of Oak Park and River Forest
The grey areas in the Black and White of the 7th Congressional District
By BILL DWYER Contributing Reporter
With the announcement that Cong. Danny Davis would retire after his current term, a torrent of Democratic candidates has joined the race to re place
him, competing in a crowded Democratic primary on March 17 that will effectively select the 7th District’s re presentative in this overwhelmingly blue district.
With Davis having held the seat for 30 years this is a once in multiple g enerations opportunity to win a seat in Con-
gress. T he 13 Democratic candidates for the seat re present an array of political views, levels of experience and races. And they seek election in a vast cong ressional district which has seen
By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter
The Oak Park apar tment building engulfed by a massive fire last week had long been on village officials’ radar over a lengthy record of safety code violations, according to county court records.
The fire, one of the biggest seen in the village in recent years, came just months after Oak Park fire inspectors had warned the building owner of serious fire code violations. Legal records related to the village’s inspections of the property paint a picture of blatant safety violations and squalid conditions that fly in the face of Oak Park’s idyllic suburban re putation.
JA ZMIN ROBINSON LA SHAWN FORD
ANABEL MENDOZA KINA COLLINS FELIX TELL
THOMAS FISHER REED SHOWALTER
JASON FRIEDMAN DAVID EHRLICH
ANTHONY DRIVER JR
RICHARD BOYKIN
RORY HOSKINS
MELISSA CONYEARS-ERVIN
In collaboration with Dominican University School of Education
A Conversation with Dr. Eve L. Ewing:
Education, Equity and Justice from Original Sins to Superheroes
Thursday, April 16 at 7 p.m.
Dominican University Lund Auditorium | 7900 Division Street, River Forest
Dr. Ewing is the author of numerous books, most recently the acclaimed Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. A New York Times and USA Today bestseller, Original Sins was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Esquire, Elle and the Chicago Public Library and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. The book explores the American school system’s historic role in reinforcing the idea of White intellectual superiority and upholding the country’s racial hierarchy.
Dr. Ewing also has been involved in several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Black Panther and Ironheart series, and is currently writing Exceptional X-Men. Ironheart, which provides the Chicago backstory of genius inventor Riri Williams following her introduction in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2021), was made into a television series last year by Disney+. She also has published the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919 and wrote the non ction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. Her rst book for young people, Maya and the Robot, was published in 2021. She also co-wrote a young adult graphic novel, Change the Game, with Colin Kaepernick, and a short story, Timebox, with Janelle Monae. No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, a play co-written with Nate Marshall, was presented in 2017 by Chicago performance collective Manual Cinema.
Dr. Sara Rezvi, assistant professor of education at Dominican’s School of Education, will moderate the conversation with Dr. Ewing.
Photo: Jaclyn Rivas
District 90, teachers agree to new tentative contract terms
Agreement must now be rati ed by RFEA membership, D90 board
By GREGG VOSS Contributing Reporter
Months after returning to the bargaining table, River Forest School District 90 and the River Forest Education Association have come to terms on a new tentative four-year teacher contract agreement.
The agreement, struck Friday, must now be ratified by RFEA membership and approved by the District 90 board of education. According to RFEA co-president Cindy Crannell, a paper vote by its membership is likely to take place March 5, adding a simple majority is required to ratify the agreement. From there, the District 90 board of education is required to vote on it.
By mutual ag reement, terms of the new ag reement were not disclosed. However, Crannell said Monday she was confident in bringing it to RFEA’s 145-person membership.
“I’m confident this will pass,” Crannell said. “I feel like it is a really good deal and it’s one of the best contracts in the 10 years I’ve worked here.”
Added District 90 superintendent Dr. Edward Condon, “Reaching the updated ag reement after 10 months of ne gotiation was a welcome milestone. We are hopeful that the new tentative ag reement will receive sufficient votes from the RFEA membership to pass.”
The new tentative agreement was the result of a “sidebar” negotiation session held Thursday with the mediator present. A sidebar negotiation session involves a small group from the full negotiation teams and is used to explore possible compromises ahead of a for mal proposal or response.
Crannell said there were six key areas that still needed to be addressed after the Nov. 10 tentative agreement was voted down in early December by RFEA membership.
“We made improvements in all of those areas,” she said. “That was important for us to do that work at the table with the district. Shifting money around isn’t improvement to the tentative agreement; we had had to put more money in the tentative agreement so it would pass.”
After nearly a year of negotiations, which
River Forest teachers and their suppor ters picket along Lake St reet outside the District 90 o ce on Sept. 30, 2025.
at times created friction within the River Forest community, some teachers may have fielded offers from other nearby districts or may be considering moving. Crannell said there are many reasons to stay.
“Me personally, I really love the people I work with,” she said. “It’s a second family for me. I feel the families in this district really support the teachers. It really took me by surprise how many parents stood up. There were lots of parents and students and they were also surprised by our pay being not really comparable to districts in the area.
“D90 is a smaller district, which I personally like, I love the people I work with, the families are amazing. I do know that the community has our back,” she said.
With a score of 85.36, Lincoln Elementary School earned Exemplary status for the third year in a row according to the Illinois Report Card released last year by the Illinois State Board of Education. Willard Elementary School (86.17) was declared Exemplary for the fourth straight year. Those are schools that rank in the top 10% of the state. The next
67% are considered Commendable, which is what Roosevelt Middle School earned
“In D90 we have worked for many years to ensure that we compensate employees as competitively as possible – especially amongst elementary school districts,” Condon said. “The terms of the new tentative ag reement reflect our continued commitment to compensating our teachers well. At the same time, we strive to provide beneficial working conditions, high-quality professional development, autonomy in decision making, substantial teacher and instructional resources, supportive and experienced administrative leadership, safe and secure school facilities, and critical supports that allow teachers to be their professional best.
“Our teachers also have the opportunity to teach truly amazing students and partner daily with eng aged and supportive families. Though these additional elements should not be conflated with the importance of competitive pay, they are noteworthy and significant.”
WEDNESD AY
of Oak Park and River Forest
Interim Executive Director Max Reinsdorf
Senior Audience Manager Stac y Coleman
Sta Repor ter Brendan He ernan
Viewpoints Editor Ken Trainor
Real Estate Editor Lacey Sikora
Contributing Editor Donna Greene
Columnists Marc Bleso , Nicole Chavas, Jack Crowe, Vincent Gay, Mary Kay O’Grady, John Stanger, Josh VanderBerg Shrubtown Cartoonist Marc Stopeck
Design/Production Manager Andrew Mead
Editorial & Digital Design Lead Javier Govea
Designers Susan McKelvey, Vanessa Garza
Senior Media Strategist Lourdes Nicholls
Marketing & Adver tising Associate Emma Cullnan
Development Manager Mary Ellen Nelligan
Circulation Manager Jill Wagner
Operations Associate Susan Babin
Social Media and Digital Coordinator Maribel Barrera
Special Projects Manager Susan Walker
Chairman Emeritus Robert K. Downs
Senior Advisor Dan Haley
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Chair Eric Weinheimer | Treasurer Nile Wendor f Deb Abrahamson, Mary Cahillane, Steve Edwards, Judy Gre n, Horacio Mendez, Charles Meyerson Darnell Shields, Audra Wilson
TODD BANNOR
Pritzker brings his message directly to students at OPRF
Governor advocates in person for his proposal to ban cellphone use during class time
By BOB SKOLNIK Contributing Reporter
Gov. JB Pritzker came to Oak Park and River Forest High School Friday morning to advocate directly for his proposal to ban cellphone use in school during class time.
“Strong schools are the foundation to our success as a state. This year, I am proposing legislation that requires school districts to adopt a cellphone policy that keeps students focused on the work in class,” Pritzker said during an hour-long event at the school’s west gym that drew about 50 people, including 25 student leaders. “We owe it to our kids to cultivate the healthiest, most productive learning environment possible – this proposal will help us do just that.”
Appearing with the governor were three members of the Illinois General Assembly including State Re p. Camille Lilly, a 1979 graduate of OPRF
Pritzker mentioned the ill effects on young people of excessive reliance on screens and social media.
“There’s real harm being done by social media,” Pritzker said.
OPRFHS currently has a limited, voluntary cellphone policy in affect.
require all school districts and charter schools in Illinois to adopt a policy limiting the use of wireless communication devices on school grounds during the day – from “bell to bell” according to a press release put out by the governor’s office.
The proposal contains four exceptions to the proposed prohibition of cellphone use during class time:
■ When a medical professional determines that the possession or use of a wireless communication device is necessary for the management of a student’s health care
■ When it is necessary to fulfill an Individualized Education Plan or 504 plan,
■ When necessary for students who are English learners to access learning materials, participate in class, or otherwise facilitate communication
“Even at lunch my friends always hold each other accountable and we try not to be on our phone around each other.”
ISABELLA CROWE OPRF student
Pritzker initially proposed a cellphone ban in schools last year but the General Assembly didn’t vote on the measure and decided to hold of f and refine the bill to address concerns that some voiced. Some parents like being able to contact their children in school at any time by text message and some worried that students need their phones in case of an emergency.
The latest proposed legislation would
■ When a student is a caregiver and is routinely responsible for the care and wellbeing of a family member.
Pritzker said that 25 other states have already enacted bans on using cellphones in schools
Pritzker came to OPRF in part because OPRF has a general practice in which students are supposed to put their cellphones in a pouch, called a cellphone home, that is typically hung on a classroom door for the duration of a class period.
Martin Torres, Pritzker’s Deputy Gover nor for Education, is the father of a current OPRF student and was aware of OPRF’s cellphone policy and helped arrange the visit. The use of the cellphone home at OPRF came out of a faculty committee that was for med at OPRF a few years ago. For mer
OPRF history teacher Dan Wolman was a driving force on that committee
OPRF Superintendent Greg Johnson,
Governor JB Pr itzker speaks at the press conference at OPRF High School on Feb. 20.
Principal Lynda Parker and English teacher Raquel Mcgee as well as Lilly and the other two members of the General Assembly also spoke at the event.
Parker said that OPRF’s cellphone policy is intended to prevent students from being districted by their phones in class and also to preserve face-to-face interaction among students.
“Our teacher committee believed we owed it to students to do all that we could to foster and preserve that human element in the classroom – a return to a daily experience marked by authentic person-to-person exchanges,” Parker said. “And recognition that, every time a student reaches for or glances at the phone, that human element suffers.”
Mcgee said that she has noticed a clear improvement in student engagement in class since OPRF began using the cellphone homes
OPRF junior Isabella Crowe said that she likes the cellphone homes but noted that some teachers are stricter about requiring that students give up their phones in class than others.
“I find it’s very helpful if teachers are enforcing it because it becomes second nature to just put in the phone home regardless of the day or if the teacher is lighter on it,” Crowe said after the event. “Some teachers are less prone to enforcing the rule than others which I think then becomes the problem
of cellphones in class but when enforced and when the teacher has made it very clear that that is an expectation as part of the classroom it works perfectly.”
Crowe said that most teachers enforce the rule but some are less strict about it.
She said that she doesn’t find it hard to be without her phone during class time, especially now as a junior when she is taking more difficult classes
“You don’t find it hard to be without [your phone]; it’s so busy in the classroom,” Crowe said. “Often the only times we’re prompted to use our phone is for schoolwork, whether using our calculator or Google Classroom on our phone to upload work but it’s not hard to be without it. We have it in passing periods and lunchtime.”
Crowe said that even during lunch she and her friends try to focus on face to face interaction instead of staring at their phones
“Even at lunch my friends always hold each other accountable and we try not to be on our phone around each other,” Crowe said.
State Rep. Michelle Mussman, (D-56th District) the chairwoman of the House Education Policy Committee, said that research indicates that students are less safe in emergencies if they are on their phones instead of listening to instructions.
Mussman also noted the irony that she was reading her remarks on her own cellphone.
TODD BANNOR
GCM donates publicatio to nonpro t news group
NEWSWELL, a liated with Arizona State U, has assumed leadership of Wednesday Journal, Austin Weekly News Forest Park Review and Riverside-Brook eld Landmark; goal is nancial stability
By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter
For the first time in the newspapers’ long histories, Wednesday Journal, Austin Weekly News, Riverside-Brookfield Landmark and Forest Park Review will have out-of-state owners.
The papers, run as nonprofit publications under the Growing Community Media umbrella since 2020, are now part of nonprofit journalism group NEWSWELL’s portfolio of publications. The GCM papers are the organization’s first titles outside of the state of California and the only re gular weekly print publications included among the group’s portfolio.
No immediate changes for the papers are anticipated.
GCM will dissolve as an entity following a transition period, with the organization donating its publications to NEWSWELL. All of GCM’s employees are being of fered employment by NEWSWELL, including Executive Director Max Reinsdorf, who until now carried an interim title, and longtime Editor Dan Haley.
The move comes amid longstanding financial issues for GCM, with the organization terminating its lease last summer for the Oak Park office space that staffers had occupied since the 1980s.
This deal re presents the clearest path to financial sustainability for the papers in recent memory, Reinsdorf said in an interview.
“Our struggles showed that we didn’t necessarily have a guaranteed path to continued news coverage for the decades to come, and that was a realization that the GCM board had over the summer,” said Reinsdorf. “We have a path towards standing the test of time with NEWSWELL, and it puts us in a position to be stronger and more resilient than we were before.”
Founded in 2024, NEWSWELL is a nonprofit af filiated with Arizona State Uni versity (ASU) that provides centralize support to bolster local publications areas including le g al support, b strat eg y, audience development, mar ing and human resources administration. Re porting and editing remains local. help is desperately needed for the four pa pers, Reinsdorf said.
“Donating these assets to NEWSWEL allows us to g et the expertise and the sources that GCM had been seeking that had been out of reach for us,” he said. “From a financial perspective, there’s revenue upside and there’s also savings to be had by NEWSWELL taking over the backend functions.”
“It allows me to see a much stronger financial picture for us.”
T he group’s other publications include Stocktonia covering Stockton, CA, Times of San Diego covering San Diego County and Santa Barbara News-Press, the onetime bankrupt paper of record for the oceanside city that NEWSWELL recently helped resur rect as a digital publication.
T he group has ambitions to expand to wherever local news needs support, said NEWSWELL’s Executive Director Nicole Carroll. T he GCM newspapers fit exactly what the group was looking for, Carroll said.
“I’m really impressed with the four news titles, all of them make a difference in their communities, all of them are the source of truth for their communities, they’ re all respected,” she said. “That’s really important for NEWSWELL; when we partner with someone … it’s important that they do solid journalism, that they’re of their communities and that they’re respected by those communities. The four titles check all those boxes.”
Carroll also works as a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s famed
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and previously served as top editor for the Arizona Re public and editor-in-chief of USA Today. She said that bringing the GCM papers into the NEWSWELL portfolio also makes sense as another link between Chicago and Arizona, alongside Cubs and White Sox spring training, Portillo’s and Lou Malnati’s franchise locations and Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.
“There’s a well-worn path from Chicago to Phoenix,” she said.
NEWSWELL’s mission comes in response to the widespread closures of local news outlets and the dramatic reduction of journalism jobs seen across the country over the last 20 years. Hyper local outlets, like the four GCM papers, are worth protecting, Carroll said.
“We want to go where we’re needed, wanted and can make a difference,” Carroll said.
T he papers’ newsg athering and editorial processes will remain unchanged, except for some additional support on investigative projects that NEWSWELL will provide, said Haley, who was a founder of Wednesday Journal in his mid-20s NEWSWELL offers journalism support to its network, including investigative editing and le g al support for public records requests and pre-publication review.
“The goal we have had since the very start was to create intensely local, authentic, inde pendent journalism,” Haley said. “This step is a big ste p, but it’s in my mind an extension of everything we’ve done up until now. This is another variation on the goal of creating an inde pendent viable local news model, and I’m really excited about what this of fers us.
“We’ve found an entity that’s as focused on legit local news as we are.”
T he papers will continue on their re gular print schedules for the foreseeable future, Haley and Reinsdorf said.
While the NEWSWELL donation will buy the papers more room to breathe, the deal doesn’t re present an immediate exit from choppy financial waters, Reinsdorf said. T he operations of the papers will still largely be paid for through local fundraising and subscription and advertising revenue.
True financial sustainability for the papers will almost certainly involve a more for malized reader membership progr am, Reinsdorf said.
“It is not a money cannon; we’re still responsible for fundraising at a similar level,” he said. “One of the first major goals will be to launch a membership program. We need a reader revenue model to generate new income and to reinvest in our newsroom.”
No fat on the bone at Carnivore
Local
butcher reaches out to the community for nancial
help to cover costs
By RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR Eats Reporter
Carnivore, Oak Park’s farm-to-table butcher shop, is looking to its fans for help.
On Feb. 15, Carnivore, located at 1042 Pleasant St., posted on social media that business has been hit with a 66% decline in the past year and a half. They are restructuring their offerings and hours and reaching out to the community for help getting back on solid footing via a GoFundMe campaign.
Then came the after math.
“After everything reopened in August of 2022, meat prices doubled,” Erik Williams, owner of Carnivore, said. “And they’ve almost doubled again.”
Managing in a volatile food market hasn’t been easy
“We’ve certainly made some mistakes,” Williams said. “Our margin for error is very thin. And so anytime that we screw anything up, it hurts. We had a bunch of maintenance last year that hurt us a lot.”
When the butch shop opened 12 years ago. the concept of farm to local butcher to table was, not new, but had a virtuous appeal. The COVID pandemic actually boosted the business too. Everyone was staying at home, cooking. No vacations or outings were sapping away extra income.
Rob Poe, who worked at Carnivore on and off over the years, has returned to help. According to Poe, staff turnover is another thing that has hurt business
“Customer service has faltered a little bit,” Poe said. “Special orders weren’t necessarily filled on time. We’re getting back to where the most important thing is the customer and high level of service with pinpoint accuracy.”
He said that what customers want to buy has changed. More ready-to-cook meals and being able to provide ingredients in store for a full meal is important moving forward.
The goal of the GoFundMe campaign is to raise $45,000.
“About half of it goes to our vendors,” Poe said. “We’ re late with several vendors and there’s a huge list of deferred maintenance.”
“I’m a little weird about the free money thing,” Williams said. “That makes me really, really, uncomfortable. None of us are here for free money. We’re here to work.”
That being, said there are realities that
must be faced, according to both Poe and Williams.
“We have a ton of regulars who are in here every week, every month,” Williams said. “Those people are our bread and butter and I’m so grateful, but I’d also like to hear what we’ve done wrong from outside eyes – what people are looking for, what they’re not looking. Our community building has been such a huge part of it. And I just would love to hear from them.”
Oak Park Avenue restaurants already feeling construction impact
Hemingway District, particularly restaurants, bears the brunt of ‘Renew the Avenue’
By RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR Eats Reporter
Renew the Avenue, the 10-month-long Oak Park Avenue reconstruction and beautification project has only just begun, but it is already affecting storeowners in the area, particularly restaurants.
The blocks immediately north and south of the Green Line were supposed to remain open during the first phase. However, on Feb. 16 they were closed as workers removed trees
“This morning, I come in and there’s no parking in
front of our entire area,” Mayra Fer nandez of Café Cubano said. “I try parking on North Boulevard. Well, that whole site is also blocked. Don’t even try going west because my alley is being torn up completely too. How are people going to get to me? I don’t know.”
