,220,000.00, VENDORS PAID UNDER $2,500: 1964.93, TOTAL: 5,375,752.50

VILLAGE PAYROLL

Under 25,000: Bueno, Collum, Diorio, Gaertner K, Heneghan, Hernandez O, Pisciotto, Pusavc, Salinas; 25,000-49,999.99: Franco, Juarez, Koeller, Morris, Raddatz; 50,000-74,999.99: Bajak, Bus, Camargo, Cano, Cepak, Domeier, Holguin, Kane, Kasprzyk, Masella, Petrillo, Petrulis; 75,000-99,999.99: Barcenas, Bradley, Casarez, Catalano, Coleman, Decosola, Dosen, Drake, Ercoli, Gonzalez, Jansen, Koclanis, Kyles, Lenz, Loster, Luis, Mika, Niemann, Palm, Radatz, Schrader, Schwarz, Thomasino, Wiley; 100,000.00-124,999.99: Basa, Buchholz, Cortes, Green, Howe A, Ivansek, McKenna, Rouse, Skoczek, Spencer, Zermeno; 125,000.00 and over: Bencik, Bochenek, Boyd, Boyer, Carter, Casey, Cassidy, Czernik, Doran, Finfrock, Fischer, Fries, Gaertner T, Greenwood, Grill, Howe E, Humphreys, Krall, Labriola, Landini, McAdams, Murillo, O’Shea, Ransom, Seablom, Smith, Swierczynski, Tagle, Viera, Walsh, Zipperich

POLICE AND FIREFIGHTERS PENSION FUND PAYROLLS

Under 25,000: Bauer, Daudelin, Marrocco, Nummer R, Petrulis, Riley L, Strauch; 25,000-49,999: Anstrand, Barth, Fahy, Hlavaty, Law D, Neault, O’Brien, O’Loughlin, Schejbal, Shustar R; 50,000-74,999: Bernahl, Blasco, Diebold, Fields, Gerard P, Katsantones, Lahey, Law M, Lombardi, Novak, Rausch P, Schauer, Smith, Victor R, Weiglein; 75,000-99,999: Barstatis, Bentel L, Bentel R, Blesy, Carroll, Daugherty, Ford, Gray, Linden, Maher, Newberry, Rann, Samuel, Sullivan, Telkamp, Victor R, Vondracek, Warnock; 100,000-124,999: Dhooghe, Finnegan, Higgins, Jandrisits, Lidinsky, Ludvik, Nortier, Nummer S, Powell, Rose, Rutz, Schoff, Stamm, Witken, Zawacki; 125,000.00 and over: Bohlmann, Weiss

Homes

Putting the community back into community banking

Local bank backs Oak Park Commons co-housing development

By LACEY SIKORA Contributing Reporter

Oak Park Commons is taking shape at 839 Madison St., Oak Park – and Illinois’ first co-housing development is unique in more ways than one.

Rendering of the Oak Park Commons building.

With a mission to foster intergenerational connection, diversity and inclusiveness through a community of adjoining private apar tments that share a common space, the co-housing development is focused on creating a long-term community. However, a lot of foundational work had to happen before the group can take up residence in the National Green Building Standard Silvercertified building a year from now.

Early participants, such as Susan Stall and Charlie Hoch, have been focused on bringing co-housing to the village since they for med the Oak Park Multi-Generational Co-Housing Group in 2018.

Their vision for a building with a shared, common purpose is what sets Oak Park Commons and other cohousing developments apar from other multifamily living spaces. Residents share common spaces, which are intentionally planned to foster social interaction among residents of all ages. In addition, Oak Park Commons will promote energy conservation practices and environmental sustainability.

with the financing and were tur ned away by some.

Walter Healy, Hoyne Savings Bank President and CEO, wasn’t afraid to consider the project that was practically in his own back yard. Healy said his career in community banking prepared him to work with local projects like Oak Park Commons.

“When [developer] Jonathan [Shack] reached out to me, he’d just been turned down by another local bank. Someone told him to call me because I was the ‘real community banker,’” Healy said with a laugh.

Noting that this development is the first of its kind in the state – much less in Oak Park, Healy said he first had to get his arms around the project, but once he did, it made sense.

Healy said that it’s easy to see the appeal of cohousing. People who have grown up in a household with others and raised their children, who are used to having other people around, get a community to live in. Younger people, without family nearby, have a close community within their own building.

The development got the green light from the village in 2022, and in 2023 broke ground on Madison Street. During the planning stages, the group approached banks for help

See OAK PARK COMMONS on pa ge 27

WA LTER HEALY Hoyne Savings Bank President and CEO

Colin Fane, Agent

212 S Marion Street Fl G

Oak Park, IL 60302

Bus: 708-383-3163 www.colinfane.com

Colin Fane, Agent

212 S Marion Street Fl G Oak Park, IL 60302

Bus: 708-383-3163 www.colinfane.com

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OAK PARK COMMONS

Shared

spaces

from page 25

“People are very passionate about thi It’s a perfect solution to have a built-in community,” he said.

Despite the apparent benefits of co-housing, Healy said that the creating a brandnew development from scratch presented some food for thought from the banking side of things.

“It was a little challenging at first,” he said. “We didn’t know how successful it would be.”

Ground-up projects aren’t easy to finance, according to Healy, but this wasn just any ground-up project.

Calling the financing “complex,” Healy said the complexity was lessened by the passion for the building by the people who want to live there.

Indeed, when he was brought on board, roughly 40% of the 24 residential units were already under contract.

Healy said that in the current banking environment, “there are very, very few ground-up developments happening. Banks aren’t willing to take that risk.”

What mitigated the risk for him was the number of contracts already in place and the nature of the contracts. Shack, the developer, said that many of the early buyers put down more than 10% and were very committed to the project.

Healy said that familiarity with Shack’s work was a big factor as well.

“When bankers finance buildings, one risk is that the building never gets done. I’ve worked with Jonathan on many projects, and there’s never been an issue,” he said. Shack, who is not only developing the building but plans to live there with his

wife, Heather, said that members of Oak Park Commons are an enthusiastic bunch.

Noting that some buyers had been involved since the early planning stages, he said that when he approached Healy, “One advantage we had was that we had a large number of units already sold to the members of the co-housing network. This was a much larger number than is usual. And, we went to the bank with concrete plans and approval from the village.”

Today, the building’s third floor is being constructed. Eventually, the building will rise to five stories and will include 24 residential units and commercial space below.

T he building is 75% sold, with eighteen residential units and the commercial space under contract. Six residential units are available for sale at prices rang -

ing from the lower $500,000 range to the mid $600,000 rang e.

The commercial buyer has not yet disclosed who they will lease the space to, but Shack says they are in conversation with community members to make sure that their opinions on the space will considered.

Shack, who works with Altierra Builders, said that Oak Pa rk Commons is unlike any other project he’s worked on, primarily because it is his first co-housing development and in his hometown.

He called the process much more handson for community members saying, “Everyone gets to talk about how they want it turn out.”

Rather than working with one developer or one designer, he has community members’ opinions to consider, and committees

at Oak Park Commons are hard at work making decisions about the gardens, interior furnishings and the public art mosaics that will grace the building’s north and west facades.

Shack anticipates a move-in date in October 2025.

“When a project like this is started, it’s years before you g et to the building pa rt Everyone is ve ry excited to see the ligh t at the end of the tunnel,” Shack said.

Healy, who has met with seve r al buyers in the c ommunity, said it ’s hard not to g et c aught up in the excitement about i ntergenerational living with a c ommunity focu s.

“For someone who’s lived in Oak Park my whole life, this is such a quintessential Oak Park project,” he said.

COURTEST Y OF OAK PARK COMMONS

Common house renderings

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS FRIDAY 5 P.M.

Call Viewpoints editor

Ken Trainor at 613-3310

ktrainor@wjinc.com

Vote ‘Yes’ for Ra Choice Vo

This election, Oak Park voters ha Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) as the method for selecting our village president and trustees in future elections, beginning in April 2027.

I urge you to vote “Yes” on this referendum because which allows voters to rank the candidates for an office in order of preference, is a better way to select elected officials than the traditional all or nothing approach to voting.

