The four candidates seeking endorsement from the Riverside Community Caucus in the upcoming municipal election took to Riverside Township Hall on Sunday, Oct. 18, for a group forum to speak to the most important issues facing the village.
Caucus chair Tim Daly led the event, in which incumbent trustees Cristin Evans, Alex Gallegos and Jill Mateo and newcomer Sharon Leamy spoke on issues facing the next village board and answered residents’ questions about their governing styles.
Daly asked each candidate to name “the three biggest issues” they think the next village board will face as well as one question personalized to each of them. Then, the candidates were asked to choose one of five questions and given 10 minutes to prepare an answer. Lastly, they answered questions submitted by the attendees and were given 30 minutes to speak directly with them before members of the caucus gathered to discuss the results.
“The one that comes to mind immediately will be the referendum passing for our new village facility. I know it’s a little tough right now — we don’t want to have a higher tax bill — but our facilities have needed a makeover for years and years,” Gallegos said. He named construction of the Groveland flood wall and inspiring more residents to become volunteers as the second and third issues.
Lacking previous experience as a trustee, Leamy spoke broadly about balancing “the needs and the wants of the residents with the needs and the wants of the village,” accounting for all of the different groups in town with the limited existing resources. She named ensuring a healthy business environment and community and strengthening the village’s schools as other top priorities.
Evans said Riverside’s financial security was the village’s top issue, supporting businesses and making land acquisitions to increase development opportunities. She echoed the construction of the flood wall and the related sewer separation project as an important issue, too, as well as supporting public safety staff with the project to rebuild the combined police and fire building.
“I think that light pollution is a serious issue, and I’m proud to be working on an initiative to get the village a designation of an international Dark Skies community,” Evans said. “The village itself is one of the greatest perpetrators of light pollution, as well as some of our larger businesses, so we are going to have to collaborate a lot on some alternative light sources.”
Mateo agreed with the other incumbents on the village board and spoke to her thought process as a trustee.
“The biggest issues have already been discussed by my colleagues here. As a trustee, when I’m voting, I think 50, 70 years down the road. We just celebrated our 150th year of incorporation. The board should be looking toward the next 150 years, so that’s why we’re focused on solving flooding issues, sustainability, the public safety facility,” Mateo said.
She named other issues, like the ongoing process to zone the village’s green spaces and minimizing costs to residents, as ones “that aren’t as big but, to me, are just as important.”
Daly asked Evans to respond to “fiscal skeptics” who worried about the price of the green initiatives she advocated for.
“It goes back to that discussion about balance: balancing what’s best for the community versus what’s best financially, what the village has as far as resources to manage the issues that pop up. It takes a lot of planning; thankfully, we do have an administration that focuses very heavily on long-range planning,” she said.
He asked Mateo to speak to taxpayers’ concerns on the sustainability of rising property tax obligations.
“As Trustee Gallegos said, our facilities have been beyond their useful life. We’ve got questions like, ‘Why not just repair them, renovate them?’ We can’t. That is spending your money after bad ideas. It is time for a new facility,” Mateo said. “If the referendum is passed, then yes, all residents, including us, will have a 20-year tax burden to help pay for that. The way I think, we can’t afford to not do it in terms of future capital expenses.”
Daly asked Gallegos about balancing economic development and commercial expansion with retainingRiverside’s historic atmosphere.
“Cooperation has to be the top priority for all of us. There are business owners who want to invest in our assets in town, but there are policies to have profitability as well,” he said. “I don’t ever want to build higher than, of course, the water tower, but as you move further and further out from that landmark, we can have higher buildings.”
Lastly, he asked Leamy how her professional background as principal of St. Catherine-St. Lucy Catholic School in Oak Park would prove her to be a strong village trustee, as she doesn’t have experience as an elected official.
“The hardest job that I ever had, but by far the most rewarding, was being the principal of an under-resourced school where we had to find ways to be successful without resources, often without parental resources, definitely without financial resources. It was a struggle all the time, and we found ways,” she said. “It took a lot of hard work, a lot of collaboration, a lot of communication and a lot of listening to the community.”
Daly and another Caucus member said the members of the Caucus will have 72 hours in which to vote for the candidates using a ranked-choice voting method, through which a candidate must reach a threshold number of votes based on the number of voters in order to earn an endorsement. Endorsements are expected to be announced by early next week.
A full recording of the forum will be made available on the Riverside Community Caucus’s Facebook page.