This particular closure was temporary, but it’s a taste of what’s to come over the rest of this year.
The village has extended 90 minutes of free parking in the Avenue Garage parking structure at 720 North Boulevard for the duration of the construction.
“I lost two customers already this morning because it’s too far to walk,” Karim Benyaich, owner of Grape Leaves, said. “This is the beginning. Everybody’s scared.”
The village has offered a matching grant opportunity to upgrade business’ exteriors, interiors and to help ease the situation.
See CONSTRUCTION on pa ge 10
RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR
Carnivore owner Erik Williams
Oak Park home sells for $1,935,00
The following property transfers were re ported by the Cook County Clerk from November 2025. Where addresses appear incomplete, for instance where a unit number appears missing, that information was not provided by the
Developer delays Arcade project till March
Two Historic Preser vation commissioners resigned after village board overruled group’s decision on the development
By LACEY SIKORA & BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Real Estate Reporter & Staff Reporter
Just days before the Oak Park Plan Commission was to consider a developer’s controversial proposal for a high-rise apar tment building near a historic site, the hearing was pushed to next month.
The proposed 10-story, 24-unit apar tment building is adjacent to the historic Boulevard Arcade Building on South Blvd. The developer’s representative, John Schiess, asked the village to move the item from a Feb. 19 Plan Commission agenda until a March 12 meeting.
Because the proposed building abuts the Boulevard Arcade Building, the owner, under guidance of Schiess, its architect, sought a Certificate of Appropriateness from the village’s Historic Preservation Commission during several appearances before that group over multiple years. The preservation commission denied the COA four times in total,
while some residents in the area have been vocal in their opposition to the development.
In November 2025, Oak Park’s village board heard the owner’s appeal and issued a COA for the building, overruling the Historic Preservation Commission citing a need for more housing in the village.
Before overruling the commission’s denial, several trustees said that the village needed to work on its hearing process to avoid a repeated waste of both developer and commissioner time in the future.
“The fact that this has gone through four hearings and still needs to go through even more, I don’t know why they even want to build anything here,” Trustee Cory Wesely said at the meeting. “That’s a problem that we at this board need to fix. We can’t have people waiting a year before they know if they can actually build something. I think that’s going to cost us development that we could otherwise use.”
The project was then directed to the Plan
Commission for review.
The village board’s decision caused two members of the Historic Preservation Commission to resign, including then-commission chair Louis Garapolo. In his resignation letter, Garapolo wrote that the board’s ruling on the project made it impossible for him to continue serving on the commission.
“In my opinion, this disregard for the required process has undermined the Commission’s work and the integrity of Oak Park’s Preservation ordinance,” he wrote in the letter, obtained by Wednesday Journal through FOIA request. “Because of this recent Board decision regarding 1035 South Blvd, I find it difficult to continue on the Commission and proceed with a positive attitude.”
For mer commissioner Mark Weiner also resigned following the board’s ruling “I served on the Historic Preservation Commission and Architectural Review Committee for 2 1/2 years,” Weiner wrote. “In that time, I learned the board and president do not
appreciate or understand historic preservation, even though a large basis of Oak Park’s economic model involves historic tourism.”
The Historic Preservation liaison role for the village has been in flux during the HPC’s meetings concerning the 1035 South Blvd. process. Susie Trexler, the Urban Planner in Historic Preservation for Oak Park, left her position after more than five years in July 2024. The role was then filled by Atefa Ghaznawi, who worked as the Historic Preservation liaison from September 2024 until August 2025. In October 2025, urban planner Brenton Boitse was hired for the position.
The plan commission will consider the application of Sachem Building LLC and its principal J. Trent Stoner for the project at 1035 South Blvd next month.
The application, including renderings can be seen here.
The owners are requesting relief from zoning ordinances regarding building height, off-street parking and unit density
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Tommy Schaefer, convicted in Bali of Sheila Mack murder, released from prison
Being depor ted to U.S., likely to face arrest here
By BILL DWYER
Courtesy of Chronicle Media
Tommy Schaefer, the for mer Oak Park resident who was convicted by an Indonesian court in April 2015 of the murder of for mer Oak Park resident Sheila Mack, was released from Kerobokan prison on the island of Bali a week ago and is in the process of being deported to the United States.
Jour nalist Andrea Dixon, who has been reporting on the Mack case for years in preparation for a book on the murder, filed a story in The Sun newspaper and confirmed to the Chronicle that Schaefer has been released “Tommy was released today,” Hudi Ismono, the head of Kerobokan Prison told Dixon. “He was sentenced to 18 years and received a sentence cut of 75 months and 120 days.”
Ismono said Schaefer was handed over to Indonesian immigration for deportation.
Schaefer, now 32, reportedly put on a happy face to a reporter as he left the prison, saying, “I’m feeling good and I’m happy. I can enjoy life. God is good.”
However, there will be little to enjoy for Schaefer upon his return to the United
CONSTRUCTION
Hard on businesses
from page 6
“They give us money, grant money for fixed signs or whatever,” George Konstantos, owner of George’s Family Restaurant, said. “Right now, we need money to pay the rent, the expenses, the employees.”
“We have this challenge in front of us, which will be challenging for all businesses at this point,” Frank Russo, co-owner of Il Vicolo, said.
Il Vicolo and other restaurants are planning to offer specials to help motivate customers to persevere through the difficulties.
“The dining alone in the Hemingway District is so important and impactful for Oak Park,” Moses Valdez, president of the
States. Like his for mer girlfriend and purported co-conspirator Heather Mack before him, Schaefer can expect to be arrested by federal authorities after he steps off his plane at O’Hare Airport in the next day or two. He will most likely be held at the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center
Dixon said a source told her that Schaefer was “terrified” at being released from the Bali prison, where’s he’s spent the past 11 1/2 years.
“He’s known since the end of last year that he was going to be leaving,” Dixon said. “But it happened really suddenly. He was really scared about leaving.”
Chronicle Media reported in July 2023 that Schaefer “could be released from Indonesian custody and return to the United States as early as spring of 2026. Australian journalist Dave Smith noted on the news.com website, in June 2023, “Schaefer has already had four years and two months shaved off his sentence and was set to receive another six-month reduction that August. With effectively 18 months off his sentence annually, Schaefer can expect release as early as April of 2026, and possibly earlier.”
Hemingway District Business Association, said “We have such a variety Flavors are from around the world with Moroccan, Italian, Mexican, Brazilian. We have now Seoul Avenue, Korean.”
The business association has ke pt in touch with the village as the plans were made for the reconstruction.
“We try to figure out how can we solve problems as opposed to just complaining,” Valdez said. “We do encourage people to follow our social media and then they can see anything that we’re going to be doing through the year. They have to fix these old pipes that are over 100 years old. We have to constantly keep looking at the silver lining and how can we work together as a community.”
Delivery is one way to mitigate the loss of business, but that has it’s issues too.
“A large part of our business switched to pickup and delivery during COVID, and
Tommy Schaefer, 32, as he walked out of the Indonesian pr ison yesterday, where he has spent the last 11-plus years. He is currently in the process of being deported to the United States.
The Indonesian gover nment routinely issues annual sentence “remissions” to most prisoners for good behavior. They usually are granted on Indonesian Independence Day in August. Additional remissions can be granted on other significant days, such as the end of the observance of Ramadan. Mack was arrested by the FBI on November 3, 2021, as she stepped off the jet bridge at O’Hare Airport upon her return from Bali. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison in January 2025 and is currently being incarcerated at the Hazelton Correctional facility in West Virginia
In the translated wording of the Indone-
that’s where we have a big base of our customers now,” Ric Gruber, CEO of Billy Bricks Restaurant Group, said. “The additional challenge for us is that you’ re adding 5-10 minutes of driving around. That makes our times to deliver longer, which makes people unhappy.”
Stress is hitting all businesses in the path of the reconstruction along Oak Park Avenue. This is on top of winter’s typical slowing of foot traffic, ICE raids that ke pt some customers from venturing out and overall inflation pressures
“I used to pay somewhere around $4 for just about all our meat,” Fernandez said. “We have up to the $9 and $10 now. I had to take a few things out of the menu.”
“The cost of operating is up over 30%,” Gruber said. “The ban on disposables, like we’ve upgraded all of our stuf f to be ecofriendly. We don’t have an issue with that. But it is a part of reality where, people
sian judges, Schaefer received an 18 year sentence for “deliberatively and with premeditation, taking the life of another person. … Sheila Ann Von Weise.”
The Bali court found Heather Mack guilty of “deliberatively providing assistance, at the time the crime was committed, to Tommy Schaefer” during the killing of her mother
A daunting array of texts and other evidence recovered by federal investigators strongly indicates Schaefer was a willing participant in the conspiracy, took the lead role in the killing, and relished the prospect of a rich payoff for killing von Wiese.
used to use Styrofoam that cost next to nothing. Now we have these expensive togo containers and we feel that pressure. We know everybody’s living in the same world right now where we all feel squee zed.”
“It’s like lots of whammies, one after the other,” Fernandez said. “We’ re just going to have to buckle up and hope for the best.”
“We are very excited. about the outcome of it,” Valdez said. “We know that once the beautification happens, once everything is done, we know it will bring more value to us and people will be excited to see the new street, to see the new lights, the new road, but during the construction we all have to pull together and suppo rt each other.”
One and all, the owners asked the same thing.
“Please support us as much as you can,” Konstantos said. “Not only me, all the businesses. Everybody needs help: the bookstore, the flower shop.”
COURTESY
Adduci, in annual address, says communication is improving
River Forest president cites safety, sustainability and communication of focus points
By ROBERT J. LIFKA Contributing Reporter
River Forest Village President Cathy Adduci credited residents for helping keep the village strong and moving forward in her annual State ofthe Village address at the Feb. 23 village board meeting.
“One ofthe things that makes River Forest so special is that people show up,” she said. “You care about your neighbors, your streets, your schools and the future ofthe community.”
She also thanked village officials and “our wonderful staff” for their contributions
“We work very hard around this table,” she said.
A short-handed village board was present to hear Adduci’s address with Trustees Katie Brennan and Bob O’Connell missing.
Trustees Lisa Gillis, Megan Keskitalo and Respicio Vazquez, who were in attendance, were generally supportive ofAdduci’s assessment.
“I thought it was a great summary,” Vazquez said ofthe presentation. “I think she did a great job.”
As to the state ofthe village in 2026, he and Gillis noted enhanced communication.
“Communication on projects has improved,” he said.
“Outreach keeps getting better and better,” she added.
Keskitalo echoed gratitude for village residents and staf f.
“I’m incredibly proud ofthe way our community eng ages with village leadership,” she said. “I am deeply grateful ofour small staf f.”
Village Clerk Rosa Castellano also sees improvement.
“We’ re moving forward and we’re mak-
the village continued its Casual Conversations with the President program and saw 547 service requests submitted online to the service request platform in its first full year
In addition to operating again with a balanced budget, village officials have supplemented revenues with grant funding from multiple sources, including $3 million from the state of Illinois and $1 million from the federal gover nment for improvements to water mains and other projects.
Adduci also noted the addition oftwo new events in 2025 – a “business bash” following the 100th Memorial Day parade and a barbecue and bingo event for senior citizens.
Trustee Erika Bachner expressed disappointment that the annual Inclusion and Pride Walk were not mentioned.
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ing progress,” she said. “That’s what we should do.”
Among the village’s accomplishments, Adduci cited public safety; sustainability; transparency and engagement; and fiscal responsibility.
Regarding public safety, she noted the promotion of James Greenwood to police chief, replacing retiring Jim O’Shea, and related advancements in command staff. She also cited ongoing programs for residents, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation classes that more than 100 residents completed and the continuation ofthe quarterly public safety meetings.
Heading the list ofsustainability accomplishments is receiving the EV Ready Gold designation from the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. River Forest is one of four municipalities in Illinois to receive the designation and the smallest of the four
Regarding transparency and engagement,
“It may have been an oversight but I want to include the wonderful celebration ofthe River Forest Inclusion and Pride Walk that the village sponsors every year,” she said. “We got more than 500 participants last year and it became so big that the walk had to be moved to Keystone Park.”
Adduci was quick to apologize.
“Thank you for reminding me about that,” she said. “I apologize for the omission and think it’s a great event.”
Adduci summarized her address by saying she is “excited” about the village’s future.
“We remain committed to upholding our guiding principles while planning for the future through initiatives I have summarized as we move forward in 2026,” Adduci said.
“I am proud ofour professional staff and elected leaders for our joint commitment to continually strengthening the community .
“Through continued collaboration, engagement and focus on our shared values, I know that River Forest’s best days are ahead ofus.”
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Cathy Adduci
Olympics, then calls it a career
OPRF alum announces retirement from speedskating
By MELVIN TATE Contributing Reporter
Emery Lehman started speedskating at a young age and has enjoyed a highly successful career in the sport. While it is rare for an athlete to end his or her career at their peak, that is exactly what Lehman is doing.
COURTESY OF NOEL STAV E
Oak Park native Emer y Lehman (right) with Ethan Cepuran (le ) and Casey Dawson follow ing the men’s team pursuit speedskating nal at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Feb. 17. Team USA earned silver in the event.
Lehman, a 2014 graduate of Oak Park and River Forest High School, announced on Feb. 19 that he is retiring from speedskating. This comes after he ear ned a silver medal as part of Team USA men’s pursuit unit at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, Feb. 17. Lehman teamed up with Ethan Cepuran – a Glenbard West alum – and Casey Dawson to get the silver in a time of 3:43.71, 4.51 seconds behind gold medalist Italy. It’s
the second medal in as many Olympics for Lehman, who won a bronze with the men’s team pursuit in 2022 at Beijing.
“We came into the competition and definitely had our hopes set on gold,” Lehman said, “but to come away with silver when we were having an ‘off ’ day still makes me really proud of the team. We definitely didn’t skate our best, and Italy skated very well and was just better than us. We are still so thankful for the silver medal and over the moon about adding to our Olympic medal collection.”
Lehman also skated in the 1500-meter race, Feb. 19, and finished 25th in a time of 1:47.23.
“The 1500 was also a tough race, I think it was a reflection of how I just haven’t been skating as well as I had all season,” he said. “I am still happy I went out there and skated my heart out, but the time wasn’t very good unfortunately.”
Overall, Lehman was pleased with the Milan experience and appreciated the
Continued
pa ge 13
Big Brother is watching: ‘1984’ sets the scene for rebellion
OPRF mounts Orwell play in Little Theatre this w
By SAMIYA WEATHERSBY OPRF/Trapeze reporter
Big Brother is always watching, and soon, he’ll be watching the stage at Oak Park and River Forest High School. Adapted from George Orwell’s dystopian novel by Robert Owens, Wilton E. Hall Jr. and William A. Miles Jr. , the play “1984” follows Winston Smith, a man living under a totalitarian government where free thought is forbidden, truth is constantly rewritten and surveillance is the way of life. Through stark imagery and unsettling themes, the play explores what happens when individuality is crushed by power, giving audiences space to confront how much control is too much. “The show isn’t telling the audience what to think,” said Ajani Dosunnmu, who plays Winston.
themes are not meant to be tied to a single time period. Bell aims to share with audiences a production they can sit with and think about later, giving the story’s meaning space to unfold on a personal level after they leave the theater.
A Wednesday Journal partner
Actors involved in the production described the challenge of po acters who live under constant ps cal pressure. Sophomore who plays the role of Julia, said that rebellion in “1984” often appears in subtle ways, explaining that “everything she does is rebellion,” even small actions that might seem insignificant.
The play will take place in the high school’s Little Theater Feb. 26 and 28 at 7 p.m. and Feb. 28 at 3 p.m. Tickets are available through the OPRF website.
Director James Bell, an OPRF English teacher, emphasized that his goal with “1984” is not to spell out a message for the audience, but to let them form their own interpretations. “I wanted to present the story,” Bell explained, rather than push a specific viewpoint. He noted that the play’s
Continued from page 12
chance to compete in front of many of his family members and friends. This was his fourth Olympic appearanc e, and he c alled it “one of a kind, unli ke any other Olympics. ”
Following the 1500, L ehman decided to hang up his skates and c all it a career. While he’s still healthy and highly c om-
Junior Teddy Nielsen, who has the role of O’Brien, emphasized that much of the storytelling happens without dialo gue, noting that emotion is communicated through “your face, your tempo…” That proves to be a challenge as well, considering Big Brother is always watching.
Several cast members also spoke about the difficulty of fully stepping into characters whose thoughts aren’t really their own. Despite the heaviness of the material, actors and crew described the rehearsal process as collaborative and rewarding, with many expressing excitement about bringing such a complex and unsettling story to the stage.
p etitive, he wanted to end his career in that fo rm
“I have had such a long journey so my decision to retire is based on the fact that I’m just getting older and I think it’s time,” Lehman said. “My times are getting faster but so is the rest of the world so it’s a good time to call it. I’ve been so for tunate with injuries and success so I’m happy to be able to end it on my ter ms.”
“It’s an interesting challenge to be able to portray characters whose ideas and opinions are so different from ours,” said sophomore Anna Kunkle, who plays Parsons, a supporter of the authoritarian regime. “You have to put aside your personal beliefs and preferences and understand the character’s importance in the story so that you can convey their feelings.”
As the cast continues to navigate the emotional and psychological weight of 1984, the rehearsal room has become a space for exploration, trust and restraint. By focusing on small choices and unspoken emotion, the actors create a depth to a story where silence can be as powerful as speech.
One moment that stood out in rehearsal
Unli ke some athletes who announc e their retirement, only to return to c omp etition not long afterwards, L ehman said he’s not planning any comeback.
“I have seen p eople t ry and do it,” sai d L ehman, “and it ’s ve ry hard to do and not something that i nterests me. I’ve d one so much and have had a lot of difficult things to overcome wh i le training, so to take time of f and t ry and tackle all that
was the cast’s re peated focus on controlled movement and silence. Actors were asked to redo scenes, not because of missed lines but because a gesture was too large or an expression lingered too long. In one scene, performers practiced standing completely still while maintaining eye contact, reinforcing the idea that even hesitation or discomfort can communicate rebellion or fear. These deliberate choices reflected the production’s emphasis on restraint and subtlety, mirroring constant surveillance and psychological pressure seen in 1984. Rather than delivering a single message, OPRF’s “1984” aims to give audiences a carefully crafted experience shaped by collaboration and intention and designed to linger well beyond the final scene.
again would be dif ficult. ” T he Olympics bring to a close a career that started for L ehman when he was eight years old. As the next chapter of his l ife begins, he looks back on speedskating with warm memories and no regrets
“I am happy with how everything went and can look back fondly on the good and bad times I’ve had,” Lehman said.
SAMIYA WEATHERSBY
Ajani Dosunnmu (le ) and Vivian Porrez (r ight) rehearse ‘1984’
APARTMENT FIRE
from page 1
First responders from the Oak Park Fire De partment and other neighboring departments responded to a structure fire at 1239 N. Taylor Ave. at approximately 8:57 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 17, battling the flames through the night for 10 hours straight, with firefighters remaining on scene the following day to manage “spot fires” that continued to burn on the property. No firefighters were injured during the response, which required 4 million gallons of water, according to a Feb. 20 court filing from village attorneys.
The building was unoccupied at the time of the fire.