Why RCV? First, unlike under our cu in an RCV election must achieve a threshold level of suppo voters — in the case of 50% plus 1, and in the case of ees, 25% plus 1. This fundamental change will be an upg currently trustees can be elected with single-digit vote shares (which can lead to single-digit accountability).

EDWARD MALONE

One View

Second, RCV incentivizes candidates to get some level of support from all voters (i.e second by voters whose first choice is a different candidate), they are likely to advocate for broadly suppor ted policies, and also run more civil campaigns that do not alienate voters. Third, RCV gives voters more choices. When voters are freed to vote their heart without fear that their one vote will be wasted (or counterproductive), a wider variety of candidates will likely take a chance on running for of fice.

VIEWPOINTS

I know, because I have talked to many voters, that RCV has broad suppor t in Oak Park. But I worry that some voters will be intimidated by the detail in the ballot measure. They shouldn’t be. RCV is as simple as I have described it. Satisfying the leg al requirements imposed on ballot measures requires explaining in detail how RCV will eliminate candidates with low support and reallocate the votes they received to their supporters’ second choice, and so on until a candidate achieves a majority of the votes. The ballot description of this process is quite technical, but really it is no more complicated than other choice ranking we do every day, like choosing your second favorite ice cream flavor at Petersen’s after you find out that they no longer carry your favorite.

Over the course of our history, our country has evolved toward a system of majority rule, supplemented with guardrails to protect the rights of minorities. But we often fall short of this ideal. By requiring majority support to be elected, while opening up the ballot to greater choice, RCV can move us closer to this ideal, and serve the principles of our democratic republic better than the system we have been using. And if municipalities like Oak Park lead the way on adopting ranked choice voting, we might even get to use it statewide in the future.

For more information on RCV in Illinois, go to rcvforoakpark.org. Edward Malone is an attorney who has lived in Oak Park for 26 years. He has worked on RCV issues as a volunteer for Fair Vote Illinois.

Ten-plus years ago, someone named Henry Griffin announced on a bird-watching forum that he’d be leading bird walks near his home in Oak Park. As a longtime bird watcher (now simply “birder”), I was intrigued. I joined the first of those walks. Imagine my sur prise to find that Henry was a recently minted teen. My amazement increased when, very early in the walk, he looked up to the sky at a tiny dot flying by and identified it. My thought? Nonsense. He didn’t even use binoculars. But I did. And he was right. He birded with a camera! Only!

Henry led his local walks through his high school years, as well as many outings at Miller Meadow, Columbus Park and Thatcher Woods. He drew a substantial and loyal following because he is extraordinarily talented, but most of all he’s personable and a fine young teacher.

Henry went of f to colle ge. When he was ready to leave, he got me to pull to gether the walks for the fall migration season, using a combination of my contacts and his list of walkers. He would lead a few of the season’s walks, but as Henry became more

deeply involved in his studies and his music (he’s a marvelous musician, an operatic baritone and pianist), more of the arranging fell to me.

Our group has grown to over 90 members, from 5 to 15 participants on any given walk. Henry still leads a few walks during each season. We mutter among ourselves that birds that don’t show up when we’re birding on our own seem to be there for Henry, but it’s not magic: he has extraordinary eyesight, hearing and a superb memory for things he’s seen and heard.

With Henry away, two experienced birders took over leading our walks. Ed O’Brien has been birding since he was a teenager and has tr aveled extensively to see birds. Lisa Spellman is, like Henry, an excellent bird photographer. She takes dozens of photos on the walks she leads and confirms what we think we have seen, sometimes even capturing images of birds we didn’t know we saw.

When we go birding as a group, we use the Cornell University Lab of Ornitholo gy digital tools, particularly the eBird and BirdCast apps. As we walk,

Paying for big projects

It is the stuf f of local governance. A thorough debate at Oak Park’s village board table about how to pay for several vital and expensive capital improvement projects was held recently and, while no final decision was made, we did learn something about the governing philosophy of multiple trustees and the village president.

We’ve got no criticism here. It was a good conversation and the eventual conclusion seems likely to be some middle ground on the debate over how much of Oak Park’s hard-won cash reserve should be spent down on projects vs. how much debt should be taken on to pay for long-term projects.

Top of the list of big ticket projects are major streetscaping and sewer re placements on the 100 block of south Oak Park Avenue. This project has been considered crucial for over a decade as the pipes running under the street are well more than a century old and the streetscape itself has been in place for four decades and is beyond worn out.

Between the below-ground work and the street-level upgrades, the cost is an eye-popping $20 million. But it has to be done and it is scheduled to happen in 2025.

Also in the planning phase are an ambitious remodel of Oak Park Village Hall and the construction of a new police station. There is $3 million already set aside for the design phase of those projects. But when it is time to actually start construction, the price tag was last estimated to fall between $132 million and $138.3 million.

Right now the village is sitting on almost $46 million in cash reserves. That is far more than the 10% to 20% reserve recommended by municipal finance experts.

Multiple trustees and President Vicki Scaman are leaning toward spending down the reserves to help fund these once-in-multiplegenerations projects. Some suggest a middle ground of spending down a portion of the reserves while inevitably issuing bonds to fund the bulk of the work over the coming years.

The theory of borrowing to fund these projects is that over the next 20 to 30 years, future taxpayers will benefit from each of these projects and so they should help pay back the debt incurred to make these investments. We agree with that philosophy while also supporting paying $15 million to $20 million of the total costs from reserves.

Meanwhile, this is a worthwhile discussion for the village board and its staf f to have.

ings we like

■ As we prepare for the closing of The Book Table on Lake Street, we are heartened to re port that a local couple is readying to open the Dandelion Bookshop on Oak Park Avenue. This is a town that should not be without an independent bookstore.

■ In a bold new approach to sustaining St. Catherine-St. Lucy School on Austin Boulevard, it has hired its first president. Staunton Peck is now on the job and will focus on raising funds for this essentially inde pendent school while also overseeing non-classroom aspects of the facility.

What does it mean to love our country?

In a 2020 essay published just before the last presidential election, novelist Marilynne Robinson asked the question: “What does it mean to love a country?” That is the question facing us again with two weeks left in the election that will determine this country’s course for the rest of our lives — and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives. What does it mean to love our country? Robinson describes the feeling as “a deep, if sometimes difficult, affinity I would call love.”

A deep, if sometimes difficult, affinity. Do you love your country if you always criticize it? Do you love it if you never criticize it? President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” which is too one-sided. We should ask what our country can do for us — especially when it isn’t doing enough for those who don’t have enough. But the second half also applies.

Not enough of us ask what we can do for our country.

I would change Kennedy’s admonition to, “Ask what your country can do for you, then ask what you can do for your country.”

That is my baseline for loving our country. Robinson says it is also “a feeling like a love of family.” America is a glorious idea, expressed in glorious language in our founding documents, she writes, which profess that “human beings are sacred, therefore equal. We are asked to see one another in the light of a singular inalienable worth that would make a family of us if we let it.”

If we let it, but too often we don’t. Our founding words, Robinson adds, “always leave us wanting” because our sense of “family” is too limited. We have an inner circle to whom we generously extend our blessings — relatives, friends and maybe our local community. But there is also an outer circle where, for too many Americans, generosity becomes conditional, and those who fall outside those immediate boundaries are neglected or rejected, sometimes unwittingly, or in the case of Trump and his antiimmigrant supporters, willfully.

Equality, our founding principle, Robinson says, “is a progressive forc e, constantly and necessarily exposing our failures and showing us new paths forward” — if we have the courage, and enough love, to take those paths.

What does it mean to love our country at this most critical time?

It can mean writing postcards, like Oak Parker Jeanette Mancusi, who has personally penned over 4,000 to people in swing states, urging them to vote because “Our rights are on the ballot Nov. 5.” Jea-

nette is a member of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist cong re gation, which has partnered with the Center for Common Ground, a non-partisan, Black and women-led voting rights organization founded in 2018. Staff and volunteers work in voter-suppression states where more than 20% are voters of color. The Unity Temple Democracy in Action/Vote Love team focused their postcard writing in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, reminding recipients that their vote is their voice and that every vote matters. It means knocking on doors, like the Democratic Party of Oak Park’s dedicated corps of volunteers, who have been carpooling each weekend to Michigan (Saturdays) and Wisconsin (Sundays) to talk to residents, face to face, in those critical swing states, because personal contact is still the most effective way to get the word out. T hey will be doing it again this weekend (dpop.us).