The central stairway, the third floor and the roof of the building were completely destroyed in the fire, leaving the building vulnerable to collapse, according to that court filing. Oak Park is pursuing an emergency injunction in Cook County housing court for demolition of the structure, village officials said.
The multi-story mixed-use apartment building had 26 residential units and seven spaces designed for commercial tenants, according to court records. OPFD is leading an investigation into the cause of the fire with assistance from Office of the State Fire Marshal, village officials said.
The investigation is ongoing, officials said.
The village has been in court with the building’s owner for much of the last two years after village inspections uncovered a variety of health and safety issues, according to county court records.
“Village staff documented deteriorating building conditions through its Code Compliance, Fire, Health, and other inspection functions from 2023 onward,” Oak Park officials said in a statement. “The village followed a process of progressive enforcement through ticketing and local adjudication. As it became clear that the property owner was not improving the building in response to ticketing, the village began working through the Circuit Court systems to compel the owner to improve the property. Additionally, in the Circuit Court, the village asked for and received an administrative search warrant, limited nuisance abatement authority and appointment of a receiver.”
“The village cannot speculate on any other legal action related to the fire until the investigation is complete,” said the statement.
In a May 2, 2025 safety inspection at the property, Oak Park fire inspector Mark Thompson noted several fire code violations including exposed wiring, a lack of functional fire alarms or any working fire extinguishers, an unsecured gas line, an unmaintained boiler past its legal inspection date and a busted water main in the building’s basement.
Village building inspector Zach Meadows noted a number of additional property standards violations at that time, including a rotting wooden staircase on the backside of the building and a broken door on the ground level that had reportedly given squatters free access to the property, according to legal records.
Shortly after those inspections, the village filed a lawsuit against building owner Sameer Chhabria, a civil litigation attorney with offices in Downtown Chicago and in north suburban Riverwoods. In a June filing, village attorneys submitted
the building was mostly being occupied by people without signed leases, according to the legal filing.
“Over the past 20 years I have seen the building decline and it is currently in a state of disre pair,” the resident said. “I do not feel safe in my residential apartment.”
Chhabria told Wednesday Journal in a brief interview this week that the persistent issues with squatters were responsible for the property’s downward spiral. He couldn’t say when those issues had started but said that the squatters’ presence had kept tradespeople from completing needed work on the property, as some contractors refused to work on the building because of it, he said.
Some of the violations found in those inspections remained in place through several months of village litigation, according to legal records. The village of Oak Park obtained a court order in September granting permission for village contractors to make repairs to the property, including installing new fire extinguishers and smoke alar ms.
A November fire inspection showed even more worrying issues at the property, including a broken pipe where “wastewater was flowing freely” from the ceiling in the basement just outside the boiler room. The inspection also found open electric boxes throughout the building, stairwells and exit ways blocked with piles of abandoned furniture and “daisy chained” extension cords running from unit to unit powering rooms.
Chhabria owes at least $40,000 in village fines in connection with code violations at the property, according to a February filing by Oak Park attorneys.
Squatters remained in the building until Oak Park police and other village officials removed them from the property in “the first week of February,” Chhabria said. The last legal
the building. Repair crews had been on site the day of the fire, he said.
He blamed the issues at the property on poor management by the people he’d hired but again couldn’t specify a time when that began to tur n for the worse.
“It got out of hand,” he said.
Chhabria said that SC Real Estate LLC, the business entity through which he owns 1239 N. Taylor Ave, does not own any other properties in Oak Park, but he declined to say if he’s involved with any other properties in the village outside of that entity. He’s owned the building since 2011.
The suit Oak Park filed against Chhabria last summer was not the first time that village officials had taken him to cour t over issues at the property. In August 2024, Oak Park sued him with court filings describing years of mounting violations
A December 2022 village inspection had found dozens of violations, including a lack of any functional fire extinguishers. A year later, Oak Park officials were at the property again following reports that raw sewage was “ejecting” from the building and onto the sidewalk, according to legal records.
Village officials also observed posted notices at that time showing that the building was close to having natural gas service shut of f, at which point the village would’ve had the building declared unfit for residence, according to court records. Between 2021 and 2024, water service at the building had been suspended eight times over nonpayment, according to a village filing.
That suit also alle ged that Chhabria hadn’t had a valid Oak Park residential rental license since 2019. The case was ultimately dismissed in October 2024, according to county court records.
COURTESY
Spring Performing Guide Arts 2026
This concert will take you on a musical journey through American traditions and the music that reflects the richness of 250 years of our country and its people. Wonderful and surprising arrangements of America the Beautiful by Frank La Rocco and the Star Spangled Banner by Paul Laprade, a premiere of Lacrimosa by Paul Carey, the well-known Alleluia by Randall Thompson, and an exciting Alleluia by Jake Runestad. The program will cover a variety of music genres representing our history from the Civil War to the present as we celebrate America’s 250th birthday. Please join us on this musical journey through American history.
April 19 • 4pm Trombone Treat (music of Schubert, Higgins and Bernstein)
June 14 • 4pm Superb Stars (music of Suk, Bruch and Groesch)
Concordia University Chapel, River Forest
March 15 • 3pm Chamber Conversations (music of Handel, Mauldin, Mozart and Bach)
April 26 • 3pm Chamber Stars (music of Beethoven, Ravel, Haydn, Brahms and Bartok)
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 611 Randolph, Oak Park
Tickets at SymphonyOPRF.org; students through college admitted free of charge. TheSymphonyOPRF@gmail.com • 708-218-2648 SymphonyOPRF.org
AND THE MAN
APRIL 24-MAY 10
MADISON STREET THEATER
DISH ABOUT A DISH
O’Sullivan’s patty melt is a spe cial sandwich
When a grilled cheese and a hamburger fall in love
By RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR Eats Reporter
For diner Nora Rowley the question of her favorite meal in Forest Park required no lengthy pondering. It’s the patty melt at O’Sullivan’s Public House, 7244 Madison St.
“The bread is perfect and somehow they figured out the exact amount to grill it on both sides,” Rowley said. “When I ask for it medium rare, I actually get it. That’s not easy to do on a grilled sandwich.”
The rye bread comes from Turano Bakery. The beef and cheese are top-notch, according to O’Sullivan’s general manager Anthony Crawford.
More than 30 years ago Jerry Sullivan opened the ancestor bar that bore the same name a few miles east, near the corner of Grand and Milwaukee Avenues in Chicago. The locati on became Emmit’s Pub (R.I.P.) when three of Sullivan’s ne phew s, Matt, Paul and Dan, opened their version of O’Sullivan’s where the Beacon Pub stand today in Forest Park.
“It ’s a true half p ound patty. It ’s a classi c take on a really simple sandwich,” Crawford said. “It’s the b est of b oth wo rl ds. It ’s li ke a burg er and a g rilled cheese had a baby. A burg er may only have one slice of cheese, whereas our patty melt has three, as well as the caramelized, g rilled onions It really boils down to q uality and c onsistency. ”
After a 10-year r un, f ast forward to when Matt Sullivan partnered with Jim and Dan Watts to recreate the magic in the current building. It’s in the for mer location of T he Park Louge with Lee Choi Restaurant inside. Doors opened here on April 5, 2003.
A Sullivan still works the bar, Sally Sullivan. She is the niece of the originator and sister to the proprietors of the earlier Forest Park version. In many ways, both Crawford and Rowley said, she is the hear t of the operation.
“Sally is an icon and she reco gnizes me and is always kind to me,” Rowley said. “I come here by myself most of the time, and I always feel very welcome. It’s a very comfortable place to sit at the bar. I can’ t imagine anyone who wouldn’ t be welcome here.”
T he rest of the pub’s menu contains what you would expect at a bar and then some items that you might not.
“We got specials that break the mold as far as what bar food is,” Crawford said. “All the soups are
Diner Nora Rowley and GM Anthony Craw ford
Get in on the avor osullivansfp.com
7244 Madison, Forest Park Daily 11 a.m. – 1 a.m.
made from scratch. We have a shrimp Dijon. And then we’ve been doing specials: g rilled seafood platter, stuffed orang e roughy. Even with those more elevated specials, we try to keep everything under 30 bucks a plate.”
T he patty melt is $16.95 with a choice of a side.
“Even the potato chips are f antastic,” Rowley said.
“We buy them pre-cut, froz en, but then we cook them to order,” Crawford said. “It’s not a bag of chips that’s been on the shelf for a while.”
It’s the attention to details that O’Sullivan’s prides itself on.
“There’s four pillars, which is what we build ourselves on,” Crawford said. “Sure it’s the food and drink, but it’s also a sense of people and place.”
Sláinte!
O’ Sullivan’s Public House, 7244 Madison, Forest Park
RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR
Richard Boykin is running for 7th District seat
Formerly ser ved as Congressman Danny Davis’ chief of sta and Cook County commissioner
By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
With primary elections in March, candidates are lining up to throw their hats in the ring for the seventh district congressional seat, which Danny Davis announced he’s retiring from in July after nearly 30 years.
An Oak Park resident who owns his own law firm, Richard Boykin announced his candidacy on Sept. 6, hoping to take over the position of the man whose congressional career he helped launch.
Boykin was Davis’ chief of staff from 1997 to 2006, starting when Davis was first elected to the position. Boykin was responsible for 22 staff in Chicago and Washington D.C. and served as Davis’ liaison to federa and local officials.
“All of his legislative activities and successes for the first 10 years, I helped lay a foundatio for his 30-year career in gress,” Boykin said.
While working for Davis hi first year, in a Republican gress, Boykin helped pass an amendment that increased a to jobs funding from $175 million to $750 million. That money provided grants to local go nonprofits to develop transportation that connects low-income people, often in inner cities, to employment and support services in suburban communities. If elected, Boykin said he’d advocate to bring more money for transportation back to the seventh district.
staff of the Congressional Black Caucus on multiple issues.
“None of the other candidates have congressional experience. I do,” Boykin said. “I know Washington. I know where the bathrooms are. I know the people in Washington. I have relationships, and I’m going to leverage those relationships on behalf of the people of the seventh congressional district.”
After over 13 years in Washington D.C., Boykin worked at Barnes & Thornburg law firm, where he represented clients who had issues with the federal gover nment before Congress and agencies.
In 2014, Boykin was elected as Cook County commissioner of the first District, which covers Chicago’s West Side and the near est suburbs. As commissioner, Boykin was the first Democrat to ppose the Cook County sweetened beverage tax in 2016. The tax hampioned by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinho Boykin told CBS Chicago ed to push him out with her union allies who funded Brandon ohnson’s campaign to successully succeeded him as commissioner in 2018.
“We’re going to make sure that Illinois gets its fair share, especially the seventh district, of transportation dollars, so that we can have good roads and infrastructure,” Boykin said.
Boykin also worked to help Davis develop the Second Chance Act, which funds grants for state and local gover nment, plus nonprofits, that go toward reentry support and reducing recidivism.
But Boykin’s Washington experience isn’t limited to his potential predecessor
He also worked for Carol Moseley Braun — the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate and the first female U.S. senator from Illinois — and Bobby Rush, a congressman from 1993 to 2023 who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. Boykin has worked with members and
ouldn’t go along with it beause I had held town hall meetings throughout the district, and people said that they didn’t want that,” Boykin said of the sugar tax. “About four months later, I led the effort to repeal it. The reason why we were successful in repealing it is because people had begun to leave their pop, their juices, all of that stuff at the counter once they heard how much it cost.”
He added that instances like this are proof he’ll hold the Trump administration accountable.
“There’ll be others who will tell you that they will hold Trump accountable, but I hope that you will ask them, ‘How can you hold Trump accountable when you haven’t even held people within your own party accountable?’” Boykin said. “They’re going to say they’re going to stand up to Trump They won’t even stand up to Preckwinkle. I did, and I got the political scars to prove it.”
Also as Cook County commissioner, Boykin sponsored the initial ordinance to eliminate the tax on feminine hygiene products. And he had a seven-step plan to reduce violence.
Some of those steps were acted upon, including the creation of the sheriff’s office gun violence taskforce to better coordinate with Chicago and state police. Boykin also helped establish the requirement to have a medical examiner provide an oral and written report at board meetings on the number of people who are shot and killed in the county, location of incidents, and their ethnicities
“Before I required this, the medical examiner used to group Hispanics and whites together,” Boykin said. Even with the adjusted breakdown, Boykin said he wants to change the fact that over 75% of people killed in Cook County are Black, while making up only 22% of the county’s population.
Boykin’s priorities
Public safety is a top concern for Boykin
In running for Congress, Boykin recently released his eight-point plan to stop gun violence. He said this iteration advocates for smart gun technology, which only allows an authorized user to fire a gun, and the regulation of ghost guns made with unregulated parts. He also wants to amend the statute for terrorism to include shooting into crowds.
“We’ve got to make sure that people are safe in their neighborhood, that seniors can sit on their porches without fear of being shot. Kids can walk down the street and play in the neighborhood without fear of being shot as well. That’s what I’m trying to do here. I’m hearing this is a major concern from Black people, from white people, from Latino people that I talk to. They’re concerned about this issue of public safety.”
Public health is another main priority for Boykin, who said he wants to keep the cost of health care down by restoring cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, and research dollars to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He added that he’ll fight to keep hospital doors open.
“Health care is a big issue for the district,” Boykin said. “The district has more hospitals and healthcare stuff, like federally qualified health centers, than any other congressional district in the country, but one in New York.”
Boykin is currently creating a health care task force of doctors, nurses and industry professionals who will be laying out a plan for the seventh congressional district soon.
When it comes to what he’d do differently from Davis, Boykin said he’d bring more vi-
tality and spend more time in his district outside Chicago’s West Side
“I bring a level of energy that is going to be much greater than the congressman’s energy,” Boykin said. “I’m going to make sure that every community counts, and that means the communities that I’ve heard who feel like they’ve been ignored,” which he said he’s heard from residents of Oak Park, River Forest, plus the River North, South Loop and West Loop neighborhoods in downtown Chicago. “They feel like the congressman has paid most of his attention to just the West Side of Chicago. Well, the district is bigger than the West Side of Chicago, and I’m going to be a voice for every side of Chicago.”
But Boykin says he’d continue standing up for the West Side, too, if elected. He lived with Davis and his wife in Austin for about five months before moving to Oak Park
“Things have not changed on the West Side of Chicago greatly since the ‘68 riots. There are places on the West Side of Chicago that are still undeveloped that have been bur ned down,” Boykin said of unrest in the area when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. He added that he’ll address the West Side’s vacant lots and bring industry and jobs back to the area.
“I’m privileged to have represented the West Side of Chicago when I was a Cook County commissioner,” Boykin said. “I took care of every part of the district, and I’m going to bring the same level of energy, commitment and tenacity to make sure that everybody’s voice is heard and everybody counts.”
Boykin grew up in Englewood, so he says he understands the people of the South Side. He added that he’d like to open a satellite office in Oak Park to better connect with constituents looking to access congressional resources in the wester n suburbs
“I’ve been someone who disrupts the status quo. I’ve also been a coalition builder. I’ve been someone who brings people together and who gets things done,” Boykin said. “I’ve been preparing for this job all my life, quite frankly. Congress was made for me, and I was made for the Congress.”
According to the Federal Election Commission, other candidates who are running for Davis’ Democratic seat include Jerico J. Brown, Melissa Conyears-Ervin, Jason Friedman, La Shawn Ford, Rory Hoskins, Danica Leigh, Tekita Martinez, John McCombs and Emelia Rosie — who’s not registered with a political party.
RICHARD BOYKIN
Oak Park approves $500K for residential energy savings program
Village consultant ready to ‘hard launch’ Oak Park Energy Navigator
By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter
cording to the village.
Oak Park’s village board approved the new contract with Elevate unanimously.
Over the last several months, Elevate has completed energy assessments at eight properties, the consultant said. Elevate has also run residential energy programs for communities like Chicago, Evanston and Ann Arbor, MI, according to the group.
If Oak Park is going to meet its ambitious environmental sustainability goals, then the village must help residents make their homes more energ y efficient.
The consultants said they hope to work with 80 properties in Oak Park during year one of the OPEN program, including both single family and multifamily residences. They said they want 40% of participants to come from “priority communities,” including residents making less than 80% the area median income, residents spending more than 30% of their income on rent or more than 6% on energy payments and elderly or disabled residents.
That’s the aim of the village’s energy navigator program, now moving toward a full rollout after the village board awarded a new $500,000 contract to Elevate, the non-profit consultant that’s spent months setting up the program for the village. The Oak Park Energy Navigator, or OPEN, will provide energy assessments to residents, information on potential energy savings, customer service support and “roadmaps” giving guidance on how to finance energy efficiency improvements through village grant programs and other funding sources as part of a “one stop shop” for energy efficiency help, according to Oak Park Sustainability Chief Lindsey Roland Nieratka.
“This navigator is, the roadmap, and it’s the assistance in the implementation, but it’s not the implementation itself,” Roland Nieratka said. “We can direct them to our rehab programs if the roadmap shows them that. Insulation, heat pump, solar, we have the grants and the loans for that. We’re following up with participants in those programs to try to get a measure of what the energy savings have been, what the emission savings have been. So that’s an ongoing process with all of those programs.”
T he progr am rose from the village ’s Climate Ready Oak Park Plan, which hopes to cut Oak Park’s carbon emissions by 60% before 2030 in a bid for net-zero emissions by 2050. About 70% of Oak Park’s emissions come from commercial and residential properties, ac-
The Climate Ready Oak Park Plan calls for 40% of the village’s sustainability funding resources go to support “the most vulnerable.”
“We need then to get the word out beyond those people who already have this on their mind,” Village President Vicki Scaman said. “Your goals are to help folks who might not otherwise be able to do this without this assistance and without the grants of the village, versus people who might already be planning it on their own.”
The program will run in collaboration with community volunteer group the Oak Park Climate Action Network’s climate coaching program. Elevate will likely refer “100% of navigator clients” to volunteer OPCAN climate coaches, the consultants said.
“This is very exciting, this is many years in the making,” said Trustee Derek Eder, an OPCAN member. “It’s very awesome to see this evolution come about and see all the work and thought that was put into this. So, it is a great day.”
The cost for the village is projected at $6,275 per property served, according to the consultants.
7TH DISTRIC T Far ung constituency
from page 1
substantial demo graphic shifts as neighborhoods around the Loop have increased with a well-to-do, largely white population, even as the Black population of the West Side has diminished and a growing percentage of Proviso Township has become Hispanic.
What’s the impact of that demo graphic change? Why are voting habits more important than total population groups? How will substantial outside campaign funding impact the final month of the race? What’s the impact of key endorsements and the planned turn-out-the-vote campaigns a handful of those endorsements will bring?
Finally, in a nation actively rejiggering congressional districts with an eye on the midterm elections in November, is the Illinois 7th District still meant to be a “Black district”? And what does that mean?
Veteran Chicago political journalist Laura Washington penned an intriguing column in the Chicago Tribune Jan. 26, pondering the possibility that demo graphic shifts and a crowded Democratic primary field might combine to throw the election to a white candidate. There are 3 white candidates in the race.
Noting the district’s 53 years of Black leadership — 30 under Davis — Washington said demog raphic shifts have seen the district “ … evolve from a predominantly Black domain on Chicago’s West Side to a sprawling territory that includes downtown areas such as Fulton Market, South Side wards, Chinatown and the west suburbs of Oak Park, Maywood and River Forest.”
Wealthy real estate executive Jason Friedman, she said, “could change the racial equation, as the only white candidate who brings significant money and clout,” which, combined with “the large number of high-profile and established Black politicians might fracture the vote.”
“If Friedman can g alvanize and consolidate the white vote, he could prevail,” she noted. “It’s a very big “if,” but it raises interesting questions.
Cancellation
Washington’s column centered on two issues: the possibility of “cancellation,” in which groupings of candidates with similar characteristics — progressive, es-
tablishment, white, Black — battle for the same pool of limited primary votes. There is also the clear desire of Black political leadership to retain control of the 7th Congressional district.
“That’s one of the things that can happen with a large field,” said Dr. Kent Redfield, professor emeritus at U of I Springfield, who’s studied Illinois politics since the 1970s. “In races with smaller candidate fields, it’s easier to see the effect,” Redfield said. “If it’s (three candidates) and the two moderates are eating up each other’s votes … the progressive with 40 percent is in pretty good shape.”
There are five progressives running, including activist Kina Collins, union official Anthony Driver, immigrant rights organizer Anabel Mendoza, human resources executive Jazmin Robinson and for mer White House advisor and attorney Reed Showalter.
An ef fort has be gun in Oak Park to unify progressive support behind Collins
There are several more established, moderate candidates, including three currently holding elected office; state Rep. LaShawn K. Ford, Melissa Conyers-Ervin, the Chicago city treasurer since 2019, two term Forest Park mayor Rory Hoskins and for mer County Commissioner Richard Boykin.
There are three putative front runners: Ford, who has been endorsed by both Davis and Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch; Conyears-Ervin, who ran against Davis in 2024; and Friedman, who has raised $1.8 million.
Friedman presents himself as a seasoned businessman who creates jobs and gets things done. Ford has stressed his legislative experience, his networks and his record of standing up for people’s interests. Conyears-Ervin portrays herself as a fighter ready to take on the Trump administration and protect safety net programs.
Conyears-Ervin is also the recent recipient of a $2.8 million cash infusion from the controversial American Israel Public Affairs Committee
Then there’s Collins, who has little money but solid name reco gnition from running against Davis three times, including a 45.7 percent performance in the 2022 primary. And Dr. Thomas Fisher, an ER physician who had strong 4th quarter fundraising and who has been endorsed by Cong. Lauren Underwood.
Along with Friedman and Showalter, the other white male in the primary is for mer Congressional staffer and professor David Ehrlich.
Experts Growing Community Media spoke with said that while it’s difficult to predict a winner, there are key indicators, including candidates with effective politi-
WIKIPEDIA
7th Congressional District map
7TH DISTRIC T
Diversity and balance from page 21
cal organizations, quality endorsements and who is able to tur n out to vote.
Washington, also a political analyst for ABC 7 Chicago, said a crowded field for a Congressional seat that is open for the first time in many years is not unusual.
Such races have different dynamics than re gular elections. There have been three such Democratic Congressional primaries in recent years, the 1st district in 2022, and the 6th and 14th in 2018.
The 1st district primary had 17 candidates, 11 of whom didn’t break five percent. Only four reached double digits, constituting 73.5 percent of the vote, as Jonathan Jackson won with 28.18 percent.
In the 6th district, seven Democratics vied to take on GOP Congressman Peter Roskam. Again, four broke double digits, accounting for 86.4 percent, as Sean Casten won with 29.5 percent.
Lauren Underwood was the exception, winning 57.35 percent in the seven-candidate 14th district primary. None of the other six got above 13.4 percent.
The 7th Congressional primary is distinct from those races, having not only many candidates, but more competing political and ethnic categories -- Black, white and Hispanic, progressive and moderate, “new guard” and institutionalist.
Money
Redfield said voters want to know a candidate and assess them. “Is this a selffunder who has no policy or political service,” he said. “Or (someone who is) enthusiastic but not resourced or experienced in building a campaign.”
Washington said money has its limits and can’t re place traditional face to face retail politics. “The money is important for lesser known candidates, like Friedman,” she said. “No one knows who he is.”
“If voters see a lot of mailers, but not direct contact, that could backfire,” she said. “People also want to know that person. How can I trust this person? It’s about that ‘touch.’”
“You have to go to (a voter’s) door,” said C.B. Johnson, a long time West Side political activist. “It’s a sign of respect to knock on my door To ask for my vote.”
Congressional District 7 Race/Ethnicity
Census
* Margin of error
Source: Census Reporter (https://censusreporter.org/pro les/50000US1707-congressional-district-7-il/)
Race and endorsements
Race — and racism — is aways a factor in Chicago politics, Washington allowed, though with some voters, she said, it’s less about race and more “I matter, my vote matters and my concer ns matter.”
White voters in areas like Oak Park, she said, “respect the desire of African Americans to retain power,” but there is also the feeling that “I shouldn’t be overlooked.”
Race still matters, though, particularly to Black political leadership in this most unusual election cycle. House Speaker Welch, a resident of the district, is among other Black leaders like Davis making it clear they intend to maintain Black political control of the 7th District, and as many Black voices as possible on the Democratic State Central Committee.
That goal is supported by Illinois Stat e Senate President Don Harmon, the white township committeeman for Oak Pa rk.
“The 7th Cong ressional District in Illinois has been an important historically Black seat in Cong ress,” Harmon said. “The district has changed but it is still drawn to perform as a Black district and I expect that the Black political community in particular is going to dig in really deeply on ensuring Black re presentation continues. Ultimately it’s up to the voters, but I think that’s an important component. It would be a significant loss in Black re presentation.”
Ford’s campaign manage r, Tumia Romero, said on Saturday that the campaign expects turnout to be between
she said, “That’s significant.”
Welch’s endorsement of Ford, Washington said, “could be the secret sauce that makes the difference.”
Turnout
Redfield said while he was not an expert on West Side Chicago Congressional politics, his “sense of this district is it’s got geographical divisions,” including an older, long established Black West Side and newer residential sections on the near west side.
The question, he said, is “What kind of electorate is going to show up.”
With no more party bosses, he said, “you’ve got to motivate people and get them out to vote.” Ultimately the question political operatives look to answer is, “who’s going to show up at the polls?”
78,000 to 80,000 votes, based on historical data. “We hope that it’s more than that, of course,” Romero said
According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, turnout was 86,158 in the 2024 primary, and 75,612 in the 2022 primary. While declining to provide specific numbers, Romero said Ford is ahead in the latest tracking poll rece ived on Feb. 20.
“He’s still leading, despite (ConyersErvin and F riedman) each sending out 10 (ne gative direct mail) pieces.”
Besides r unning for the Democratic State Central Committee 7th District seat, Welch has endorsed Ford to re place Davis in the 7th Cong ressional seat.
Redfield said no serious politician of Welch’s stature makes endorsements lightly, saying, “When they put their name out there they’re expending political capital.”
Redfield said quality endorsements have a “value added” quality, enabling a candidate to “piggyback” onto another politician’s organizational strengths. “If the endorsement brings with it something that adds value,” he said, like communications and ground support, “they carry weight.”
“If they’ll put in the work, put your name on palm card s, use the endorsement in direct mail, (then) the support of any party people does make a big difference,” said Dick Simpson, a for mer Chicago alder man and political science professor.
“With endorsements has to come a political operation with people to help,” Washington said. In the case of Welch,
According to one political expert in the field of survey research, an Oak Park resident who asked not to be named, the answer is not found in general population statistics. Recent U.S. Census data, he said, shows ethnic percentages in the 7th district are “approximately 36 percent Black, 29 percent white, 21 percent Latino, and 10 percent Asian.”
Then there’s the racial profile of the actual primary voting population, he said, and “Those demographics are different.”
Experienced campaign professionals, he said, “estimate this number to be about 40 percent Black, 40 percent white, 10 percent Latino, and the rest being a mix of Asian voters and other demographics. They use past voting results to predict this outcome.”
“As far as the estimates for the electorate, each campaign does their own prediction, so there’s no exact source for it,” he said. “It’s just a common knowledge thing that those of us in the profession can acquire from our colleagues.”
“You cannot exactly predict the electorate until it votes,” he said.
A study released in January by Unite America Institute (UAI) sheds some light on that disparity. It found that the voting populace that votes in primaries is different from general elections.
The UAI, a nonprofit organization “that seeks to encourage nonpartisan civic engagement and political participation” found that “self-identified liberals were 20 percent of the population, yet were 29 percent of “decisive primary voters,” roughly “1.5 times more representation than parity would suggest.”
The greatest disparity was with Republican primary voters, which while notable, has little relevance to the deep blue 7th District.
2024
Democratic primary results by Chicago wards in 7th Congressional Distric t
Oak Park police investigate battery of CTA train conductor
By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter
Oak Park police are investigating an incident where a man re por tedly spat on a CTA train conductor.
Source: Chicago Board of Elections; https://chicagoelections.gov/elections/results/205
Bolded ward number indicate “Black” ward
Young Millennial and Gen Z voters, UAI found, “were notably absent” in primaries, with 18- to 25-year-olds comprising nine percent of the population but just three percent of primary voters; 25- to 39-year-olds “comprised 25 percent of the population but only 11 percent of the primary electorate.”
Meanwhile, those 55 and over were 68 percent of the primary electorate despite being just 46 percent of the population.
Whites were 70 percent of the population but “constituted 84 percent of the primary electorate; Black voters 13 percent of the population but 11 percent of the primary electorate.
Under representation was even larger for Hispanic and Asian American voters, “three to four times less represented than their shares of the population,” the UAI found. Washington, who has said she’s “not endorsing anyone in this race,” said she’s
also not making any predictions. But two candidates, she opined, have an advantage, “at least in name reco gnition,” from currently holding office — Ford and ConyearsErvin.
“They have bases where they’re somewhat known,” Washington said. And Ford, she said, “has a much higher (public) profile than the typical state legislator.”
Washington said “traditionalist” older Black voters, “would probably lean toward more moderate candidates.”
Allowing that “Danny Davis is progressive,” she said, “I think older Black voters in general are more conservative on some social issues,” and would “tend to support more traditionalist, older candidates, with mainstream
credentials, those who have held elective office.”
Bob Skolnik contributed re porting.
A man in a blue coat and mismatched blue and black shoes was holding the door of the train open while it was stopped at the Oak Park Avenue Green Line station despite the train conductor telling him to stop blocking the door. When the conductor was on their way to re port the man to CTA control, the man spit on the conductor before fleeing the station on foot, according to police.
The man is being sought on battery charges, according to police. The incident happened shortly before 6 a.m. on Feb. 18, according to police.
Aggravated robbery
Oak Park police are investigating a robbery incident in which thousands of dollars in electronics and cash were stolen from a Chicago resident, according to police.
The victim was in the 800 block of South Humphrey Avenue at around noon on Feb. 19 when they were approached by a man in his late 30s who was driving a purple Acura SUV. The man threatened the victim by implying that he had a firearm, before taking cash and two cell phones from the victim, according to police
The total value of the stolen items is estimated at $9,900, according to police. The suspect is being sought for aggravated robbery, according to police.
Co ee shop battery
Oak Park police received a re port of a battery incident at a local coffee chain location last week.
A male in either his teens or early twenties entered the Starbucks in the 700 block of Lake Street shortly before 4:20 p.m. Feb. 18 while yelling and then grabbing the victim, an Oak park resident, and forcing them outside of the store. The suspect then pushed the victim before punching them multiple times in the face with closed fist, according to police. The offender was last seen going west on Lake Street towards Oak Park Avenue, according to police.
These items were obtained from Oak Park’s Police Department re ports dated Feb. 16–23 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 a description of the suspect as they seek the public’s help in making an arrest.
De ant Ford responds t misleading crypto PAC attack ads
By BILL DWYER Contributing Reporter
In a speech equal parts defiance and political critique, with some genuine emotion apparent, State Re p. LaShawn K. Ford responded Monday to political attack ads funded by a crypto currency PAC upset with his vote as a state le gislator Ford, one of 13 Democratic primary candidates looking to succeed the retiring Danny K. Davis as 7th District re presentative in Cong ress, stood with Davis and other supporters at his campaign headquarters to address a video ad and political mailers that f alsely imply that he was convicted of felonies related to bank fraud
T he attack ad, created by the Fairshare super PAC, refe rred to a federal indictment against Ford in 2012, charging him
info rmation. T he video pieces to statements in a way that conveys that one statement made related to the next statement. But they do not.
Ford, the video intones, “was indicted on 17 counts.” Waiting a moment effect, they re peat, “17 counts” graphic of “17 counts” handwritten on piece of cardboard.
“The verdict? Ford convicted of fraud.” But Ford was not charged tax fraud in the 17-count indictment. single charge was in a superseding indictment.
In 2014, after the original prosecutor left office, another prosecutor took the case, and the U.S. Attorney in suddenly dropped all 17 felony in exchange for Ford ag reeing to enter guilty plea to a single misdemeanor tax charge. Ford, who has worked in real estate and property rehab on the West Side, ag reed to plead guilty to overstating the rehab costs on one of his properties by about $23,000, which lowered his capital gains taxes when the property was sold, resulting in $3,782 in lost tax revenue to the IRS. He was sentenced to probation, a $1,000 fine and restitution.
“I am not a felon,” Ford said. “I am a state legislator, I am a real estate broker, I am licensed to be a teacher.” Had he been convicted of any felony, he said he would not be able to be any of those things.
Calling the funding behind the attack “blood money,” Ford said such tac-
tics are “harmful to our democracy.” He said he was targeted by the PAC because of his vote in the Illinois House to re gulate the crypto currency industry, “because I stood up for my people.”
“I’m here to protect the community and the people who elected me.”
Davis called the ads “scurrilous.”
“Yes he was charged,” he said of Ford. “But it was a lie. And the Justice Department knew it.” He added, “The judge said it was a mistake.”
on the podium.” He then left the room, retur ning several minutes later
“We need to change the law and make sure we’re able to have a fair democrac y.”
L ASHAWN FORD State representative
Ford spoke about his defense attorney, the late T homas Durkin, saying, “He actually told the courts that ‘this Black man is g etting railroaded.’” His voice quavering, Ford added, “I needed that attor ney at that time.” As the room erupted in applause, Ford teared up, covered his eyes and laid his head down
T he crypto industry’s hostility toward Ford stems from his support of a bill that passed the Illinois General Assembly last August, SB 1797. T he bill created the Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act, which directs the Department of Financial and Professional Re gulation to re gulate digital asset business activity in Illinois and imposes new compliance and consumer-protection requirements on them.
Ford said dark money is playing a ne gative role in today’s politics
“I think we have a problem when we have dark money in a race that can do whatever they want in the race without any checks,” he said. “We need to change the law and make sure we’re able to have a fair democracy.”
BILL DWYER
Surrounded by suppor ters, including Cong ressman Danny K. Davis, 7th District Congressional candidate LaShaw n K. Ford addresses the media Monday regarding the contents of an attack ad by a cr ypto currency PAC circulating in the district.
BILL DWYER
LaShaw n Ford became emotional Monday talking about the “dark times” he endured facing a federal indictment in 201214, charges that were ultimately dropped.
Homes
Historical Society honors two couples with Heart of Our Villages awards
McMahons and Sokols have played active roles in River Forest and Oak Park
By LACEY SIKORA Real Estate Reporter
The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest’s annual gala will take place on Thursday, March 12. The Heart of Our Villages Awards will be celebrated at the event. This year’s honorees include two couples: Sandra and David Sokol from Oak Park and Laurel and Dennis McMahon, for merly of Austin and River Forest. The awards were established in 2018 on the 50th anniversary of the Historical Society. Frank Lipo, executive director of the Historical Society, notes the awards honor community members whose lives of service exemplify the spirit of Oak Park and River Forest through sustained volunteerism, support of local not-for-profits, a respect for diversity, and demonstrating a passionate commitment to making a difference across multiple organizations over many years.
“This is not just an award for someone who did something great this year,” he says, calling the awards more of a “lifetime achievement” acknowledgment.
Sandra and David Sokol in Oak Park
The Sokols moved to Oak Park in 1972, and it didn’t take long for the couple to become involved in community issues. When they were looking for a place to live in Oak Park, they noticed there were plenty of empty apar tments but not a lot available to live in.
“Everything was redlined,” says David. They jumped into the Community Council at Hawthorne School (now Percy Julian Middle School), which focused on issues related to housing, business and schools.
The couple hasn’t stopped making a difference in more than 50 years in the community.
David, a professor of Art and Architecture at UIC, was elected to the Oak Park village board in 1977. He later served a total of 16 years on the Historic Preservation Commission, with nine years as chair.
Sandra, a for mer teacher, was also involved in the Hawthorne Community Council, which led to her involvement with Hephzibah and countless other community organizations. In 1985, she began working for the village government as a community relations re presentative and was elected Village Clerk in 1993, a position she held for 16 years.
The couple remain active, serving on local boards and facilitating community groups. Sandra says of their community involvement, “It keeps us going.”
Lipo says the Sokols were an obvious choice for the awards and says, “David and
Sandra are always involved in the next committee, the next cause. They’re people who got involved from the start, and 50 years later, they are still involved. There are layers to their involvement: elected, appointed, volunteering -- it’s a big swee p.”
Laurel and Dennis McMahon in River Forest
After owning and restoring two homes in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, the
McMahons moved to River Forest and purchased an 1882 Victorian at 306 Keystone Ave. Their ef for ts restoring the William H. Hatch House landed the home on the National Re gister of Historic Places.
Bitten by the preservation bug, Laurel served two terms as board president of the Historical Society, and fostered neighborhood pride by forming the South of the Tracks Society in River Forest.
As the chairman for the Planning Committee for River Forest’s 125th anniversary celebration in 2005, she spearheaded an architecture survey of the village. See AWARDS on pa ge 26
David and Sandra Sokol PROVIDED
Dennis and Laurel McMahon
ONLY
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AWARDS
from page 25
“We thought it was important to document what we have so people moving to the village can make an infor med decision. When you buy a house, you’ re not just buying that one physical home or property. You’ re buying into a community.”
Laurel also was an organizing force behind River Forest’s Historic Preservation Ordinance and first chair of the village ’s Historic Preservation Commission.
“It’s not just one of these accomplishments, but for both couples, over and over again, it ’s the things they did shaping the village s. All of these things aren’t self-operating. Someone has to step in and lead.” For Lipo, the leadership of the Sokols and McMahons pays dividends that can’ t be measured. “The good thing about awards like this is that they encourag e others to g et involved and take on a new role in the community. T hese couples are an inspiration.”
T he McMahons owned and operated McMahon’s refreshments on Lake Street from 1993 to 1996, which led to Dennis’s work on the River Forest Plan Commission. While working his day job, which included stints as executive vice president, g eneral counsel and secretary at Follett Corporation in River Grove, Dennis served on the Plan Commission from 1995 to 2015 and also was the longest serving member of the village ’s Development Review Board from 1997 to 2015.
Lipo says of the McMahons, “For their entire time in River Forest, they’ve been involved. Laurel saw the value in not just caring about history but in creating community value.”
Both the Sokols and the McMahons embody the spirit of the Heart of Our Villages awards Lipo says
Before you go
The Heart of Our Villages awards will be presented at the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest’s annual gala on Thursday, March 12 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Nineteenth Century Club, 178 Forest Ave., Oak Park
Tickets are $125 per person and can be purchased at: www.oprfmuseum. org or by calling 708-848-6755.