Loving our country means voting, of course, but there are times when loving our country demands something more: for Republicans, it means voting against the party you have always voted for and finding the courage to vote for the other party. It means rising above party loyalty and ideology to come to the aid of your country because your party’s candidate is morally and mentally unfit to be president and will harm our country if elected. As Hippocrates said so long ago, “First, do no har m.” Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference.” Voting means caring enough about our country to make the strongest possible statement, not relying on fellow citizens to make that statement for you just because you “live in a Blue state.” You can’t love your country and not vote (or throw away your vote on a third-party candidate), especially in this election when so much is at stake.

It means voting even if you have to go outside your comfort zone to do it — for the sake of the country to which you pledge allegiance. If you don’t love your country enough to help save it, then what are you?

Democracy places just one demand on us. It leaves its very existence entirely in our hands. It asks if we’ve got what it takes to keep this precious gift of self-government alive, and if we don’t, it dies in our hands without a whimper.

Marilynne Robinson put it differently.

“Democracy,” her essay concludes, “is the great instrument of human advancement.

“We have no right to fail it.”

KEN TRAINOR

TO WN by Marc Stopeck

WEDNESDAY

JOURNAL

of Oak Park and River Forest

Viewpoints Guidelines

e goal of the Viewpoints section is to foster and facilitate a community conversation and respectful dialogue. Responsible community voices are vital to community journalism and we welcome them. Space is at a premium and readers’ attention is also limited, so we ask that Viewpoints submissions be brief. Our limit for letters to the editor is 350 words. For One View essays, the limit is 500 words. Shorter is better. If and when we have su cient space, we print longer submissions, but when space is limited — as it o en is — we may ask you to submit a shorter version or hold the piece until space allows us to print it.

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SHRUB

Lifelong learners celebrated

The Senior Citizens Center of Oak Park & River Forest was chartered in 1954 and is the oldest senior citizens center in Illinois. In 2019, we began collaborating with the Park District of Oak Park to offer active adult programming.

This year on Sept. 18, the Senior Citizens Center held its annual Ulyssean Awards dinner. Since 2004, beginning with the center’s 50th anniversary celebration, we have been honoring distinguished members of the community, individuals 50 and above, who have demonstrated commitment to the continuing quest of lifelong learning, and have had significant involvement in, and made contributions to, the community which have served to broaden our social, educational, and/or cultural horizons.

This year’s Ulyssean Award recipients are Marc and Dorie Blesoff, Robert Giles, and Sandy Lentz.

Before he embarked on his final journey, as chronicled by the great English poet Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses extolls his thirst for adventure and knowledge, and encourages his aging friends to join him, ending with “made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” It is this thirst for learning, doing, and adventure of body and spirit that is the Ulyssean Journey, honoring individuals in the community who exemplify this lifestyle and philosophy.

Recent past honorees in our two communities include Harriet Hausman, Barbara Ballinger, Janet and Bob Haisman, Nancy Teclaw, Rev. Don and Dolores Re gister, Ken Trainor, Robert Downs, Mary Kay O’Grady, Charles Williams, John Seaton, Gerald Lordan, Rose Meyer, and Tom and Marcia Palazzolo.

Abby Schmelling Oak Park

Not ready for ranked-choice voting

Effective public policies provide solutions to vexing problems. In the context of Oak Park, ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a solution in search of a problem. Two significant claims by its proponents are that RCV reduces political polarization and leads to better public policies. The New Republic, a left-of-center policy research organization, notes that the evidence does not support or refute either claim. It becomes a matter of what you believe.

But assuming the proponents are correct, I have yet to see proof of either stark polarization or bad public policy by the village or other Oak Park units of government. Voters are asked to embrace an election form with no beneficial purpose for our community. In addition, RCV cannot be implemented under current statutes. It is an idea whose time has not come.

Peter Creticos Oak Park

Your tax dollars at work

Today’s mail brought me “Storyline,” a 12-page glossy “mag azine” of the Oak Park Public Library.

One wonders how much money was spent on this, taking into account the time spent by personnel, printing costs, mailing costs and so for th. The periodic one-sheet insert in village mailings seems more than adequate to communicate anything worth communicating. Does anybody really care that some random librarian loves a punch needle kit? Do we really need a glossy brochure

with hours and closing dates? Nobody is going to keep the brochure as a reference source for such things. Any normal person would simply Google for it.

I worked my butt of f to earn the money that goes to the library in taxes. I’m not at all amused to see those dollars wasted on trivialities and information nobody needs in brochure form

Bob Stigger Oak Park

Voting against Harris is misguided

Joseph Har rington recently sent in two pieces about the benefits of third party voting (“There are more than two sides,” Viewpoints, Oct. 9). He writes about the Green Party candidacy of Jill Stein, and how she is siphoning from Democrats the votes of Arab-Americans in the swing state of Michig an. Why are they voting Green? According to Harrington, Biden and Har ris won’ t forcefully call for a ceasefire in Gaza. He overlooks the ceasefire existing on Oct. 7, 2023 at 6:28:59 a.m., when ter rorists from Hamas crossed into Israel to pillage, maim, rape, kill and kidnap.

If he and some Michig an voters want a ceasefire, there are things to do. Pressure the Red Cross and other NGOs (non-gover nmental org anizations) to secure access to the 101 hostage s currently in Gaza. Those NGOs have failed to do so for 54 weeks. The Red Cross failed to protect the hostages from harassment during the November 2023 exchange. The NGOs failed Eden Yer ushalayim, a 24-year-old who was starved to 79 pounds when executed in a tunnel under Rafah, Gaza. Pressure gover nments to pressure Hamas, PIJ, and others to release all the hostage s. They can fight for the release of Kfir Bibas, who was 9 months old when kidnapped into Gaza with his f amily. They can fight for the release of

Shlomo Mantzur, at 86 the oldest hostage. He has the distinction of surviving the Farhud po groms in Iraq in 1941, where Jews were also raped, maimed, mutilated, and killed.

Har rington puts responsibility for a possible election loss by Harris on people who have made the Gaza War their only election issue To me, they are “cutting of f their noses to spite their faces,” as the saying goes. After all, a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump, the author of the “Muslim Ban” during his presidency and a threat to our democracy. They may face anger from Democrats, but that will dissipate. As a Jewish voter, I know that there will be those who will extend blame to Israel and the Jewish community

I know that if for mer President Trump loses, the American Jewish community will be blamed. Trump has said so, loud and clear. The dif ference is that Trump has suppor ters who will take out their anger at his loss on individuals and groups he blames I feel the heightened anxiety of safety and security concerns among Jewish religious and community org anizations, and among individual community members.

Whoever wins, or loses, we are in for dif ficult times.

Supporting Fioretti for state’s attorney

I have never in my entire career endorsed a political candidate. But I believe that Bob Fioretti and the staf f he’ ll put in place will be able to bring professional prosecution to the Cook County State’s Attor ney’s Of fice. Kim Foxx and her staf f have demoralized law enforcement in Cook County to the point where it is almost ir reve rsible. I b eli eve that Mr. Fioretti puts public safety first, will take the victims and families into a ccount over of f ender s, and wo rk to re pair the relationship with all police agencies in Cook County.

This is not a Re publican-Democratic issue

for me; it is strictly about the best individual to lead the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and have public safety as its driving forc e. I believe that Bob Fioretti is that person. I would also add that I believe every single police of ficer, family member, and those who support the police and Cook County should put aside their political views and vote for Fioretti because everyone, in every neighborhood, deserves to be safe, have a prosecutor who is an advocate for them, and does it professionally.

Tom Weitzel Ri verside police chief (retired)

Alan Peres Oak Park

Nov. 5 approaches. I am concerned that our focus on Democrats and Re publicans obscures the larger choice facing us: to hold fast to the current options or break free of them.

JIM SCHWARTZ

One View

Unfortunately, neither of the current parties promotes the progressive policies that most Americans want and need. Differences exist between them and the Democrats are better on many issues, but those differences are not significant enough, and both parties gravitate toward conservative, corporate-funded positions. When it comes to economic prosperity, neither Democrats nor Re publicans advocate a living wage for workers. We are at a point where even $15 per hour won’t suffice, but Democrats failed to push for even that during Biden’s term.