The gala evening kicks of f with entertainment, hors d’oeuvres and beverages at 6:30, followed by the awards ceremony honoring the McMahons and Sokols at 7:30. All proceeds from the event benefit the operations of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest.
306 Keystone dur ing restoration.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS FRIDAY 5 P.M.
Call Viewpoints editor
Ken Trainor at 613-3310
ktrainor@wjinc.com
Climate change did in leaf pickup
MVIEWPOINTS
y daughter’s Cub Scout troop learned about climate change the hard way this November. They headed out for their annual leafraking service project, ready to help their neighbors bag up their abundant leaves — only to find that most houses had no leaves yet to rake. The trees were still holding on despite the calendar saying it was time to fall.
CHAVAS
A few weeks later, we were hit with the highest y snowfall ever recorded in November. Eight inches buried whatever leaves had finally dropped. More snow followed in early December, right as Oak leaf pickup program ended — as scheduled he result? What Ken Trainor coined as “leaf dreck”: the muddy leaf mush now matted in our gutters and clogging our curb cuts [No thank you very Viewpoints, Jan. 14]. Based on a recent flurry letters to the editor, many residents think the solution is simple: bring back the glory days of raking es into the street.
But that misses what really caused our dreck-filled streets. Climate change created a perfect storm — war ming fall temperatures delayed leaf drop by weeks, while record snowfall hit Oak Park in late November. Leaf pickup didn’t stand a chance.
This leaf dreck is more than just ugly. When rain washes through decomposing leaves, it creates a “nutrient tea” that flows straight into our stor m drains, polluting local waterways. Matted leaves clog storm drains, contributing to the kind of flooding we experienced during early January’s “biblical deluge” (there’s that pesky climate again!). And wet leaves on streets and sidewalks are as slippery as ice — a genuine hazard for cyclists and pedestrians
In reality, neither the old street/raking system nor the current bagging system can handle what climate change is throwing at us. When leaves are still on trees in November and then get buried by record snowfall, no collection method works. We’re trying to force predictable systems onto an increasingly unpredictable climate.
It’s time for a fresh look at exactly why we collect leaves each fall. We talk about aesthetics, safety and environmental sustainability, but what’s really been missing is any serious reckoning with how climate change under mines our ability to deliver on these priorities. We need a system designed for flexibility and extreme weather, one that can adapt when nature doesn’t follow our October-to-December timeline
Oak Park is due to rebid our waste management contract soon, including leaf pickup Perhaps this is our opportunity to rethink the entire approach: not just how we collect leaves, but what we’re trying to accomplish and how climate change affects our ability to get there. What creative solutions might emerge if we stopped trying to force a 1990s-era system to work in a 2026 climate?
We’re way past debating bagging versus raking. Climate change has made that conversation obsolete. It’s time to reimagine how we provide this service and free up space in the Wednesday Jour nal for more valuable debates
Has anyone heard about this new pool?
Shrubtow
My Black history
In writing this, I am sharing my own experience as an identified white suburbanite. I think back to growing up in the South, 40 miles from North Carolina more than 60 years ago. The red clay of Virginia was my home ground. The first Black adults I knew worked for my family. These first impressions were all positive. I knew no Black young people; they were invisible to me
By the time I arrived at the University of Tennessee, James Baxter was elected president of the student body; he was Black. After graduation, I married and moved to Cleveland. I got a job in the Glenville Public Schools not long after Dr King’s death and the Hough riots I was a teacher in a Title I junior high. My department chairperson, Mrs. Moore was Black. My principal, Mr Mitchell was Black, and so were all my students. I had a lot to lear n. We rented a beautiful second floor apartment in East Cleveland because Mr. Naybor, who was Black, introduced me to Mr. Thomas, who became our landlord. He was also Black.
Topps, another member of the eastside community, invited me to join the local Board of the NAACP. The best sprinter coach for my daughter was Samantha Caffey, a Black track star. Kenny Williams, a Black UIC basketball player, picked my son to play in park district tour naments
Cynthia Breunlin (right) aw ning Bush’ sculpture by Geraldine McCullough to Rev. Adonna Reid in First United Methodist Church.
When we moved to Illinois, we found an affordable home with FHA financing. Bellwood offered multiracial experiences for our daughter; we enjoyed block parties and a multicultural playgroup where more than one language was spoken. My children have six biracial first cousins who identify as Black; family gatherings were an array of complexions and a variety of viewpoints.
When we moved to LaGrange, Mrs. Virginia
The starting line-up for the junior high were Black athletes; they schooled my son in the finer points of the game. Julia Doris and Linda Eastman asked me to join them in approaching Lyons Township High School to promote diversity and inclusion as well as forming a coalition, CommUnity. Ber nadette Jones and Sherlynn Reid asked me to lunch and subsequently hired me to serve as consultant to a HUD project they were sponsoring. Yvonne Poindexter and Rev. Jim Shannon invited me to interview for the position of real estate specialist; Leadership Council Director Aurie Pennick, an attorney, became my boss. All of these re Black professionals ho gave me experience which made me qualified to become housing programs manager for the village of Oak Park. Sherlynn Reid and Rogene Hill were Black department heads. My bank in Maywood was Black-owned. My Realtor, Dorothy Reid, my doctor at MacNeal, and my insuranc e agent, Don Williams, were Black.
When I lost my job and had cancer, Marjorie Johnson, an elegant Black neighbor, offered me her United Pass which allowed me to fly anywhere in the world for one year! It transformed
North Ave. re in a retrap
It is an eye-opener to read our story today about the massive fire a week ago in a large mixed-use building on North Avenue
Our Brendan Heffer nan dug into Cook County court records to find that conditions in the building had been deteriorating over years, that ongoing inspections by Oak Park fire and building department personnel logged massive numbers of violations from exposed wiring to inoperable fire alarms and fire extinguishers, with raw sewerage leaking both inside and outside the building.
The village had mixed success in making those court charges result in improvements or holding Sameer Chhabria, the longtime owner of the building, accountable.
In recent months the building had been emptying out with tenants finding it uninhabitable and a growing problem with squatters occupying units because outside doors were not secure. Chhabria, a civil litigation attorney by trade, blamed the squatters for the conditions and said, un-ironically, that he could not find tradespeople to make repairs because squatters made his building unsafe.
Thankfully, only earlier this month, village officials emptied the building of its last legal and illegal tenants and boarded it up. A fire that ripped up a central staircase and demolished the roof and the third floor followed shortly. The village, not surprisingly, says the building must be demolished.
To this point it seems the village has been fairly aggressive in working to deal with the multiplying problems caused by the landlord in this building. Clearly, though, the courts and the village lacked the tools to bring the owner to the table. Thankfully, the building was empty and no injuries were reported in a fire that bur ned for 10 hours.
Surprising and discouraging that such living conditions existed in an Oak Park apartment building.
Pritzker comes to OPRF
It is a boost when Gov. JB Pritzker tur ns up at OPRF High School to laud a bold program the school has initiated. That’s what happened last week when the day after Pritzker’s State of the State address included a push to ban cellphones for students during school classes. He came to Oak Park to reinforce his point that cellphones are making teaching and learning harder for all involved and are an active distraction from personal, one-on-one class conversations
At the urging of a core group of teachers a couple years ago, OPRF created “cellphone homes” in each classroom. Students deposit their phones in the pouches at the start of class and have them back during passing periods and lunch.
So far it is working well. A comment our reporter Bob Skolnik got from a student was that she wished every teacher enforced the policy every day.
He was somebod d kept hope alive
When Jesse Jackson died last week at the age of 84, I was reminded of a column I wrote about him 41 years ago in Ft. Collins, Colorado, my first year as a columnist. Jackson had run for president the year before and would do so again in 1988. The following column ran on March 8, 1985:
I attended Jesse Jackson’s speech a week ago on the Colorado State Uni versity campus. As a speaker, few can match his brand of fire. His deli very started slo almost halting, then built gradually most great orators, to a passionate intensity, his tonality and musical cadence conve ying a strong sense of moral authority. It made me wonder how he sounds when he isn’t recovering from pneumonia.
TRAINOR
Jackson spoke to the largely white crowd about the need for greater racial and ethnic di versity at Colorado State. The university should recruit Blacks and other minority members, he said, to enhance their students’ development. Otherwise, they will be incomplete, culturally depri ved.
“The world,” he pointed out, “is yellow, black, brown, poor, and doesn’t speak English.” If students are unable to cope with people of color, they will not be able to compete in the real world.
“Any politics of isolation,” he warned, “threatens national security.”
Jesse roused the crowd re peatedly to resounding ovations. From my seat in the rafters of the athletic center, I had a clear view. Some 6,000 people rising in unison to applaud vigorously again and again is heady stuff.
Jackson labored on the periphery of the political scene for some time. In Chicago, he started a multiracial organization called Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), which turned into the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, promoting pragmatic progress — achieving equality through increased economic opportunity and educational accomplishment for the poor and oppressed. He traveled the public-school circuit preaching self-esteem, leading students with his famous chant: “I am … somebody!” A subversiv e messa ge — in the best possible sense.
During colle ge in the 1970s, a fe w of us headed down to the Loop to attend a PUSH convention. At one point I found myself in a ballroom surrounded by a sea of Black faces. As a white suburban kid, this was a completely new experience, which produced two insights: “This is what it’s like to be a Black person in a largely white culture” and “Every white person needs to experience this.”
A lot of white people in Chica go, howev er, don’ t trust Jesse Jackson. They think he’s just another slick self-promoter with a big ego. He was also a
thorn in the side of the white power structure because he never stopped PUSHing for Black equality.
After Harold Washington’s upset of the Democratic machine to become Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983, Jesse entered the 1984 Democratic presidential primary race to challenge that bastion iteness. He made things interesting. He also made belie vers out of a lot of people (Black and white) who had scoffed at his nerve.
Jesse has never been a typical politician (i.e. interested mostly in power). Neither is he strictly a prophet shouting from the wilderness. He has become adept at playing both inside and outside the system and doesn’t stay too long in either space. He speaks the langua ge of capitalism, but also seeks to empower the disenfranchised. He is not Martin Luther King Jr., nor is he Adam Clayton Powell Jr. though he reminds some of one or the other, or both. If he becomes a card-carrying member of the political mainstream, I fear he’ll lose his unique voice, which on this day reaches a full-throated roar at Moby Gym (so named because it resembles a great white whale) as he lands his speech with his latest chant, which applies to ev eryone:
“Keep hope aliv e! Keep hope aliv e! Keep hope ali ve!”
I doubt that Jesse Jackson will ev er become president. Instead (borrowing a biblical motif so often applied by oppressed minorities), he is preparing the way for one who is to come, someone who is not ev en on the scene, perhaps not even born yet.
The one who will become our first Black president. Tur ns out he only had 23 more years to wait. Happily, Jesse was present on Nov. 4, 2008, shedding his share of tears during Barack Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park.
His own dreams may not have come to fruition, but according to Clayborne Carson, Stanford University professor of history and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, who was quoted in the New York Times Feb. 17 obituary, “In his best imagination, he saw himself as someone who could bring the country together, appeal to working-class whites as well as poor Blacks, unite them around economic change. But that’s been a dream in American politics for as long as there has been American politics. When that dream has to confront reality, it’s a hard bridge to cross.”
Nonetheless, Jesse Jackson managed to keep hope alive, paved the way for our first Black president, and raised the consciousness of one sheltered white suburban kid.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one.
SHRUB
TO
WN by Marc Stopeck
Howie Einhorn made the world a better place
Recently, Oak Park lost a great man who made a tremendous impact with little notice, as he always wanted. Howard Lyle Einhorn MD, known to friends, family, and patients as “Howie,” was always a man to question-untilproven any sort of fact or comment. He joined his father’s medical practice at Gottlieb Hospital and carried on that practice until retirement a month before his death on Feb. 26. My guess is that he loved the practice of internal medicine, his patients, and the challenge of finding solutions to patients’ individual and unique medical problems so much that he just could not let himself retire.
Howie’s office was well known with a waiting room that was more like home so that any patient could find comfort when they entered it. Long before cultural competence was a watchword in medicine, Howie committed himself to the care of the Hispanic community by having cultural knowledge and fluency in Spanish. His patients feel a great loss, almost as if they lost a close family member. Howie was greatly admired by colleagues for his medical skill and commitment to patients. He took very seriously the Hippocratic Oath to the point that he would provide medical care for his patients even if
changes in circumstances limited their ability to pay.
Though Howie was raised in a religiously Jewish family, he charted his own spiritual course as an adult. But he always kept to the profoundly Jewish value of caring and supporting others, being present at times of greatest need. His life was a bold demonstration of the Ten Commandments, the SHEMA, and the command by Rabbi Hillel to care for others as the Torah’s greatest command. Howie exemplified the Prophet Mikah: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.”
Howie was not a stereotypical religious Jew, but in my eyes he was a religious Jew because his life re presented the strongest demand that the Torah and Judaism challenges us with, to live every day following God’s command to care for others and to make the Earth better by your actions. Wherever Howie walked he made the world a better place; he was a good Jew and a man that set an example for us all.
May his memory be for a blessing.
WEDNESD AY
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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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
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Frank Vozak Oak Park
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‘ONE VIEW’ ESSAY
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Calls to eliminate single-family zoning have become a familiar refrain in progressive municipalities across the U.S., including Oak Park. The stated goal is laudable: to expand housing options, address affordability, and correct the racial inequities embedded in 20th-century land-use policy
Yet good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. Across the country, the elimination of single-family zoning has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises — producing limited affordability gains, accelerating speculative redevelopment, and often worsening the very inequities refor mers claim to address
This is not an argument for complacency or denial. Single-family zoning does have a troubling history. In many Norther n cities, it functioned as a race-neutral proxy for racial exclusion after explicit racial zoning was outlawed. Large minimum lot sizes, bans on multifamily housing, and other ostensibly technical rules were used to preserve racial and economic homogeneity. That history should be acknowledged plainly and honestly.
But acknowledging historical misuse is not the same as endorsing present-day abolition. Policy must be judged by its actual effects, not its moral framing
Across jurisdictions that have aggressively dismantled single-family zoning — including Minneapolis, Portland, and parts
Zoning changes and equity
of California — the results have been underwhelming at best. The most common outcome has not been an explosion of familyfriendly, affordable “missing middle” housing. Instead, zoning liberalization has tended to invite teardowns, luxury duplexes, and small-scale speculative projects that are affordable only in the abstract. A $900,000 duplex replacing a $700,000 single-family home may technically increase density, but it does nothing to expand access for middle-income families, let alone lower-income households.
BOB MILSTEIN
One View
The reason is structural. Zoning reform changes what may be built; it does not change what the market finds profitable. In high-demand communities like Oak Park, land values are already elevated. Removing single-family restrictions raises the speculative value of parcels, incentivizing developers to maximize return, not affordability. Without deep subsidies, income targeting, or public development mechanisms, “missing middle” housing tends to materialize as missing affordability.
This patter n has equity consequences
Longtime homeowners — many of them middle-class or fixed-income — face rising assessments, tax pressures, and redevelopment incentives that encourage displacement rather than inclusion. Renters, meanwhile, see little relief, as new units enter the market at price points far above
As the River Forest Village Board quickly advances a proposed 72-unit, large-scale apar tment building, the village manager promised residents a “$600,000 increase to the property tax base” to help ease the tax burden on homeowners. The village president stated on a Facebook page that the development would add $700,000 to the tax base. These unsupported assertions ignore the mechanism for taxing property in Cook County. Property taxes are driven not by individual developments, but by how much local taxing bodies, schools, parks, library, county services, and the village, etc., levy each year. (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://civicfed.org/sites/default/ files/2025)
The assessed value of a new building
median rents. The social fabric becomes more transient, not more integrated
Moreover, the assumption that single-family zoning is the primary driver of racial inequality in housing oversimplifies a far more complex reality. Disparities in income, wealth, credit access, school funding, transportation, and regional job distribution all play decisive roles Focusing reform almost exclusively on zoning risks treating a symptom while ignoring the disease. It also allows municipalities to claim moral progress without undertaking the more difficult work of funding public housing, enforcing fair housing laws, or confronting regional segregation patterns that lie beyond local zoning maps.
Oak Park, in particular, is not a closed enclave frozen in time. It already contains a substantial mix of housing types, including apartments, condominiums, two-flats, and courtyard buildings. The village’s challenge is not an absolute absence of density, but a mismatch between housing costs and household incomes — a problem zoning reform alone cannot solve.
There is also a civic dimension often overlooked in these debates. Zoning is not merely a technical instrument; it reflects negotiated community priorities about scale, infrastructure, schools, green space, and neighborhood continuity. Treating opposi-
Smoke-and-mirror tax promises
is added to the total tax base. But taxing districts routinely increase their levies to meet spending goals. When both the tax base and levies rise, homeowners do not receive tax relief. In many cases, our tax bills actually go up. (https://news.wttw. com/2025/11/17/property-tax-bills-southwest-side-homeowners-set-jump-30-study)
It is also misleading to treat headline numbers about “new value” as money flowing directly to taxpayers. Many new apar tment developments qualify for Cook County property tax incentives, including Class 9 and af fordable housing programs, which reduce assessed value for up to 10 years. (https://www.ilga.gov/documents/ legislation/ilcs/documents) Although the village and the developer have stated this 72-unit building will have no af fordable
tion to single-family zoning as inherently reactionary or racially suspect shuts down legitimate concerns and undermines democratic deliberation. A progressive community should be capable of holding two ideas at once: that past zoning regimes caused har m, and that sweeping deregulation is not a panacea.
None of this is an argument against change. Targeted refor ms — such as allowing accessory dwelling units, incentivizing true affordability through public-private partnerships, preserving naturally occurring affordable housing, and investing in regional housing strategies — can expand access without triggering speculative churn. These approaches are slower, less rhetorically satisfying, and far more effective.
The danger of the current push to eliminate single-family zoning is not that it is motivated by equity concer ns, but that it confuses symbolism with substance. If the result is higher prices, accelerated displacement, and cosmetic density, then the policy has failed — no matter how progressive the language used to justify it
Equity deserves better than a zoning slogan. It requires realism, evidence, and the humility to learn from policies that have already been tried — and found wanting — elsewhere.
Sources can be found in the online version at oakpark.com.
units, other programs could apply.
During those 10 years, the development will contribute far less to the tax base than advertised (https://www.cookcountyassessoril.gov/form-document/class-9). Any suggestion that the full projected value will immediately benefit existing residents is, at best, incomplete Homeowners’ tax bills are determined by how their assessments change relative to other properties, not by whether a new building is constructed nearby. Recent reassessments across Cook County show that residential homeowners often absorb a greater share of the tax burden, even amid new development, particularly when commercial values decline or levies increase. (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://
cookcountytreasurer.com/pdfs/taxbillanalysisandstatistics/taxyear2024)
The idea that a single, oversized project will “pay for itself” or lower property taxes is a convenient talking point, not a fiscal reality. Using speculative tax benefits to justify a development of this scale risks misleading residents and undermining trust in the decision-making process. River Forest deserves an honest conversation about density, scale, infrastructure, traffic, and neighborhood fit without dangling property tax relief that the system does not reliably deliver. Public policy decisions should be based on facts, not overly optimistic assumptions
Bruce Faland River Forest
Strengthen Inclusionary Housing Ordinance
Like so many of our neighbors, we were drawn to Oak Park for its identity as a diverse, inclusive community. But despite the proud le gacy of progressive housing policies that helped build that reputation, today we face an alarming decline in our Black population, due in large part to the lack of af fordable housing in the villa ge Oak Park has made some progress in recent years with policies and programs that have supported af fordable developments. Still, disturbing challenges remain: 40% of renter households and of homeowner households of older residents over 65 are “housing cost burdened,” paying more than 30% of their monthly income on housing.