Previously, asylum had been a bedrock component of our national immigration policies, but earlier this year Biden implemented a plan that restricts access to asylum, an idea Trump had previously championed. Harris suppor ts the continuation of this plan.

And in Gaza, while Trump is telling Netanyahu to “finish the job,” Harris can’t seem to utter the words “Israel’s right to defend itself” often enough. The Biden administration has supported — and either Trump’s or Har ris’ administration will continue to support — Israel’s attacks on Gaza until they decide they are finished with the slaughter.

What can we do about any of this?

The answer is that, because Harris will win Illinois’ electoral votes re gardless, those of us who live here can vote for a party that is on the right side of the issues: the Green Party. Some might ask,

“What good will that do when either Harris or Trump will win the presidency anyway?”

If the Green Party earns 5% of the vote nationally, they will qualify for federal election funds in the next election, allowing them to compete on a more even playing field. That could be the start of the trajectory for us to grow the Green Party into a national force in electoral politics

If you want to support that ef fort, you can vote for Jill Stein. She is not on the ballot here in Illinois, but she is an approved write-in candidate. In Cook County, select the option for a write-in vote and write in “Jill Stein and Rudolph Ware.” Your vote will be counted along with the national Green vote

Whether Har ris or Trump wins this upcoming election, we need a stronger advocate in support of Gaza, compassionate immigration policies, and progressive economic policies. We need an empowered Green Party. Voting Green in this election is one way to contribute to this empower ment. And then after this election, we need to continue buildin g the party, supporting Green candidates in state and local elections We will need institutional actors who can advocate against Trump ’s policies from a place of clarity, or we will need institutional actors who can push Harris to adopt the progressive policies that are supported by a majority of voters. Growing the Green movement will allow us to push our government, whatever the outcome of the election on Nov. 5.

Jim Schwartz is an Oak Park resident, an educator, and a blogger at Entwining. org.

Voting for progressive policies anks for the judges guide

We would like to thank Wednesday Jour nal for the incredibly useful “Check Your Judges” guide in last week’s paper! [General Election Guide 2024, Oct. 16] Usually, we have very little information on judges, at best the Qualified/Not qualified rankings of various bar associations. This guide gives specific notable or controver-

Voting for and against judges

Please consider voting ‘No’ for any judge on the list below, and voting ‘Yes’ for all the other judg es. I compiled the list from recommendations by 17 local bar associations and Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization that examines issues of equity and justice in the court system. Any judge who received a ne gative re port from any bar association or from Injustice Watch is on the list.

You can see the details of the recommendations at these websites: https://www.voteforjudges.org/ https://interacti ves.injustice watch.org/ judicial-election-guide/2024-general/en/

Vote No for these judges:

sial events and decisions, which provides actual insight into many of the judges. Also valuable is that the 80 or so judges are listed in the order they appear on our ballots. This gives interested voters a chance to make an infor med decision.

Tom and Carolyn DeCoursey Oak Park

Thomas E. Hoffman

Kathy M. Flanagan

E. Kenneth Wright Jr.

James N. Varga

Mary Margaret Brosnahan

Maura Slattery Boyle

Carl Anthony Walker

Mike McHale

Erica L. Reddick

Lionel Jean-Baptiste

Carl B. Boyd

Lisa Ann Marino

Beatriz Santiago

Adrienne Elaine Davis

Ieshia Gray

Shannon O’Malley

Linda Pere z

Building more a ordable housing

I share the concern of many Oak Parkers about the lack of affordable housing in Oak Park, especially for people employed by businesses in Oak Park. So far, the main impetus has been to either ear mark so-called affordable units in existing or planned-for new multi-unit buildings or to require buildings that do not have affordable units to contribute to a village affordable housing fund

I would contend that this policy has yielded far too few af fordable units and, at times, removed units from the market when an af fordable building with 10, 15, 20 af fordable units is re placed by a high-rent building with nine or fewer affordable units. There seems to me to be a lack of resolve to truly create a substantial number of new affordable multifamily housing units.

Many years ago, the village underwrote a large building with high-rent luxury units, the Whiteco building at Harlem and Ontario whose sole redeeming value was a Trader Joe’s grocery store in a Russianstyle, cookie-cutter building.

Look around and you’ll see new buildings being built with market-rate rather than affordable-housing units. Two of the largest parcels of land being developed are not for affordable, high-quality housing but rather an unneeded grocery store at Oak Park Avenue and Madison Street and an unwanted carwash at Austin Boulevard and Roosevelt Road.

A small incremental addition of

affordable-housing buildings, like 7 Van Buren St., are celebrated as a major victory for affordable housing, when in fact the building will only have 9 affordable units replacing the 12 affordable units that were previously at the site.

When I approached a village trustee with my concer ns, she shared my concer n and was of the belief that few private developers are willing to invest in affordable units, so essentially we get what private developers are willing to give us, often with village subsidies.

My answer is that our village government one time before made a major investment ($20,000,000) to build the Whiteco building in the belief that this building would spur growth in a moribund downtown Oak Park. Some have said this project did just that.

Now, facing this crisis of affordable housing, shouldn’t the village of Oak Park use all of its fiscal development support, village code variances, and other investment tools to form partnerships with private developers to build not 9, 10, 11 affordable units but hundreds of well-built, affordable housing units to house people in need, people who work in businesses in the village ear ning modest pay, and people who were born and raised in the village but cannot afford to keep living here. We owe it to them, our community values, and to ourselves.

Frank Vozak Oak Park

Jim Poznak, Oak Park

Condo associations as micro-republics

When I tell people I’m president of my condominium association, they often re ply, “I’m so sorry for you.”

Whether they get their impression of condo politics by way of personal experience or reputation, many folks I know imagine leadership in a condo association as a thankless, unpaid position with many responsibilities and little power. In six days the contestants in a novel and contentious race for the White House will cross the finish line, and after 10 years of acting as board president I can’t help noticing the similarities between the office of the President of the 50 “United” States and the elected leaders of my condo association which represents 51 owners.

Some condo board presidents I’ve talked to — those who looked at the job of president of the association through the eyes of reality — did not want to be burdened with that responsibility but accepted the job, perhaps out of a sense of duty

Gorge Washington sent a letter to General Henry Knox, dated April 1789, in which he expressed his reluctance to become president. In that letter, Washington wrote, “I can assure you that my movements to the chair of Gover nment [aka President] will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those

BIRD MIGRATION

Millions of migrants!

from page 29

we employ eBird to record each species and how many of each species the group sees. While several walkers do their own recording, two of us act as quasi-of ficial recorders for the group

One purpose of this ef fort is to track one’s own “life list” of birds. The mai n purpose, though, is to participate in a remarkable citizen science project that keeps track of species frequency and numbers over time. Millions of birders across the world submit their sightings, some on a daily basis.

T he other application we use is BirdCast. This is a free tool developed in a par tnership between Cornell, Colorado State University and University of Massachusetts Amherst. The facility provides live nightly migration maps and

of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties.”

I resonate with the feelings expressed by our first President. Ten years ago, I had retired from serving as a pastor for 30 years, having paid the price of responsible leadership. I had to admit, however, that I was the logical choice, so I accepted the job.

Our country’s form of gover nment is a republic, not a direct democracy. In a condo association, the owners likewise vote for board members to whom they delegate the job of making policy. In the case of my condo building, the board hires a manager who does most of the work of implementing board decisions

Our federal gover nment employs 268,947 civilians and 2.25 million military personnel. Our management company employs just a few people, including a part-time maintenance man, and board members wind up doing a lot more of the hands-on work than do Danny Davis or Emmanuel “Chris” Welch, but structurally we are largely the same

numbers of birds overflying particular areas, usually broken down into counties across the U.S. The maps can be viewed as animations that show the fl ow of birds during a night’s flight from approximately sundown to sunrise.

From its large eBird database of info rmation gathered over several years, BirdCast predicts what mi gratory birds to expect at any given time during a migration season. The nightly infor mation can be used to anticipate what birds might be present on a walk, as well as the likelihood of seeing them at all.