To address this problem, the village of Oak Park commissioned an independent
study from the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus (MMC) that produced the Strategic Vision for Housing re port in 2024 with nine recommended strategies. Their recommendation to update Oak Park’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance (IHO) is one we are particularly ea ger to see advanced as a tool that can help meet the village’s goal of expanding its af fordable housing stock.
Luckily, the village board and staff at villa ge hall ag ree that updating the IHO is an important part of responding to the af fordability crisis in Oak Pa rk. They have gathered input from local and re gional experts on best practices around inclusionary housing, examined research that supports effective af fordable housing legislation, and are committed to following the Gover nment Alliance for Racial
Equity guidelines for assessing housing policies on their equity impact. And work to update the village’s zoning code is currently underway. We are encouraged to see this range of strategies employed to make our community more af fordable and accessible.
It is imperative, however, that the village prioritize strengthening the IHO. The MMC re port is clear that doing so will fulfill the ordinance’s original intent to “provide oppor tunity within the village for af fordable housing ... to ensure that an adequate stock of af fordable housing is and remains available in the village.” Since its passing in 2019, Oak Park’s IHO has not produced any affordable housing units in the village. As the village board prepares to consider another luxury apart-
Oak Park electeds endorse Kina Collins
We are Oak Park elected officials who have endorsed Kina Collins to be the next 7th District Congressperson because Kina shows up. She trained the local Moms for their sit-in at Broadview, she helped the District 90 teachers union during negotiations to get a fair contract, and she is actively teaching the OPRF High School students how to organize for collective power. She fought to include trans women in the Illinois Council on Women and Girls Act, which she co-authored and helped pass in 2018. She has the respect of our local Moms Demand Action group because she has been showing up for gun violence prevention work in our community since she was 16.
Right now — when compassion, backbone, and integrity are in short supply — we are lucky to have a candidate who
doesn’t waver, even when it costs her. In 2019, before anyone was talking about ICE, she was loudly calling for it to be abolished. AIPAC — a right-wing superPAC known for attacking progressive candidates with millions in negative ads — targeted Kina last election season with $494,000 [1] and aggressive tactics because she was the only one unabashedly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, she did not back down.
We stand with her now. AIPAC has poured almost $3M [2] in this race to force us to choose between 2 establishment candidates, to ensure another vote for their anti-democracy project and another 2+ decades of diminished power in what should be a progressive district.
Today, we ask you to join us. Kina Collins is the progressive candidate who
has proven herself to be up to the challenge, and the only one with a pathway to win. If you want the 7th District to be for the people and not bought and paid for by oligarchs, vote for Kina Collins
Sources:
[1] https://www theguardian.com/ us-news/article/2024/aug/16/congresselection-pro-israel-lobby-aipac [2] https://prospect.org/2026/02/10/ aipac-super-pac-illinois-house-congressmelissa-conyears-ervin/
Colin Bird-Martinez, Library Trustee
Derek Eder, Village Trustee
Susanne Fairfax, Library Trustee
Jenna Leving Jacobson, Village Trustee
Becky Perez, Education Advocate
Teresa Powell, former Village Clerk
Kristina Rogers, Library Trustee
Annie Wilkinson, Library Trustee
Mika Yamamoto, Library Trustee
anks, seniors, for keeping hope alive
I’d like to say thank you to Jeanné Schulte Matthews for submitting two recent letters (Old maybe, but making history, Viewpoints, Feb. 18) and (A very senior walkout, Jan. 26), which shared how she and her fellow senior residents are keeping hope alive and fighting for a better world. It would be so easy for
our senior citizens to hang up their hats and relax (Lord knows you all deserve it!), but instead they’re choosing to lock ar ms with us younger generations to ensure our freedoms remain intact for generations to come. Whether it’s physically getting out on the street, using your voice to speak out, or simply
being with us in spirit, this Millennial is incredibly moved and grateful for your participation. Your courage and compassion has inspired me to keep going even in these hard times. Now let’s get back out there and fight!
Elli Purtell Oak Park
ment development, and with sights on future development of the Mohr property, it is urgent that the board prioritize updating the IHO.
Af fordable housing is widely popular in Oak Park because more af fordable housing options are essential to achieving the village of Oak Park’s mission and vision for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. We are excited about the growing number of local advocates joining our call to push the village of Oak Park to strengthen its IHO. We invite you to join and connect with us by reaching out at: op4af fordablehousing@gmail.com.
George Bailey, Alicia Chastain, Rohini D’Silva, John Du y, Henry Fulkerson, Ryan O’Malley Oak Park ers for Affordable Housing - Steering Committee
How to report ICE activity
The PASO West Suburban Rapid Response team is preparing for another surge of ICE activity. When ICE activity is seen or suspected, call the FSN (Family Support Number) 855-435-7693. Calls can be anonymous and you will probably have to leave a message. This number is for the greater Chicagoland area and dispatchers send the information to rapid responders in the appropriate geog raphic area.
When calling, follow the SALUTE guidance to share as much information as possible.
Size: Number of agents and vehicles.
Activity/Action: What the agents are doing. Are they using force?
Location: Exact address or intersection. Uniform: What are they wearing? Any agency markings, badges, or masks?
Time and date: When the event happened. Equipment: What vehicles, weapons, or tools do they have/are they using?
Please save the number in your contacts and use it when needed. Signs with this information are located throughout our community. It is a tool for all of us as we support our communities through this unprecedented time.
PASO West Suburban Rapid Response Team Oak Park
Afew years after World War II, television burst upon the American scene with great speed. We bought an RCA in 1952, and the novelty of seeing TV pictures in our home caught everyone’s fancy but not my grandfather’s. He was convinced that we would go blind watching TV. The rest of us thought of it as a modern wonder of electronics
Television brought the world into our home in sight and sound. I could see sports teams play, and the adults (not grandpa yet) could see Broadway plays, news events, and political speeches.
Thanks to TV, images of middle-class life and ads for consumer goods blanketed the country. By the end of the 1950s it was said that nine out of 10 American families owned a television.
Television re placed newspapers — not in
DOOPER’S MEMORIES
Our TV world of the 1950s
our home — as the most common source of about public ev what I obser of my friend ing was their main leisure activity.
Television changed Americans’ eating habit TV dinners, while watching a pr were available ’50s. This form never took place in our house because we all ate to and the TV was not turned on until 7 p.m.
One Monday evening a friend of mine stayed for supper and said he wished he could eat like we did because his family re gularly ate TV dinners. That
Delores McCain’s impact
I felt compelled to reach out after reading the article Delores McCain wrote in August 2010 highlighting myself and other high school seniors who were awarded the Third Unitarian Scholarship. Seeing her words again brought back a flood of memories and deep gratitude. For years, I often wondered what became of Ms. McCain — a woman who not only interviewed us, but encouraged us, prayed with us, and personally comforted a nervous young man, as I prepared to leave home for Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. As an 18-year-old preparing to move 12 hours away, I was filled with uncertainty. Her kindness and reassurance helped ease my fears in a way I have never forgotten.
Through reading your articles from 16 years ago, I was saddened to learn that Ms. McCain died just a month after I left for college. I never had the opportunity to tell her that I successfully graduated from Jackson State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and later ear ned my MBA from Belhaven University. I have always wanted her to know that her words, her faith, and her encouragement truly mattered
Please know that her investment in me made a lasting impact. Because of Ms. McCain’s willingness to uplift and affir m young people, I carried hope and confidence with me throughout my collegiate journey and beyond. I wanted you — and everyone at the Austin Weekly — to know how meaningful her presence was in my life
Thank you for continuing to preserve and share stories that remind us of the legacy of remarkable individuals like Delores McCain
Thaddeus Wright
evening we were eating lefters from our Sunday supper. olutionary new food trend provided many Americans with a common cultural experith a few exceptions, like thy hearings, oided controversy and projected a bland image middle-class life Popular ws for our family were The Goldbergs (with immigrants as the main characters) and The which portrayed ing-class families living in tment building. By the end of the decade, the dominant programs were quiz shows, westerns, and comedies set in suburban homes like Leave it To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet, a show that also
featured teen idol Ricky Nelson — the real life son of Ozzie and Har riet. By the end of the ’50s, television had become the most ef fective advertising medium ever invented. Large corporations sponsored popular programs like General Electric Theater and Alcoa Presents. I remember that TV ads, aimed at middle-class suburban viewers conveyed images of the good life based on endless consumption. In 1962, we bought an RCA color TV Black-and-white was fine, but color TV was terrific. All of the perfor mers were more lifelike in color and the costumes and settings were far more appealing, too.
After a while Grandpa lost his fear of going blind due to watching television. Most every night and on weekends he was front and center in the living room enjoying comedy shows, baseball and — to my grandmother’s chagrin — wrestling.
Dear Thaddeus,
This note means the world to us as Delores was one of the bright lights at Austin Weekly for so many years. Her ability to reach out and connect with people in Austin, to ask for their views on local issues, to share their voices with the neighborhood was very powerful.
Let me share the story of how I met Delores. I was at my desk working, swamped as usual. Phone rang and it was a person I’d never talked with and she was steamed. Wanted to know if we were planning a Black History Month section and if not, why not? I said we didn’t have a plan to do a special section that year as we were shorthanded. That was unacceptable to her. And, fairly exasperated, I said, if you want a special section, why don’t you help us create one? Thought that would shut her up. Instead she took me up on it. And without any particular training in reporting, she did it. And it was good.
That led to her suggestion of the Street Beat column in the Weekly. And soon after, she joined us as one of our front desk people, a role she played until she got sick. Really became the heart-and-soul of the place. Wonderful person.
And your description of your encounter with her at Third Unitarian rings so right.
Thanks, Thaddeus
Dan Haley
Trump put in his place
“Hope springs eter nal” has come through for us. Our Supreme Court has had a spinal infusion of cartilage or some other strengthening material (divine intervention, wisdom, or common sense?) and put our POTUS in the cor ner, on a high stool, wearing a dunce cap! I believe there’s a place for everything, and am elated that right now, Trump has finally been put in the right place.
Lauretta Christensen Oak Park
Only the very incompetent chosen
El Paso Airport closed because Hegseth’s Department of Defense didn’t coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration, which failed to notify airport officials and airlines. Recently, two killed by Noem’s Department of Homeland Security. Measles epidemic spreading throughout the U.S. because Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t believe in vaccines Bondi’s Justice Department can’t follow the Epstein law passed by Congress.
I guess these things might happen if loyalty and obedience are more important than experience and competence, but as Trumplicans assure us, “Only the very best are chosen.”
DELORES MCC AIN
Robert Kleps Oak Park
A Supreme Court check on Trump
On Feb. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the le gality of a slew of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a result that outraged the President. This 6-3 ruling came as a great shock to me, because about nine months ago, Ken Trainor [Unchecked, Unbalanced, Un-supreme, Viewpoints, June 17, infor med us all that the justices on the Supreme Court are “cor rupt, politically partisan, and ideologically extreme,” that the high court has already “granted unlimited power” to the presidency, and that the Supreme Court has become “a politicized subsidiary of the Re publican Party,” resulting in a democracy that has “no functioning system of checks and balances.”
Tom Healey Kansas City
Showalter knows how to get it done
I’m a longtime Oak Park resident and recently retired after 38 years of public service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where I was a public affairs director. While there, I spent decades working on federal programs that impact farmers, communities, kids, seniors, and families, including tens of thousands in Oak Park and the surrounding area. I know how much experience, knowledge, integrity, and persistence matter in gover nment. That’s why I’m supporting Reed Showalter for Cong ress in Illinois’ 7th District.
I first met Reed after a visit to the Far mers Market, and I was immediately impressed by his understanding of our food systems and his reco gnition that huge corporations are inflating the costs of groceries for everyone while hurting family farms and small businesses The progressive policies he is looking to implement are ones that serve everyday
Help us upgrade our creative space
Dear Oak Park community,
For the past ten years, Compound Yellow has been proud to live, work, and create alongside you here in Oak Park. We believe that art, music, and shared creative space can strengthen a neighborhood and, since 2026, our shared creative space has grown into a vibrant gathering place for artists, musicians, families, and neighbors of all ages.
This year, we have an exciting opportunity: a matching grant of up to $25,000. Every dollar donated will be matched, doubling the impact of your support.
With the funds we raise, we plan to: Beautify our parkways and grounds, making our outdoor spaces more welcoming and accessible.
Create new signage and build a permanent stage/marquee structure for our outdoor music series, Side Yard Sounds, so we ca n continue hosting musicians in a setting that feels both professional and joyful.
Cultivate a beautiful prairie garden of native species and make improvements in our chicken coop area, giving neighborhood children a living landscape to explore and lear n from as they pass our house on their way to school.
Support the artists and musicians who
bring our programs to life and hire muchneeded operational help to sustain and grow our work
Your gift will not only improve our physical space — it will directly support the creative people who make Oak Park such a culturally rich and inspiring place to live
We love being part of this community. Over the past decade, we’ve seen firsthand how creative spaces can spark connection, nurture imaginations, and bring neighbors together across generations. Our hope is to continue this work for another 10 years — and beyond. We also hope that even more Oak Parkers will discover Compound Yellow and join us in building a thriving, inclusive cultural community right here at home
If you believe in the power of local art, music, and shared space, we invite you to contribute. With the match in place, your support goes twice as far — and helps ensure that Compound Yellow remains a creative cor nerstone in Oak Park for years to come. Donate and please subscribe to our newsletters to mark your calendars. We hope to see you soon!
With gratitude,
Laura Shae er Founder, Compound Yellow
people
I have worked with many politicians over the course of my career, including some of the other candidates in this race and others across the Midwest. And during my time with the USDA, I recognized the importance of having leaders who not only have the right values, but understand the complexities behind federal policies and how the federal gover nment works. Reed has that balance.
For example, Reed played a role in crafting policies that lifted up small far mers and attempted to remake local food systems that consolidation has devastated. It was called the Inflation Reduction Act and sought to make the supply chain challenges we saw during the pandemic become a thing of the past. And these policies, which I saw implemented at the state and local level at USDA, were making headway, and then the Trump admin-
istration came in and pulled back funding for these programs, which is devastating in many ways. And also illegal. But Reed knows how to address these challenges — he’s done it before and he can do it again. It’s exactly what we need because food and health are building blocks for our communities and our lives. Monopolies, a lack of competition, consolidation, and har mful food and agriculture policies hurt all of us and shrink the middle class. Reed understands this, and also understands how to address it. Our district deserves a representative who is grounded, but committed to putting in the hard work behind the scenes I believe Reed Showalter is the candidate
That’s why I’m proud to support Reed Showalter for Cong ress
Alan Shannon USDA Midwest Public Affairs director (retired)
Why I joined Anabel’s campaign
For more than 30 years, I have fought alongside West Side families to keep their homes, protect their neighborhoods, and demand accountability from systems that too often fail us. As a pastor and housing justice advocate rooted in Austin and across Illinois’ 7th Congressional District, I have prayed with seniors facing displacement, supported families navigating housing instability, and witnessed the urgent need for leadership grounded in lived experience. For me, housing justice is ministry — and ministry calls us not just to faith, but to action.
That is why I chose not only to support Anabel Mendoza for Cong ress but also to join the core team helping to lead her campaign
Together, we stood with the tenants of Harrison Courts in East Garfield Park, demanding federal action after months of unsafe living conditions. I watched her listen deeply, walk alongside residents, and center their voices in the fight for dignity and safe housing. She does not speak for communities — she organizes with them.
We have also traveled together into Black churches across the South and West sides, engaging congregations in honest conversations about unity, eco-
nomic pressure, and the shared struggles facing Black and Brown communities. In a time when division is easy, she is doing the harder work of building bridges, bringing people together around shared solutions
Illinois’ 7th District has a proud legacy of faith-driven leadership, but honoring that legacy means recognizing when it is time to grow. Families are struggling to find affordable housing, Section 8 voucher holders face barriers, seniors fear displacement, and working people are being squeezed by rising costs. These challenges require bold, responsive leadership willing to fight for transformative solutions.
Anabel Mendoza represents that next chapter. A lifelong Chicagoan shaped by working-class roots, she understands that when Black and Brown communities stand together, we build real power. I joined this campaign because I believe our district is ready for leadership that reflects our shared future and is committed to ensuring every family has the opportunity to thrive.
Rev. Robin Hood
Founding pastor, Redeemed Outreach Ministries Outreach director for the Anabel for Congress campaign
Tim omas, decentralizing power
Illinois’ State Central Committee sets the direction and priorities of the Democratic Party in our state, and with Danny Davis’ retirement, the 7th District has a chance to elect a proven progressive leader. Tim Thomas will invest in our party — developing the next generation of Democratic candidates and championing values that matter to voters across the district.
Tim’s opponent, Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch already holds one of the most powerful roles in the state. Now he is seeking the 7th District’s State Central Committeeperson seat — following the same logic that defined the Madigan era: more power in fewer hands equals strength.
We know this isn’t true. Centralizing power in a small circle is exactly what allowed dissent to be suppressed, challengers to be discouraged, and grassroots
energy to be managed rather than mobilized. That approach didn’t build a stronger party; it hollowed it out. It’s the very structure that left Democrats less prepared to confront the rise of Trumpism in the first place.
If we want a party capable of taking on authoritarian politics, we cannot replicate its architecture. We should be expanding leadership, empowering local organizers, and building real accountability. As a leader in the labor movement, Tim knows the impact of collective power.
Let’s apply this model to the State Central Committee and elect someone who believes our party is strongest when more people share power — not when one person accumulates more of it
Laura Sakiyama Oak Park
Anabel Mendoza is the answer
After years of working on progressive campaigns, I have learned not to make endorsements lightly. I worked on Anthony Clark’s campaign in 2018, volunteered for Kina Collins’ campaigns in 2020 and 2022, and supported her again in 2024. Those experiences have shaped how carefully I choose where to place my trust and my vote. That is why I am supporting Anabel Mendoza for Congress
Anabel stands out for pairing a deeply progressive vision with a campaign that feels grounded and capable. She listens carefully and speaks about policy in a way that connects to people’s lived experiences, from the heart, not ego.
There is no other candidate in this race who brings the unique combination Anabel does. As an immigrant rights organizer, she is guided by justice and understands that immigration is deeply connected to every issue that matters in this district — from housing and labor to education and beyond
As the youngest candidate in the race, she approaches the deeply horrifying moment we’re in — where our democracy hangs by a thread — with urgency. We cannot afford to lose any longer. Having grown up in
Chicago in a working-class Latino family, she brings a personal understanding that livable wages and economic opportunity are about livelihood.
I have also been struck by the strength and intentionality of her campaign team. With experienced leadership grounded in the district, outreach across the diverse communities that call the 7th District home, from Englewood to Oak Park, and strong coordination between field and data teams, her campaign reflects a level of preparation that candidates I have supported in the past lack.