Astounding numbers

BirdCast tracks migration from March 1 to June 15 and from Aug. 1 to Nov. 15. In Cook County, the numbers are astounding. A few nights during a season will see 8-10 million birds flying over. Our current fall season has seen about 80 million birds flying and can expect a final number between 90 and 100 million. This total reflects our presence in the

What is missing in the analogy is that my condo association has no independent supreme court to arbitrate disputes. And that’s where the manure can really hits the rotary oscillator

We had a dispute recently in my building re garding a decision the board made and with which about a third of the owners disagreed. Of the 25% of the owners who showed up at the all-building meeting — direct democracy — a significant cohort were adamantly opposed to the board’s decision while those with no opinion silently waited for some light to appear along with the emotional heat.

We all recognize that the volume of noise in a room does not always equate to the number of those who favor a proposal.

There’s a story about a janitor who was cleaning the church one night and discovered that the pastor had already placed his ser mon on the pulpit. He decided to read it and halfway through he saw a handwritten note in the margin, “Argument weak here, so pound the pulpit with fist.”

So it goes with pastors, politicians and condo owners. When you can’t summon up much light, there’s always the option of sub-

middle of the Mississippi Flyway, one of four avian migratory flyways reco gnized by the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service. Our flyway path extends from Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada through Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota, to Alabama and Arkansas, and then to Central and South America.

In the spring of 2024, our group identified 88 species of birds We won’t know what we’ve seen this fall until the season is over. The songbirds most represented in our sightings are passerines, i.e. birds that perch, and the most diverse passerines are in the “New World Wood Warbler” family that contains 120 species. The warblers present special challenges because they are small birds most of which flit quickly from branch to branch high up in trees, seeking insects to eat. Because they change plumage from spring to fall, many species become drab and quite similar to each other. This is one reason our experienced leaders are so helpful.

We also see various hunting birds, multiple types of hawks and the occasional

stituting heat for the absence of illumination, and it seems to me that many voters as well as some condo owners cannot discern the dif ference.

At the condo all-building meeting the weakest argument was what I will call “slippery slope” reasoning, i.e. if you give them an inch they’ ll take a mile. In the board’s opinion, the decision they made to make an exception to a rule was a one-time decision. They gave an inch and only an inch. That’s it.

In our national politics the use of the slippery slope fallacy is evident. For example, “If we let them take our assault rifles, they will try to take our 30-30 rifles and our 12-gauge shotguns.”

Motivating the slippery slope logical fallacy is a lack of trust, and trust can be eroded by unethical behavior by the board (or federal gover nment) or the owners (or the electorate) or both.

The strength as well as weakness of democracy is that it gives power to the people, and my experience indicates that the people sometimes are swayed by emotional heat while at other times it tur ns out that they are wise and discerning.

Tom Holmes is a Forest Park resident who writes a column for the Forest Park Re view, a Growing Community Media publication.

eagle or owl, as well as Chimney Swifts and Nighthawks, which spend hours flying with beaks agape, catching innumerable airbor ne insects. We catch views of water birds of many types, including herons, ducks, geese, and cor morants. By the time the great favorite of birders and nonbirders alike, the Sandhill Cranes, fly over in their great flocks toward the end of the year, we have long since finished our Oak Park Migration Bird Walks season.

We have gotten used to the cycle of arrivals in the spring and the cong ruent cycle of de par ture in the fall, helped along by BirdCast’s anticipated species through se gments of the migration. This does not diminish our excitement each season. The hunter that remains in all of us finds expression in this endeavor, though the objective is not to bring them back to the cave to eat. Rather, it is to experience wonder on a regular basis and to hope for something we’ve never seen before. It happens every year

Ed McDevitt is a Ri ver Forest resident.

Is ranked choice good for Oak Park?

In the upcoming election, Oak Parkers will vote on whether to start using ranked-choice voting (RCV) for village trustee and village president elections. RCV is a different way for people to vote in races with more than two candidates: Instead of just choosing one candidate, you rank candidates as your first choice, second choice, etc. (See https://www oakpark. com/2024/10/14/oak-park-rankedchoice-voting-referendum).

It’s not a new method: Other towns have been using it since 1939. RCV is gaining in popularity throughout the U.S. and the world, but is it good for Oak Park?

I’m a researcher with the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago. I’ve studied the research on pros and cons of different voting methods: RCV is especially well-suited to Oak Park. It is most advantageous when elections include multiple candidates of dif-

Dec. 21 is the winter solstice. It’s also the birthday of my childhood friend, Ed Wackrow. Ed and I have been friends since we were 7. We always made a big deal about Ed’s birthday. It was the kickof f to our Christmas celebration.

This year is dif ferent. Ed passed away on Sept. 28 just short of his 70th bir thday. I’ve never lost a close childhood friend like Ed. It was always the three of us hanging out to g ether: Ed, Bob Cullen and me

We became friends because we lived along the “Great Shortcut” to Longfellow Pa rk in Oak Pa rk We played year-round spor ts at the park. Ed was a gentle soul but he could be a fierce competitor. He was especially competitive at basketball, which we played on Ken Trainor’s alley hoop

We also hung out in Ed’s basement because he had a pool tabl e. The walls were decorated with psychedelic Beatles posters. They were hung there by Ed’s older brother, Jerry, who was our music influencer.

ferent stripes all on the ballot together. That often characterizes our village elections (When I was a candidate for trustee in 2019, for example, there were 11 of us!)

JOSHUA KLAYMAN One View

The biggest advantage of RCV is that you can say what you truly think without having to game the system. Suppose you think A is excellent, B is pretty good, and C is awful. In the current system you have to worry that you’d better vote for better-shot B so you don’t get C. With RCV you can go ahead and vote for A. If A is eliminated, your vote will go to your second choice, B, and you’ ll still help B beat C.

Or suppose there are two excellent candidates, A1 and A2. Right now, they could split the vote with around 30% each, and the election goes to Candidate C with 40%, even though 60% of the people wanted A1 or A2. Or A1 and A2

may be pressured to have one of them drop out instead of letting voters choose. (This happened in a recent village president election here.) RCV eliminates that worry because most A1 voters will put A2 as their second choice, and vice versa. The most-prefer red A candidate will win with about 60%, reflecting what people want.

What about village board elections, where three trustees are elected at once? Instead of just saying yes to three candidates and no to everyone else, RCV lets you rank as many of them as you like from your top choice down. If one of your favorites is out, or if they’re way ahead and don’t need your vote, you still get a say in who you want instead; you don’t have to game out how to make your vote count.

In multi-seat elections, RCV also tends

So long, Eddie Spaghetti

We spent hours listening to Jer ry’s collection of 8-Tracks and albums. I heard Abbey Road for the first time. Ed was a music lover his whole life. Music was a bond but we shared so many others. The three of us were such good friends, we even enjoyed doing boring stuf f to g ether.

Ed and I attended Ascension School but drifted apar t when we went to dif ferent high schools. Ed attended Quigley North. He was popular with his classmates and played on the baseball team. He went on to earn a de gree in psycholo gy from Quincy Colle ge.

RICE

Quincy was one of the towns Ed and I visited during our road trips. I used to bring him along for companionship on my out-of-town private investigator trips. He was my navig ator, studying road maps to find our way.

Ed also started our annual pilg rim-

to produce more diversity in who gets elected. Tabulating the votes here is a bit more complicated, but there is a well established and easily monitored process for doing it that is already of fered by the vote-counting software used in Cook County and many other states and towns.

State law allows certain towns and villages to choose RCV by referendum. But it also requires that the referendum spell out the exact process in great detail, right there on the ballot. So don’t be put of f by the big amount of text. It follows accepted best practices

Look to the end of the Spanishlanguage version of the referendum to fill in the oval for “Yes.” If passed, the county will modify the ballot and buy the software module in time for the 2027 village elections

It’s a good idea for Oak Park. Joshua Klayman is an Oak Park resident.

age to White Pines State Park For years, our family drove to White Pines to hike the trails We stopped at the Black Hawk statue on the way. On the way home, we bought pumpkins and apple cider.

Ed often came with us. He also traveled with us on vacation. My wife would be stuck in the backseat with young kids, while Ed rode shotgun. I explained that he needed the room because he had long le gs. He was a shy person who rose to the occasion when necessary.

When he called the house, he always eng aged my kids in co nversation. It was a conversational tightrope, especially when they were teens. My kids called him “Eddie Spaghetti.” He was like an uncle to them. He was like a brother to me and Bob, who called him our “leisure consultant” because he was always available for fun. Ed tape-

recorded all the major spor ting events. We watched MJ and the Bulls on a nightly basis.

T he highlight of our hanging out, though, was on Christmas Eve.

Ed would still be shopping for ba rgains on Dec. 24. Then we would head to Ascension Church for Midnight Mass. After mass ended at 2 a.m., we went to Bob’s to exchange gifts. Ed was a generous gift-giver. He once gave me two tickets to Frank Sinatra’s final Chicago concer t. I still have them in my wallet.

During this time, Ed worked at the NAMI Drop-in Center on Oak Pa rk Avenue. His mom, Marie, had founded the center, after Jer ry was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Ed hosted barbeques, took groups on outings and was a wonderful listener

I miss Ed very much but we’re still going to celebrate his bir thday. It’s the least we can do for the tallest of our triad, who was born on the shortest day of the year.

Art Albores, 94

Longtime OPRF High School teacher

A year ago he lost his keys and walked five miles home. Six months ago he was eating ice cream with his grandchildren in Califo rnia. Four months ago he was beating everyone in cards at the annual Michig an f amily reunion. Two months ago he was driving his 96 year old sister to breakfast. Four weeks ago he was at the gym sweating through his t-shirt. Five days ago he was telling everyone to stop wor rying and go home. Two days ago he was singing a thundering rendition of happy birthday to his granddaughter. Once in English. Once in Polish. Once in Spanish. And an hour before joining the choirs of angels he said goodbye to his wife of 53 years with a g rip as strong and full of love as the life he lived.

Arthur Albore s, 94, left us on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. T he third youngest of seven children born to Jacob and Victoria Albores who emigrated from Mexico, they settled on the West Side of Chicago. When his father died suddenly, his mother held the f amily to g ether through the Depression and World War II.

Art found a second home at the YMCA, which cemented a faith in community that endured the rest of his life. He attended North Central Colle ge and graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science de gree. He taught grammar in Chicago and the sur rounding suburbs for nine years while serving as a Navy reservist.

In 1965 he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years establishing YMCAs in Caracas, Venezuela. He attended Middlebury Colle ge and graduated with a Master of Education degree

When Oak Park and River Forest High School called him in Spain to offer him a teaching job, he settled in as a Spanish teacher for the next 40 years and dedicated his life to shaping the minds and lives of generations of young people, at both OPRF and Norther n Illinois University.

In 1971 he discovered the reason he was put on this earth when he met Carole. Five months later they were married. First child Geoffrey came a year later, Peter the year after that and Timothy the year after that. He was fiercely proud of them. Grandfatherhood was the same. As the children grew older he grew wiser, offering advice when asked and a hug when needed. He was patient. He told silly jokes, sent books underlined, passed down traditions. His love was boundless

Among his lessons: On Christmas morning, he took his family to a soup kitchen to feed those whose Christmas wasn’t as full as theirs. Read for pleasure. Wear colorful socks. Spend time in Michigan, marvel at the green. Carry a thin wallet because nothing is that important anyway. Be a part of your children’s lives without telling them how to live. Never miss a parade. Workout three days a week, at minimum. Keep moving or you rust. Make everyone say “too soon” when you pass on at 94. Meet people where they are but always bring a handful of love and a pocket full of Kleenex. Never forget La Familia is everything

He was proud that in 94 years he never needed a cane

Art is survived by his 97-year-old sister, Helen; his five grandchildren, Maya, Emilie and Maddy, Oliver and Charlie; his three sons, Geoff, Pete and Tim and their wives Chris and Sandy, both of whom he was crazy

about; his wife Carole whom he loved more than life itself, and a lifetime of family and friends, too numerous to list but not forgotten.

Visitation was held at Conboy-Westchester Funeral Home, 10501 W. Cermak Road, Westchester on Oct. 17. On Oct. 18, Mass was celebrated at St. Giles Church, 1045 Columbian Ave., Oak Park. Interment was private.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Housing Forward (formerly PADS), www housingforward.org, in Ar t’s honor.

Ruth Radnitzer, 97 Whittier School lunchroom supervisor

Ruth Elizabeth Radnitzer, 97, died peacefully on Sept. 29, 2024. Born on Nov. 15, 1926, For 35 years, Ruth worked as a lunchroom supervisor at Whittier School, where she was a much-loved face to students and staf f alike. She frequently volunteered at the Whittier School Cultural Fair where she was proud to share her Swedish heritage. She was a member of Austin Covenant Church and Villa Park Covenant Church

She enjoyed making handmade crafts of plastic canvas and crocheted hot pads which she delighted in gifting to all those around her. Family and friends could count on receiving a card from her for every special occasion, especially one wishing them a speedy recovery when they were ill.

Ruth was a devoted mother to three sons, the late Keith (Leigh), Karl (Crys tal), and Kurt (Dawn); grandmother and great-grandmother of Bailey, Isaac and Rachel, Hannah and Nick, and Abig ail, Joshua and Jessica, Kelly and Joy. She was preceded in death by her husband, Ken, with whom she shared 62 years of marriage

A visitation/funeral service will be held on F riday, Oct. 25 from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. at Hursen Funeral Home, 4001 Roosevelt Road in Hillside, followed by a burial service at noon, directly behind the funeral home at the Glen Oaks Cemetery, 4301 Roosevelt Road in Hillside.

In lieu of flowers, the f amily requests donations to Covenant Harbor Bibl e Camp, 1724 W. Main St., Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 53147 in honor of Ruth Radnitzer

WEDNESDAY J

of Oak Park and River Forest To run

Please contact Ken Trainor by e-mail: ktrainor@wjinc.com, or fax: 708/524-0447 before Monday at noon. Please include a photo if possible.

SPORTS

Fenwick football is all about family

Deep camaraderie is the driving force behind this year’s success

By MATTHEW RIOS Contributing Reporter

After a heartbreaking one point loss to Joliet Catholic on Sept. 13, the Fenwick Friars climbed onto the bus for a ride back home. And that night on the bus, something was brewing inside everyone.

“I just remember thinking, ‘We cannot let this season be another season like [last year],’” said junior Tommy Thies. “The next week of practice, we really locked in because we knew we could’ve won that game But now it’s in the past, we don’t care, and we need to beat our next opponent.”

Fenwick came together to avoid a slump like last season and worked to start winning games. And win they did. The team went on a win streak that only recently ended with a 35-10 loss to Mount Carmel on Oct. 18. During that win streak, the Friars clinched a spot in this year’s playoffs. Over and over again, many in the organization have pointed back to the same thing when asked what has propelled this team to where they are now — commitment to family and camaraderie

“It’s definitely more of a brotherhood this year, and we’re staying close because

you are your brother’s keeper,” said Tommy. “Last year we would only have about 20 guys show up at 6 in the morning for weights. This year we have just about every guy buying into the process because this is when you win games. Everyone knows how special this team can be.”

The players believe in the familial bond in and around the locker room. And just like an actual family, the Friars re gularly spend time together.

“The night before a game we have a team dinner. There’s a lot that goes into football that isn’t the X’s and O’s. It’s about culture and playing for the person next to you,” said Scott Thies, athletic director of Fenwick High School. “I think that sense of community is a differentiator for Fenwick. I see it every day. [The students] are surrounded by teachers, coaches and classmates who have high expectations and push each other.”

So it’s no wonder the defensive and offensive teams have also started their own dinners. For the defensive starters, one player a week hosts the team on Wednesday night after practice. Once they’re done eating, the players all review film and get ready for the next g ame on the calendar.

Tommy and Jake Thies, Tommy’s younger brother, both attend these dinners and say it’s a big part of what has brought the team together. It gives the players a chance to socialize and bond, but it also allows them to grow with each other. Once the

film starts running on the TV, the guys get serious. Players help each other out and make sure everyone knows the plays and coverages before heading into practic e.

Whether on or of f the field, the Fenwick football team has a brotherhood that runs dee p. And when Susan Thies, Tommy and Jake’s grandmother, passed away, that brotherhood shined through yet again. The team showed up to the wake in support of the family and grieved with them. For Jake, it really validated all the camaraderie that the team had developed.

“When my grandmother passed away during the season, everyone showed up. I thought it was really special because it showed how tight our team was and how they were there for me,” said Jake. “There

are a bunch of guys on the team I’ve been playing with since I was 10 years old. So everyone on the team I just think of as family.”