Finally, Anabel does not accept money from corporate or special-interest PACs, nor is she beholden to a single large organization such as a union. While I strongly support labor, I have concerns when a candidate is overly reliant on one union and becomes captured by that base of support, or changes positions simply to secure endorsements while failing to speak clearly about a genocide unfolding in Gaza. To me, Anabel’s true progressive background and independence represent the next chapter for the 7th District.
Scott Sakiyama Oak Park
CYNTHIA BREUNLIN
My Black history from page 27
my depression into a magical year. Rev. Adonna Reed and Pastor Megan Tobola at my mainline church are both Black. Rev. Doctor Ebony Only inspires us in our congregation’s Networking for Social Justice over the last four years. Dr. Judi Savage is my dearest poetic friend. Ron Thompson, a Black neighbor in my building, looked after me during COVID and did not hesitate to check on me or pick up grocery items
So what have I told and why? I have recounted my own experience where I have benefited in housing, education, and employment. If I am successful today. I can thank:
The first Black child who sat next to me in class; the first Black president of my Souther n university; the first Black landlord who rented us an apartment; the first Black employer who recruited me for a job; the first Black neighbors who invited us to dinner; and the Black literary authors, musicians, and artists who have shaped my spirit
It is my hope that, especially in these times, others will recognize their own Black History, and that our children will someday celebrate a shared history of mutual success.
Printed previously in the Suburban Life and the Wednesday Journal. Cynthia Breunlin is a 30-year resident of Oak Park.
Do
we need a limited-access pool?
Psst!! Maybe it’s a well-kept secret ... but there’s a large city just to the east of Oak Park called Chicago and ya know what? It has many, many pools, indoor and outdoor too, two of which are in Austin! And you know what else? Admission to these pools is much cheaper than to Oak Park pools
Just a thought, when you all consider whether Oak Park needs a $40 million pool that will limit access to what’s presently available in the summer
Is CRC saving $40 million?
I understand that the indoor pool at CRC, second phase, was canceled and they are opting to build an indoor pool facility where the Ridgeland outdoor pool is. I wonder about the funding that the park district got for making the CRC a Net Zero Energy facility. I hope it was lots, at least I think $40 million is a lot, and that
is what the new indoor pool is priced at. They won’t be getting funding as a Net Zero Energy facility as they say an indoor aquatics facility cannot operate as a net zero facility. It would be nice to see the accounting as to funding received for the CRC and the taxpayer cost for the new indoor pool and loss of an outdoor pool.
I received the following message from the park district in answer to my question about the CRC on their Facebook page:
“An indoor pool was originally included in the Phase 2 concept plan for the Community Recreation Center (CRC). As designs progressed and grant funding be-
came available, the park district took the opportunity to make the CRC a Net Zero Energy facility. An indoor aquatics facility cannot operate as a net zero facility. More details about the referendum can be found on our website at pdop.org/indoor-pool.” Michael Papierniak Oak Park
Anne Huston Oak Park
Ash Wednesday in Melrose Park
In a certain way, the Ash Wednesday service outside Our Lady of Mount Car mel Church in Melrose Park, was about what MAGA used to call “religious liberty.”
And by religious liberty, I do not mean cruelty and chaos.
CROWE
I don’t mean ICE agents pepperspraying protesters point blank. I don’t mean mid-day arrests of Hispanic-looking people on crowded streets or outside Home Depot.
On Ash Wednesday, thousands, including many Oak Parkers, processed in memory of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, who was shot dead by ICE in nearby Franklin Park on Sept. 13 after dropping his two children off at elementary school.
They processed for Rene Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis who were also shot dead by ICE.
They processed for families of wage ear ners detained at the nearby Broadview ICE facility or deported
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich was there and said that people who lack resident papers from a state “are not dust that can be swept away” because “God does not need papers to know who or where you are.”
Days earlier, Chicago Federal Judge Robert Gettleman had to order Homeland Security to allow clergy access to the nearby Broadview ICE detention facility for Ash Wednesday services
Ar med with the court order, the clergy went to Broadview and only then did ICE let them in
Religious liberty? President Trump’s contrary notions were on display at the recent Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. He said, “I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don’t.” He also said, “This, by the way, will be the last year that Democrats show up to this event, I tell you.”
Religious liberty as cruelty and chaos. The counter-programming from Melrose Park was a quiet procession through the streets by people praying with ashes on their foreheads.
Robert Panton, 64
Ophthalmologist, joyful debater
Robert William Panton M.D., 64, died after a valiant 10-month struggle with pancreatic cancer on Feb. 22, 2026. Born on March 20, 1961, he grew up in the Chicago metropolitan area and graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School as the class valedictorian. He attended Brown University, graduating in 1983 with Phi Beta Kappa honors and a combined B.A./B.S., then continued his studies at the Brown University School of Medicine, graduating in 1986 with an M.S. in phar macology and an M.D. He served his internship in internal medicine at the University of Chicago (1986-1987) and his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infir mary (1987-1990). He completed his professional education with a cor neal transplantation fellowship at the Wilmer Institute of Johns Hopkins University (1990-1991).
He joined his late father (John Panton M.D.), his brother (Peter Panton M.D.), and his sister (Elizabeth Panton Karkazis O.D.) in practice in 1991 and was affiliated with the Panton Eye Center for the next 35 years. He was certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology and was a Fellow of both the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American College of Surgeons. He was a member of the medical staffs of Rush Oak Park Hospital, Gottlieb-Loyola Hospital, West Suburban Hospital, and Westlake Community Hospital.
He was active in multiple professional societies, including the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, the Illinois Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Chicago Medical Society (CMS), the Illinois State Medical Society (ISMS) and the American Medical Association. He served as president of both CMS (2012-2013) and ISMS (2020-2021), the latter intersecting with the peak of the COVID-19 crisis. He assisted Illinois Governor JB Pritzker in for mulating the state’s pandemic strategy and his monthly columns in the ISMS Journal kept Illinois doctors infor med with the rapidly evolving science
and the constantly changing health policy response.
A strong supporter of youth sports, Panton Eye Center was a longtime sponsor of River Forest Youth Baseball and Softball. He also coached youth baseball and basketball. Bob is survived by his wife, Marika; his three children, Jonathan, James, and Zoe; his brothers, Peter (Estelle) and Evans (Laura); and his sister, Elizabeth (Frank) Karkazis. Visitation will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 25, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Saler no Galewood Chapel, 1857 N. Harlem Ave., Chicago. The funeral service will take place at 10 a.m. on Feb. 26 at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church, 2501 S. Wolf Road, Westchester, followed by inter ment at Elmwood Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations to Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church, Westchester IL, Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, Chicago IL, and St. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church (Rockford, IL) are appreciated Arrangements were handled by Nicholas M. Pishos Funeral Director (Hellenic Funeral Service).
Jackie Riedl, 90 Longtime Oak Park resident
Jacqueline “Jackie” Riedl, 90, of Oak Park, died peacefully on Feb. 15, 2026. Bor n on Dec. 12, 1935, in Lewiston, Maine, to Rosario and Lauretta Dionne, she grew up with her sisters Monique (deceased) and Diane. As a young woman she met her husband, Ron Riedl, a Navy serviceman, while at a dance. After moving to the Chicago area, they were married on Feb. 15, 1957 and remained together for 59 years, raising their four daughters in a home in Oak Park where they lived for nearly 50 years. Her employment consisted of retail work in a variety of roles before retiring to care for Ron with love and commitment as he battled Parkinson’s disease
As a member of St. Ber nardine Church, she enjoyed volunteering, from crocheting blankets for donation to assisting with bingo. She shared a strong bond with a close circle of friends lasting many years. While living at Brookdale Senior Living, she enjoyed greet-
ing and welcoming new residents. An avid reader, sewer and quilter, in later years, she enjoyed exploring beyond her neighborhood by car and long walks.
Jackie is survived by her daughters, Susan Riedl, Nancy (John) Gliori, Renee (Robert) Bor mann, and Karen (Paul) Newsom; her eight grandchildren, Ruth Riedl, Joe Gliori, Nathan Gliori, Amy Bormann, Elizabeth Bor mann, Eli Bormann, Rena Bor mann, and Grace Newsom; and her great-grandchildren, Stella Gliori and Piper Kruse. She will be greatly missed and fondly remembered.
Visitation will be held on Feb. 28 from 10 to 11 a.m. at Zimmer man-Har nett Funeral Home, 7319 W. Madison St., Forest Park. A service will be held at 11. Inter ment private.
John Miller, 64
Resident of Oak Park and Forest Park
John Miller, 64, of Oak Park, for merly of Forest Park, died peacefully at home on Feb. 3, 2026, preceded by his wife, Kimberly; his parents, John and Mary-Bernadine; and his eldest sister, Katie. His three children Katherine, Sophia, and Justin will be waiting to hear the soft refrains of Pink Floyd until they see him again. He leaves behind a host of other “children” he adopted over his life, a colorfully assorted mix of old and young whom he loved as fiercely as his own. His five unofficial grandchildren, Jacob, Ethan, Scarlett, Ravyn, and Luna will all miss their Papa John sitting in the kitchen and trading warm-hearted jabs as they ran through the house; his unofficial son-in-law, Marche, will miss trading cooking secrets alongside them. His remaining sisters, Susan and Cheryl, will feel his absence at their annual Miller Family Galena Weekend. His numerous other family members, both blood and found, will all miss him dearly.
Memorial visitation will be held from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, March 1, at Zimmer manHar nett Funeral Home, 7319 W. Madison St., Forest Park, where a memorial service will be held at 4.
JACK
SPORTS
OPRF’s Castleberry is a state champ
Second Huskie to win a wrestling title in as many years
By MELVIN TATE
Contributing Reporter
Last year, Oak Park and River Forest High School junior Jamiel Castleberry placed fifth in the 120-pound weight class at the IHSA Class 3A individual state wrestling championships.
That finish, while satisfying, also fueled his hunger for something higher. He accomplished his goal to the fullest extent possible at this year’s championships in Champaign. Castleberry (36-3) defeated Oleksandr Havrylkiv of Hersey 5-1 in the 126-pound final to claim the title. It’s the second consecutive year an OPRF wrestler has won a championship; junior MJ Rundell won the 106-pound title last year.
“It sounds good,” Castleberry told Wednesd Journal. “It feels eat.”
Havrylkiv for much of the match and was eventually pinned for the loss. Castleberry knew he’d have to come out differently in order to attain a better result.
“I just knew I had to score points,” he said. “My brother and my coaches had a game plan. I stuck with the plan and it worked out. I’ve been waiting on this for a long time. I got fourth my freshman year [with Proviso East] and fifth last year. This year I got it done and it felt pretty amazing.”
OPRF coach Jason Renteria felt the discipline and poise Castleberry showed keyed his successful title run.
“It was awesome to see,” he said. “The earlier match, we both knew Jamiel made some mistakes he shouldn’t have. We already thought he was better than [Havrylkiv] and just had to make djust-
the end. The growth within the program, whether as an individual or for the team, has been huge. He’s been responding to what the staf f has asked him to do and is ing up right before our eyes.”
Castleberry is one of OPRF’s four wrestlers who are now all-staters as a result of their top-six finishes in Champaign. While Rundell (41-4) came up short in his bid for a title, losing in the 113-pound semifinals 4-0 to Erik Klichurov of Montini Catholic, he rallied in the final wrestleback to Patrick’s Jack Koenig at 2:54. Then in the third-place match, he defeated Joliet Catholic’s Colton Schultz on a technical fall at 2:42.
“I was hurt for MJ,” Renteria said. “But him to wake up the next day and [defeat] the next two kids with a smile on his face speaks volumes.”
Also finishing third was senior David ya (34-4) at 157. Ogunsanya pinned Joliet Catholic’s Nolan Vo gel at 1:01 in the third-place match.
“[David] gave it his best shot and I don’t think he left anything out there,” Renteria said. “I’m really proud of him.”
The Huskies’ most impressive wrestler outside of Castleberry was senior Zev ransky at 144. Koransky (32-11) lost his opening match 9-6 to Jaxon Jorgensen of
Marist, but then ran of f three consecutive wrestleback victories to secure a top-six spot. Following a loss in the final wrestleback, Koransky notched a major decision win over Edwardsville’s Ryan Ritchie to place fifth.
“It was real hard for Zev to lose the first match, but to put it together and get three straight wins, he did it Huskie-style,” Renteria said.
Senior Pier re Nelson fell a match shy of a top-six finish, losing the third wrestleback to Hampshire’s Knox Homola 18-5. Juniors Alex Cohen (132) and Lucas Albrecht (215) each went 0-2, and senior Aiden Noyes (150) beat DeKalb’s Cam Matthews 9-1 in the first round before dropping his next two matches.
With individual action concluded for the year, OPRF turns its attention to the 3A dual-team quarterfinals. The Huskies face Barrington, Feb. 27 at 5 p.m., at Grossinger Motors Arena in Bloomington.
“We feel good,” Castleberry said. “I feel the team [competition] is better than individual because we’ve all worked hard to win a team trophy. When I came to OPRF, I told [former head] Coach [Paul] Collins I wanted to win a team trophy more than anything. Hopefully we get that done this year.”
S AMANTHA SMART
OPRF High School junior wrestler Jamiel Castleberry gets his hand raised in victory following the IHSA Class 3A 126-pound title match in Champaign, Feb. 21.
S AMANTHA SMART
OPRF junior wrestler Jamiel Castleberry squares up against Homewood-Flossmoor’s Chazz Robinson in an IHSA Class 3A 126-pound semi nal. Castleberry defeated Robinson 5-4, then went on to defe at Oleksandr Havr ylkiv of Hersey 5-1 the follow ing evening to win the title
Neumann, Cides power local swimmers to state
Fenwick overcomes nomadic season by qualifying four individuals, relay
By GREGG VOSS Contributing Reporter
Saturday is proof that the way things start doesn’t have to be the way they end. Case in point: Fenwick senior Michael Neumann began this season on the bench with sickness for two weeks. That’s a lot in the boys swimming and diving world.
He returned, though, and worked hard –despite the fact that he and the Friars were nomadic most of this campaign due to issues with Fenwick’s pool, swimming at both Triton College and the FMC Natatorium in Westmont, where the IHSA state meet is held
But at the IHSA sectional Saturday at Leyden, Neumann qualified for state next weekend in the 200-yard individual medley, where he took second in 1:54.56, and the 100 butterfly, also second in 50.78 seconds. He also swam a leg on the qualifying 200 medley relay, which opened the meet with a win in 1:33.57.
“He came back hungry to make up for lost time,” Fenwick coach Justin Jornd said.
After the meet, Neumann was all smiles, though he did say all that moving around throughout the season was challenging.
“There’s not much you can do about it,”
Michael Neumann competes in the 200 Yard IM during the IHSA Boys Swimming Sectional at Fenwick, Feb. 22, 2025.
Neumann said. “We just kept pushing each other day in and day out. At the end of the day, we just got in everyday and swam no matter what pool it was.”
Neumann’s senior teammate, Jack Posluszny, qualified for state individually by winning the 100 breaststroke in 57.44. He was
also part of that 200 medley relay, along with Neumann, sophomore Hugo Gibson and senior Thomas Caicedo. Gibson qualified individually by winning the 100 backstroke in 50.86, setting a pool record.
This is Posluszny’s third trip to state. He never tires of it, but he did have advice for first-timers.
“Go in to have fun,” Posluszny said. “You can’t go fast unless you’re having fun. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, it’s going to be hard if you get too nervous.”
The season came to an end for many swimmers Saturday, including Fenwick junior Sebastian Gutierrez, who took eighth in the 500 freestyle in 5:16.07. Jornd said he was among those who had come a long way during the season.
What’s Gutierrez’s off-season strategy? It’s pretty simple
“Staying in the pool,” he said. “Staying active and working hard.”
Cides stars for OPRF
If you want to talk about someone who maximized his time at the Leyden Sectional, look no further than Oak Park and River Forest High junior Alfonso Cides.
Cides qualified in two individual events – the 100 freestyle, where he swam 47.06 seconds to take second, just 48 of a second better than the qualifying time, and the 200 freestyle in 1:43.32, where he took third. He also led off the winning 200 freestyle relay, which took first in 1:26.90. Joining him on that relay
were juniors Connor Harmon and Cameron Kuenster, and senior Francesco Canzona.
“He’s a super-hard worker,” OPRF coach Clyde Lundgren said of Cides. “He’s not your loud, boisterous, vocal guy. He lets his swimming do the talking. He’s definitely a leader. The guys try to hitch their wagon to him.”
Cides was on a state-qualifying relay last year and thought a lot in the offseason about getting back as an individual.
“That offseason was six days a week, Monday through Saturday and just thinking about these cuts all year,” he said. “I think I’ve been prepared very well by coach Clyde.”
Part of Saturday’s drama included Kuenster, who took second in the 50 freestyle in 21.76 … just .03 of a second away from the qualifying time of 21.73. A disappointment, to be sure, but Kuenster wasn’t mad about it
“Being 03 seconds away from the state cut definitely hurt, but it was still close to a second off a cutoff, which I was very happy with,” Kuenster said. “That helped fuel my next race.”
Which was the 200 free relay, where he raced the anchor leg and earned his first trip to state.
“We’ve earned it and we can continue to prepare for it and practice to make the little things consistent like the walls and relay starts,” Kuenster said.
Senior diver Max Vannopas also qualified for state, finishing second with 330.30 points. As a team, OPRF took second with 255 points, while Fenwick was third with 226. Chicago Lane Tech won with 275.
TODD BANNOR Fenwick’s James Kiesewtter competes in the 100 Yard Butter y at East Leyden High School on Feb. 21.
TODD BANNOR
OPRF’s Alfonso Cides dives in at the start of the 200 Yard Freestyle at East Leyden High School on Feb. 21.
STEVE JOHNSTON
PUBLIC NOTICES PUBLIC NOTICES PUBLIC NOTICES
PUBLIC 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: M26001329 on February 3, 2026 Under the Assumed Business Name of PIZZA DOM with the business located at: 905 S. LOMBARD AVE. UNIT 2, OAK PARK, IL 60304. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: DOMINIC VALLONE 617 WILLOW GLEN ST. ADDISON, IL 60101, USA
Published in Wednesday Journal February 11, 18, 25, 2026
PUBLIC NOTICE
SECTION I REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
Landscape Maintenance and Watering 2026: Ogden Avenue, Cermak Road, Roosevelt Road and Depot District NOTICE TO PROPOSERS: The City of Berwyn (hereinafter City) is seeking Requests for Proposals for the project listed below. A Request for Proposal (RFP) packet is available at the City Clerk’s Office, City Hall, 6700 West 26th Street, Berwyn, IL 60402, or at https://www.berwyn-il. gov/government/bids-rfps
Sealed RFPs will be received at the City Clerk’s Office, until the time and date specified below, for: Landscape Maintenance and Watering 2026: Ogden Avenue, Cermak Road, Roosevelt Road and Depot District.
ADDRESS PROPOSALS TO: Attention of the City Clerk’s Office, City Hall, 6700 W. 26th Street, Berwyn IL 60402, on or before 10:00 a.m. on March 18th, 2026. Proposals shall be sealed and clearly marked on the front, “Proposal for Landscape Maintenance and Watering 2026: Ogden Avenue, Cermak Road, Roosevelt Road and Depot District.” Faxed or emailed proposals will not be accepted.