The Fenwick Friars are expected to be a threat this postseason with their strong culture and talent. If Fenwick can keep up its solid defense and improve consistency on offense, there’s hope that they can make a deep playoff run.

The Fenwick Friars kick of f the end of the re gular season against the Carmel Corsairs at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 25 at Triton Colle ge. A win there would clinch the outright Chicago Catholic League/East Suburban Catholic Conference White Division title for Fenwick. After that, they plan to just take it one game at a time

OPRF girls win tennis sectional, Fenwick 2nd

Stein, Brecknock, three doubles teams advance downstate

By MELVIN TATE Contributing Reporter

For the first time in 10 years, the Oak Park and River Forest High School girls tennis team is a sectional champion.

On Oct. 19, the Huskies won their IHSA Class 2A sectional with 24 points — three more than runner-up Fenwick. It’s their first sectional crown since 2014, when they tied with Chicago Latin. Moreover, it’s their first outright sectional title since

2013, and it continues the program’s lateseason momentum.

“We started the season kind of rough, and [assistant coach] John [Morlidge] and I thought we weren’ t getting the most out of the girls,” said OPRF coach Fred Galluz-

zo. “But lately, we’ve picked it up and had a good run. We had good tournaments at Buffalo Grove and Prospect; we had a great day against Fenwick (6-1 dual-meet victory,

See TENNIS on pa ge 38

STEVE JOHNSTON

Fenwick’s Jake ies (8) and Tommy ies (7) prior to the start of their game against Mount Carmel during a Chicago Catholic League showdown, Oct. 18, in River Grove.

OPRF, Fenwick boys soccer primed for playo s

Friars, Huskies feel con dent going in

By MELVIN TATE Contributing Reporter

With the IHSA boys soccer state tournaments beginning this week, both OPRF and Fenwick high schools like how they’re playing.

Here’s a look at each school:

OPRF

The Huskies finished tied for second in the West Suburban Sil ver with a 4-2 record and 12-4-2 overall in the re gular season. They are the sixth seed in the Class 3A New Trier sectional.

“We lost 16 players from last year,” said OPRF coach Jason Fried, “but these guys came in and ke pt the same standards and level of play. They’re definitely getting stronger as the season goes on and are going to be tough to beat in the playoffs.”

OPRF does have a few players with experience: junior goalkeeper Christian Kel-

TENNIS

from page 37

Oct. 5), and finished second at the [West Suburban Silver] tournament, which was a great achievement. I feel gratified, and the kids have had fun.”

OPRF sophomore Lucy Stein, the #2 seed, won the singles title and improved her record to 29-2 with a 7-6, 6-0 victory over Fenwick senior Lily Brecknock (24-4), the third seed, in the final. Both advanced downstate, along with third-place finisher Maya Kasza of Lane Tech and fourth-place finisher Leena Manadan of Whitney Young.

Galluzzo feels the experience Stein gained last year when she qualified for the state finals will help this time around.

“She’s had a really solid season; 29-2 is pretty good, but it’s even better than that,” he said. “She’s grown through some of the matches she’s struggled with, and the two matches she lost, she learned from them. Lucy has a stronger mental approach, and I feel she’ll have a good tournament.”

The Huskies also advanced both of their

lo gg (1.02 goals-against average) and senior midfielders Noah Cummings, Josh Kitterman (five goals, three assists), and Nolan Walters. Fried says the Huskies will lean on them to provide leadership in a win-or-gohome tournament.

“They’ve been helping the coaching staff a lot,” he said. “They’re leading by example They know what it takes to succeed in the playoffs.”

Junior forward Kingston Petersen led OPRF in scoring with seven goals and five assists, while junior forward Adrian Bondartsov added four goals and five assists. The Huskies’ defense led by Cummings, juniors Zachary Goldberg and Kento Przybysz, and seniors Quinn Jansen-Singh and Warren Vitale, has been stout, allowing just one goal per game

OPRF began the playoffs, after press time, on Oct. 22 in a Lane Tech regional semifinal versus Senn. A victory would move the Huskies into the final against either Lane Tech or Payton Prep, Oct. 26.

“They moved us up north a couple of years ago, but it didn’t get any easier for us,” Fried said. “There are a lot of great teams in our sectional: Evanston, Lane Tech, Maine South,

doubles entries. Seniors Alice Cadwell and Maeve Marzec (7-3) made it to the final, where they lost to Nicola Kupczyk and Malia Chen of Chicago Latin 0-6, 0-6.

In the third-place match, seniors Anika Gupta and Sophie Welch (15-14) fell to Fenwick senior Caroline Gruber and sophomore Emma Louderback 3-6, 2-6.

“We haven’t had three entries [since 2019],” Galluzzo said. “That’s different. Just the fact that we’re going with a team is going to be a big plus and will feel good.”

The OPRF sectional singles’ top seed, Fenwick senior Megan Trifilio, suffered a foot injury in the quarterfinals versus Manadan and subsequently was defeated 2-6, 0-6. It was just the second loss of the season for Trifilio, who finishes with a 23-2 record.

“They did their best to treat Megan, but it was difficult for her to move from side to side,” said Fenwick coach Ron Ro gala.

“I know she’s disappointed. She worked to get back into the match, but she just couldn’t overcome that injury.”

However, Ro gala was happy to see Brecknock, Gruber, and Louderback advance.

“Lily played a couple of terrific days of tennis,” he said of Brecknock, who won

New Trier. It’ll be tough to get through.

“We need to focus on what we’ve been doing all season, which is managing the details of the game and coming together as a group,” he added. “We have to be consistent, and if they do that, they’ll get the outcome they want.”

Fenwick

A first look at Fenwick’s 2-12-3 record would indicate that a likely early postseason exit is a distinct possibility. But the Friars have played competitively for the most part and enter the playoffs with momentum, having picked up victories in their final two regular-season matches

“We’ve got a really good group,” said Fenwick coach Craig Blazer. “We’re young, and it’s taken us a while this season, but the guys have responded. There’s nothing like winning, and these last two wins have just provided such a fun environment for these guys to move forward on.”

Senior midfielder Sam Allaire leads Fenwick this season with four goals and three assists, while sophomore midfielder/forward Luke Menacho has three goals and three assists. Junior goalkeeper Dom Bal-

the Class 1A singles title in 2022. “Caroline and Emma were terrific together as a team and competed hard all year. They had a very fine sectional.”

Ro gala also saluted his other doubles team, seniors Rachel Abraham and Mia Menendez, for their sectional ef fort

“Rachel and Mia played some tennis against Whitney Young,” he said. “They fought tooth and nail with that team (6-7, 6-7 second-round loss) and it doesn get much closer than that. A bounce here and there, they would’ve advanced to the quarterfinals and anything could’v pened. They had an outstanding year as a team and became close friends, wh me is really important.”

Ro gala expects Brecknock, Gruber, and Louderback to “play hard and smart” at the state finals, which are hosted by Hersey in Arlington Heights, Oct. 24-26. And he’s also hoping for some divine intervention.

larin, despite having just two victories this year, has an impressive GAA of 1.50. “We had 11 one-goal games,” Blazer said. “I give the guys a lot of credit for embracing the challenge and doing their best.”

Fenwick, seeded 12th in the Class 2A St. Laurence Sectional, opens the playoffs with a re gional semifinal versus Chicago Latin at St. Ignatius on Oct. 23 at 5:30 pm. Should the Friars prevail, St. Ignatius would likely be the opponent in the final, Oct. 26.

Fenwick lost the season opener to Latin 2-1 on Aug. 30 at the Fenwick Priory in River Forest. Allaire’s goal in the first half gave the F riars the lead, but the Romans rallied for two second-half goals to take the win.

“They’re a good team,” Blazer said. “We know we’ve improved a lot from that time, but we know it’s going to be a tough game.” He adds that Fenwick’s key to postseason success is continuing to have better communication on the pitch and playing good defense, among other things.

“We also need to have possession a lot and manage our free kicks,” he said. “Our guys understand what they’re doing now

C

“I will keep my fingers crossed, say a little prayer to the tennis goddess, and ask that the bounces be kind for us,” he said. “We’ll see what happens, but I know we’ll play hard.”

OPRF senior Sophie Welch returns a shot during a recent tennis match. Welch qualied for this weekend’s IHSA state nals in doubles along with classmate Anika Gupta as the duo nished fourth at the Class 2A OPRF Sectional, Oct. 19.

RESOLUTION NO. R-87-24

A RESOLUTION PROVIDING FOR THE LEVY OF AN ADDITIONAL LIBRARY TAX FOR BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE

BE IT RESOLVED by the Council of the Village of Forest Park, Cook County, Illinois, as follows:

Section 1. The Board of Library Trustees of the Village of Forest Park, by Resolution dated September 16, 2024, has requested the corporate authorities of the Village of Forest Park to levy an additional 0.02% tax for the maintenance, repairs and alterations of library buildings and equipment, pursuant to 75 ILCS 5/3-4, in order to include the sum of $76,168.00 in the Village’s 2024 tax levy ordinance as the 0.02% Library Building and Maintenance levy.

Section 2. The corporate authorities of the Village of Forest Park hereby determine and propose to levy such additional 0.02% tax for the year 2024, subject to the provisions of 75 ILCS 5/3-4.

Section 3. The Village Clerk is hereby authorized and directed to publish a copy of this Resolution in the Forest Park Review, a newspaper with a general circulation within the Village of Forest Park, said publication to occur within fifteen (15) days of the adoption of this Resolution.

Section 4. Pursuant to 75 ILCS 5/3-4, notice is hereby given that if a petition requesting a referendum signed by 1,008 or more electors of the Village of Forest Park is filed with the corporate authorities of the Village of Forest Park on or before November 22, 2024, which is thirty (30) days after the date of publication of this Resolution, then the question whether this Resolution shall become effective and said tax imposed shall be submitted to the electors of the Village of Forest Park at a general or special election to be held in accordance with the election laws of the State of Illinois in force at the time of such election. The Village Clerk is hereby directed to provide a petition to any individual requesting

Section 5. In the event no petition is filed with the corporate authorities within thirty (30) days from the of publication of this Resolution, then this Resolution shall be fective and the additional library shall be levied accordingly, and included in the Village’s levy ordinance for library purposes.

ADOPTED by the Council of the Village of Forest Park, Cook County, Illinois this 15th day of October, 2024. YES: 5

NAYS: 0

ABSENT: 0

APPROVED by me this 15th day of October, 2024.

Rory E. Hoskins, Mayor ATTESTED and filed in my office, and published in pamphlet form this 15th day of October, 2024.

Vanessa Belmonte, Clerk

LEGAL NOTICE

The Village of Oak Park --Office of the Village Engineer, 201 South Boulevard, Oak Park, Illinois 60302-- will receive electronic proposals until 10:00 A.M. on Thursday, November 7, 2024, for the following: 24-10 Sewer Cleaning and Inspection. Proposals can be sent electronically to eavgoustakis@oak-park.us.

In general, the contract will require the following work: light cleaning of sewer segments to be inspected, inspecting sewer segments by means of closed-circuit television (CCTV), and providing reports of CCTV inspections at locations shown, and all appurtenant work thereto. All CCTV inspections shall be performed in accordance with NASSCO’s pipeline assessment certification program (PACP) standards.

Proposal forms may be obtained from the Village’s website at http://www.oakpark.us/bid. For questions, please call or email Elaine Avgoustakis, (708) 358-5726, eavgoustakis@oak-park.us

The work to be performed pursuant to this Proposal is subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act, 820 ILCS 130/0.01 et seq.

THE VILLAGE OF OAK PARK Bill McKenna Village Engineer

Published in Wednesday Journal October 23, 2024

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

OF OAK PARK PLAN COMMISSION

DOCKET NUMBER: PC 24-08/09

(Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment (NC Zoning District) and Special Use Application – Community Service Center)

HEARING DATE: November 7, 2024

TIME: 7:00 p.m. or as soon thereafter as the agenda permits

LOCATION OF HEARING: Room 201 - Council Chambers, Village of Oak Park, 123 Madison Street Oak Park, Illinois 60302

PETITIONER: Housing Forward, 1851 South 9th Avenue, Maywood, IL 60153

PROPERTY ADDRESS: 112 South Humphrey Avenue / 21 South Boulevard, Oak Park, IL 60302

LEGAL DESCRIPTION: LOTS 4 AND 5 IN BLOCK 1 IN A SUBDIVISION OF THAT PART OF THE EAST ¼ OF THE SOUTHWEST ¼ LYING BETWEEN THE SOUTH LINE OF THE CHICAGO AND NORTHWESTERN RAILROAD AND THE NORTH LINE OF THE DUMMY RAILROAD IN SECTION 8, TOWNSHIP 39 NORTH, RANGE 13 EAST OF THE THIRD PRINCIPAL MERIDIAN, IN COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

P.I.N.s: 16-08-305-004-0000

REQUEST: The Petitioner, Housing Forward, seeks text amendments to the Oak Park Zoning Ordinance as follows: (i) an amendment to Article 8 (“Uses”)

to add “Community Service Center” as a special use in the NC-Neighborhood Commercial District, and (ii) an amendment to Section 8.4 (“Principal Use Standards”), Subsection X. Community Service Center standard number 1, to amend the overnight hours for the residential portion of a Community Service Center to be 5:30 pm to 9:00 am instead of 7:00 pm to 6:30 am. The Applicant is also requesting a Special Use permit to allow a Community Service Center at the above referenced property addresses. The Plan Commission may also consider any related and additional relief that may be discovered during the review of these dockets.

A copy of the proposed text amendments and special use application are on file and available for inspection at the Village Hall, Development Customer Services Department, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois 60302, during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

The Plan Commission may continue the hearing to another date without further notice by public announcement at the hearing setting forth the time and place thereof.

ALL INTERESTED PERSONS ARE INVITED TO BE HEARD

OAK PARK PLAN COMMISSION Oak Park, Illinois 60302

NOTICE IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY, ILLNOIS COUNTY DEPARTMENT, PROBATE DIVISION Estate of NANCY MELANSON, Deceased No. 2024P003200 That the Order Admitting Will to Probate and Appointing Representative in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois was granted on July 26, 2024 for the Estate of Nancy Melanson, Deceased and that KRYSTIN MELANSON BURNS was appointed as the Independent Executor and letters of office have issued and states under the penalties of perjury that:

1. Nancy Melanson died April 20, 2024, leaving a will dated February 13, 2013.

2. The approximate value of the estate is Personal: $10,000, Real: $400,000, Annual Income from Real Estate $0.

3. The names and post office addresses of the testator’s heirs and legatees are set forth on Exhibit A made a part of the petition.

4. The testator nominated as executor of the following, qualified and willing to act: Kristin Burns, 1115 Thatcher Ave., River Forest, IL 60305.

5. By order dated July 26, 2024 Kristin Melanson Burns has been appointed Independent Executor and letters of office issued.

6. This ad requests that any unknown heirs make themselves known to the attorney herein.

7. This ad will serve as a notice to creditors that they have 6 months from the date of filing of this petition to submit their claims.

Atty Name: Matt Leuck Attorney for Petitioner 84 E. Burlington, 2W Riverside, IL 60546 708-447-3166

Atty No. 11017

in RB Landmark October 16, 23,

NOTICE Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: G24000553 on October 8, 2024 Under the Assumed Business Name of EPISTLE WEAR with the business located at: 1626 BUCKINGHAM AVE, WESTCHESTER, IL 60154. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: ARLENE JONES, 1626 BUCKINGHAM AVE, WESTCHESTER, IL 60154, USA.

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation or discrimination based on age, race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin, or intention to make any such preferences, limitations or discrimination.

The Illinois Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental or advertising of real estate based on factors in addition to those protected under federal law. This newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity basis. Restrictions or prohibitions of pets do not apply to service animals. To complain of discrimination, call HUD toll free at: 1-800-669-9777.

VILLAGE

Candidates often win without broad support

Negative campaigning is rewarded

Voters only get one choice per position

Vote splitting can defeat the most representative candidates

Majority winners are guaranteed

Positive campaigning is rewarded

Voters have more choice and therefore more voice

Votes can be transferred to candidates who share similar views

Cesar Chavez Frederick Douglass

Cesar Chavez Frederick Douglass

Benito Juárez

Benito Juárez