PROPOSALS ARE DUE NO LATER
THAN: 10:00 a.m. on March 18th, 2026. Proposers shall submit three (3) paper copies and one (1) electronic copy in .pdf format on a flash drive of their proposal.
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
-- WJ/FPR/RB LANDMARK --
QUESTIONS: All questions and clarifications regarding this Request for Proposal (RFP) must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. on March 6th, 2026 by e-mailing or calling the following City Representative: John Marchand, Public Works Director, 708-749-6510, jmarchand@ci.berwyn.il.us
Published in Wednesday Journal, Forest Park Review, RB Landmark February 25, 2026
LEGAL NOTICE
LEGAL NOTICE The Village of Oak Park will receive sealed bids from qualified contractors at the Public Works Center, 201 South Boulevard, Oak Park, Illinois 60302 Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. local time until 3:00 p.m. on Friday, March 13th, 2026 for the following:
Village of Oak Park 2026
Traffic Sign Materials Bid
Package Bid Number: 26 - 107
Bid documents may be obtained from the Village’s website at http://www.oak-park. us/bid. For questions, please call Public Works at (708) 3585700 during the above hours.
Published in Wednesday Journal February 25, 2026
PUBLIC NOTICE NOTICE TO BIDDERS
Notice is hereby given by the President and Board of Trustees of the Village of Brookfield, Illinois that bid proposals will be received for the following project:
the Edwin Hancock Engineering Company.
PUBLIC INFORMATION MEETING #2
2026 STREET IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT VILLAGE OF BROOKFIELD, ILLINOIS
This project will include the replacement of concrete curb and gutter, sidewalks, driveway aprons, and drainage structures, pavement widening, replacement of certain sections of combined sewers, milling and resurfacing certain pavements, landscaping disturbed areas, and performing other related work.
Sealed bids will be received up to the hour of 11:15 A.M. on Wednesday, the 11th day of March 2026, in the office of the Village Manager in the Village Hall located at 8820 Brookfield Avenue, Brookfield, Illinois. All sealed bids received will be publicly opened and read at 11:15 A.M. on the same day, Wednesday, the 11th day of March 2026, at the Village Hall.
Electronic copies of bidding documents, consisting of the bid proposal, project specifications, and project plans are available from the Edwin Hancock Engineering Co., 9933 Roosevelt Road, Westchester, Illinois 60154. Bidding documents can be requested by emailing info@ ehancock.com. No bidding documents will be issued after 4:30 P.M. on Friday, the 6th day of March 2026.
All bidders wishing to obtain bidding documents must be approved by the Village prior to obtaining bidding documents. All bidders must provide proof that they are prequalified with the Illinois Department of Transportation to perform at least 40% of the value of the work before being issued bidding documents. A non-refundable fee of Fifteen dollars ($15.00) will be required to obtain bidding documents. Proposals will only be accepted from bidders that have obtained bidding documents from
All bid proposals offered must be accompanied by a bid bond, cashier’s check or certified check in an amount not less than Five Percent (5%) of the total amount of the bid, as a guarantee that if the bid proposal is accepted, a contract will be entered into and the performance of the contract properly secured. Checks shall be made payable to the Order of the President and Board of Trustees of the Village of Brookfield. No bid proposal shall be considered unless accompanied by such bid bond or check.
Any bidder in doubt as to the true meaning of any part of the bidding documents may request an interpretation thereof from the Village. The bidder requesting the interpretation shall be responsible for its prompt delivery. At the request of the bidder, or in the event that the Village deems the interpretation to be substantive, the interpretation will be made by written addendum issued by the Village.
In the event that a written addendum is issued, either as a result of a request for interpretation or the result of a change in the bidding documents issued by the Village, a copy of such addendum will be emailed to all prospective bidders. The Village will not assume responsibility for receipt of such addendum. In all cases it will be the bidders’ responsibility to obtain all addenda issued.
The Contractor and Subcontractor shall comply with all regulations issued pursuant to Prevailing Wage Act (820 ILCS 130), and other applicable Federal Laws and regulations pertaining to labor standards.
The Village of Brookfield reserves the rights to determine the lowest, responsive, responsible bidder, to waive irregularities, and to reject any or all bid proposals.
BY ORDER THE PRESIDENT AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES
VILLAGE OF BROOKFIELD, ILLINOIS
Published in RB Landmark February 25, 2026
Scheduled by The Village of River Forest For Improvement of the Washington Boulevard Corridor The Village of River Forest will hold a second Public Information Meeting concerning the proposed improvement of Washington Boulevard Corridor. The Public Information Meeting will be held in the Community Room on the first floor of Village Hall (400 Park Ave, River Forest, IL 60305) on Thursday, March 19th, 2026 from 4:00 - 7:00 PM. All persons interested in this project are invited to attend this meeting.
The purpose of this public meeting is to share information and gather community input on Phase I of the project, which includes preliminary engineering and environmental studies for proposed improvements along Washington Boulevard between Thatcher and Lathrop Avenues. The proposed improvements are intended to enhance safety and accessibility for motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists.
This will be an open house–style meeting, and residents are encouraged to stop by at any time during the scheduled hours to review project materials, ask questions, and provide feedback. Village staff and members of the project team will be present to receive input, provide information, and answer questions. Those unable to attend in person may submit comments or questions via email to WashingtonCorridorProject@ primeraeng.com. Additional project information is available on the Village website or by visiting the QR code below:
The Village of River Forest is committed to ensuring accessibility for all participants. Persons with disabilities who require reasonable accommodations to attend or participate in this meeting are encouraged to contact the person listed below by March 12th to make arrangements. The contact may be by telephone, in writing, by fax or by telecommunications device for the deaf (TTY).
For additional information, please contact Jack Bielak, Director of Public Works & Engineering, Village of River Forest | 400 Park Ave, River Forest, IL 60305 | 708-714-3551
Published in Wednesday Journal February 25, March 4, 2026
Submit events and see full calendar at oakpark.com/events
Integrity Matters. Leadership Matters. Trust Matters.
Attorney Richard Boykin has built his career on honesty, strong moral values and a committment to do what’s right - not what is easy. From fighting for transparency in government to standing up for working families, he has always put community first. When others chose politics as usual, Boykin chose principle. When tough decisions had to be made, he chose integrity over expediency. Because real leadership isn’t about promises - it’s about character.
by
Treasurer Maria Pappas, Ald. Ray Lopez, Ald. Silvana Tabares, Hon. Billy Marovitz, Dr. Willie Wilson, Paul Vallas, Rabbi Barry Axler, Hon. Anan Abu Taleb, Hon. Jim Taglia
Why you should check your judges
Judges are powerful officials whose decisions can take someone’s freedom, remove a child from their parents, or evict someone from their home. They have the power to correct or perpetuate injustices. That’s why Injustice Watch created this guide to judicial candidates running in Cook County’s primary elections on March 17.
Illinois voters elect judges every two years. This year, 46 candidates are running for 29 judicial vacancies—continuing a trend of declining competition in these races. Most candidates are running for seats on the circuit court, where judges hear cases such as tra ffic tickets, divorces, evictions, and criminal charges. All candidates this year are running in the Democratic primary; the winners will run unopposed in the November general election.
Our team spent months researching the candidates’ legal experience, community involvement, donors, political connections, and controversies. Injustice Watch does not make recommendations or endorsements. Our guide has everything you need to be an informed voter.
About the cover
The cover art is inspired by Norman Rockwell’s 1968 illustration “The Right to Know,” which accompanied an editorial in Look magazine advocating for more government transparency during the Vietnam War. I see this cover as a reminder to our readers of their responsibility to watch what our government is doing and their power to demand transparency and accountability from judges and other elected officials.
—Verónica Martinez, Injustice Watch visual reporter
Find your subcircuit
Cook County is divided into 20 subcircuits, geographic boundaries first created in the 1990s to build a more diverse judiciary. About two-thirds of the county’s circuit court judges are elected from subcircuits. Once elected, they have the same roles and responsibilities as judges elected countywide.
Check this map to see which subcircuit you live in. If you’re not sure, you can check your voter ID card, scan the QR code on the opposite page, or visit injusticewatch.org/checkyourjudges
Primary voting
This year’s Illinois primary election is March 17. Early voting in Chicago’s 50 wards and sites around suburban Cook County starts March 2 (and earlier in downtown Chicago and at suburban courthouses).
To find your polling place and check your voter status:
• Chicago residents, visit chicagoelections.gov
• Suburban Cook County residents, visit cookcountyclerkil.gov/elections
Who can vote?
Voters must be at least 18 years old, be a U.S. citizen, and reside in their voting precinct for at least 30 days prior to Election Day. People with felony convictions can vote in Illinois as long as they are not serving a felony sentence in prison or jail. People in jail pre-trial and people on mandatory supervised release are eligible to vote.
Sources: Cook County, U.S. Census, Google Maps
MCCARTHY
Map by Jonathon Berlin and Mark Friesen
More in our digital guide
This is a condensed version of our guide, edited for space. For more detailed candidate profi les, including responses to our candidate survey, complete bar association evaluations, endorsements, and top campaign donors, scan the QR code or visit injusticewatch.org/ checkyourjudges.
Understanding the candidate icons
Current or former public defender
or former prosecutor
Current or former public defender: This candidate has served as a public defender, representing clients in criminal cases who can’t a fford a private attorney. Current or former prosecutor: This candidate has served as a prosecutor at the city, county, state, or federal level.
Appointed judge: This judge was appointed by the state Supreme Court to temporarily fi ll a vacancy. Appointed judges must run for a full term to stay on the bench. Past controversy: This candidate has been involved in some kind of personal or professional controversy. We report what we found in the “Notable” section and offer candidates an opportunity to respond to our reporting. Democratic Party pick: This candidate has earned the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic Party. The party only endorses candidates in countywide races.
Highly qualified ratings: Two or more bar associations have rated this candidate highly qualified or recommended. Not all bar associations give out ratings higher than qualified.
Negative ratings: At least two bar associations have said this candidate is not recommended or not qualified to be a judge. Candidates who don’t participate in the ratings process are automatically rated as not recommended.
JUDITH C . RICE 68, River Forest
Experience:
• Presiding judge of the Cook County Circuit Court’s domestic violence division (2021-present)
• Circuit judge hearing divorce, domestic and elder abuse, and eviction cases (2014-2021)
• Senior vice president of BMO Harris Bank, overseeing the bank’s community development activities and serving as its Community Reinvestment Act officer to ensure equitable lending (2007-2014)
• Deputy chief of sta ff to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, working on public housing and economic development issues (2006-2007)
• Chicago City Treasurer, elected to oversee city investments (2000-2006)
• Commissioner, Chicago Department of Transportation (1999-2000)
• Commissioner, Chicago Department of Water (1996-1999)
• Various roles in the Chicago departments of law and revenue and as executive assistant to Mayor Daley (1989-1996)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in the criminal appeals and juvenile court divisions (1988-1989)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall Law School) (1988)
Notable: Rice is well-regarded by domestic violence survivor advocates for her management of the domestic violence courthouse. She has led efforts to increase access to emergency petitions for restraining orders to nearly 24 hours per day.
Rice was the fi rst woman to head Chicago’s transportation and water departments. Rice would be the fi rst openly lesbian appellate court justice in Illinois. Rice’s father, Fred Rice, was Chicago’s fi rst Black police commissioner.
LUZ MARIA TOLEDO
46, Palos Hills
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, assigned to the civil bureau, where she defends the county in real estate tax matters. She spent 11 years prosecuting felony and misdemeanor criminal cases. (2007-present)
• Policy adviser, Illinois lieutenant governor’s office, working under then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn on proposed legislation related to consumer protections, health care, and the environment (2006-2007)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2006)
Notable: In 2020, Toledo won a case in which a New Jersey investment fi rm purchased a segment of the Kennedy Expressway in a Cook County tax sale, which the assessor’s office had misclassified as vacant land, then claimed it was owed $1 million in interest after the sale was deemed erroneous and voided.
44, Near South Side
Experience:
STEVEN Q. McKENZIE 59, Irving Park
Experience:
• Assistant corporation counsel supervisor, Chicago Law Department, overseeing lawsuits against property owners over building code violations (2006-present)
• Director of litigation, Law Center for Better Housing, representing tenants in court (2003-2006)
• Assistant defender, O ffice of the Illinois State Appellate Defender, representing clients in appeals (2002)
• Attorney for legal aid organizations in Cleveland and Chicago, representing people in poverty and people with HIV/AIDS (1998-2001)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (1997)
Notable: McKenzie, who specializes in housing law, works for the city of Chicago helping to draft housing ordinances and suing landlords over building conditions. For example, McKenzie took numerous landlords to court for failing to heat homes during a cold snap in 2019. In 2014, he helped press the owner of an unsafe Pilsen building to aid tenants with relocation assistance. More recently, he represented the city in a lawsuit against the owners of Ellis Lakeview, a troubled apartment building in Kenwood.
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court in January 2025, hearing tra ffic cases
• Judicial clerk to state Supreme Court Justice Mary Jane Theis, evaluating petitions for leave to appeal, reviewing and analyzing motions, and drafting opinions (2019-2025)
• Illinois assistant attorney general in the civil appeals division, fi ling briefs and conducting oral arguments before the Illinois Supreme Court and state and federal courts of appeals (2013-2018)
• Senior associate at a large law fi rm, focusing on complex commercial, employment, and products liability litigation (2008-2013)
• Law clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (2006-2008)
Law school: University of Chicago (2006)
Current
Democratic Party pick
Past controversy
Appointed judge
COOK CIRCUIT COBBS VACANCY
COOK CIRCUIT | BURKE VACANCY
LINDA SACKEY
COOK CIRCUIT | COGHLAN VACANCY
ASHONTA C . RICE 47, Lower West Side
Experience:
• Attorney in private practice specializing in family law, but also handling real estate, probate, criminal law, and other matters. She also serves as a court-appointed child representative and guardian ad litem. (2007-present)
• Assistant public guardian, Cook County Office of the Public Guardian, representing children in minor guardianship cases, special education advocacy, administrative appeals, and advocacy for minors (2004-2007)
Law school: Loyola University New Orleans (2004)
Notable: Rice fi rst ran for judge in the 15th subcircuit in 2018. She ran for judge countywide in 2024, but was removed from the ballot by the Cook County Electoral Board for failing to include her married name in her fi ling paperwork. Rice was in divorce proceedings at the time.
In 2021, Rice was found by a Cook County Electoral Board hearing officer to have engaged in a “pattern of fraud” while gathering petition signatures for her mother’s campaign for Chicago Heights Park District commissioner. Rice disputed the officer’s fi ndings in an interview with Injustice Watch. “The fi ndings of the hearing officer are her fi ndings and her thoughts, but I testified under oath telling the truth. … I did not collect any fraudulent signatures.” The hearing officer struck 32 signatures collected by Rice; Rice’s mother did not appeal and was removed from the ballot.
MICHAEL CABONARGI 55, Wilmette
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing tra ffic cases (2025-present)
• Democratic counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, researching the backgrounds of Trump administration nominees (January-June 2025)
• Region 5 Director, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, implementing health care policies across six Midwestern states (2023-2025)
• Commissioner, Cook County Board of Review, evaluating and deciding property tax appeals (2011-2022)
• Senior attorney, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, prosecuting fi nancial fraud cases in the Chicago regional office (2005-2011)
• Attorney at two large Chicago law fi rms, where he also represented the Cook County Sheri ff ’s O ffice in police misconduct lawsuits and helped defend the City of Chicago following the closure of Meigs Field (2002-2005)
• Law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge William J. Hibbler (2000-2002)
Law school: University of Illinois (2000)
Notable: Before law school, Cabonargi was an aide to U.S.
Sens. Paul Simon and Dick Durbin, and he quickly rose through the Illinois Democratic Party ranks. In 2011, then-Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans appointed him to the Board of Review. He was reelected to the board unopposed three times, before losing his seat in 2022.
While Cabonargi was a board commissioner, his wife, Erin Lavin Cabonargi, worked from 2015 to 2019 as a director and consultant for Chicago developer Sterling Bay. Cabonargi initially told Injustice Watch he not only recused himself, but “completely walled off ” himself and his sta ff from any Sterling Bay property tax appeals during his wife’s tenure. Records show he and his sta ff participated in deciding at least three Sterling Bay appeals in that period, including one in which he and the other commissioners reduced the valuation of a Hyde Park fitness center, leading to a $110,000 reduction in its taxes. In two other appeals, Cabonargi agreed with other commissioners not to change property valuations. Records provided by the board did not show any other Sterling Bay appeals decided by the commissioners in that period.
Cabonargi told Injustice Watch his recusals put Sterling Bay at a disadvantage because the company’s cases were then decided by only two of the three commissioners. But records provided by the Board of Review showed no instance where Cabonargi recorded a recusal and only the other two commissioners voted on a Sterling Bay appeal. Cabonargi later asked to clarify his statements. “In no case did Sterling Bay receive a benefit while I was commissioner and while my wife worked at Sterling Bay that they would not otherwise have received based upon the evidence they submitted to the board because I interceded to give them a benefit,” he said.
In 2017 and 2018, the county Board of Ethics found Cabonargi and the two other Board of Review commissioners collected improper political donations from real estate professionals who practiced before the Board of Review. Cabonargi’s campaign violations mounted over nine months—even after two ethics board warnings. Cabonargi said he ultimately returned all $82,050 in excessive contributions reported in ethics notices.
In 2017, Cabonargi’s political aides created a second campaign committee, The Fund for 9th District Democrats. Of the $107,813 in donations to this new committee, $90,200 came from real estate professionals whose work included property tax appeals, an Injustice Watch analysis found. Cabonargi said in an interview that he followed the law and quickly returned excess contributions.
Cabonargi also promoted close political operatives to senior positions at the Board of Review while they did campaign work for him, the county O ffice of the Independent Inspector General reported in 2020. Cabonargi was “Commissioner A” in the report, and his role has not been previously reported. “There were no allegations of criminal or civil misconduct. There was no action. There was just no evidence of misconduct,” Cabonargi said.
From 2013 through 2019, Cabonargi sued two former Chicago Tribune columnists over $5,220 Cabonargi said he was owed following the sale of his Logan Square home to them. “It turned legal quickly, in a way I did not expect,” columnist Heidi Stevens told Injustice Watch. Cabonargi ultimately won in court and said he had little recollection of the events.
AVA GEORGE STEWART
58, Near North Side
Experience:
• Solo practitioner representing clients in tra ffic, DUI, and other criminal cases, along with civil litigation including wrongful death and breach of contract cases (2023-present, 2005-2021)
• Chief of the misdemeanor and tra ffic division for the Lake County State’s Attorney’s O ffice (2021-2023)
• City of Chicago municipal prosecutor handling driving offenses (2003-2005)
Law school: University of Illinois (2003)
Notable: Stewart is vice chair of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission, a public body that oversees guardianship for people with disabilities and mental illness and advocates for their rights.
D’ANTHONY ‘TONY’ THEDFORD
55, Loop
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, assigned to the pretrial division (2024-present)
• Attorney in private practice handling criminal defense, personal injury, employment, and civil rights cases (2005-2024)
• Cook County assistant public defender (1997-2005)
Law school: University of Alabama (1996)
Notable: Thedford represented the family of Calvin Cross, who was fatally shot by Chicago police in 2011, in a civil lawsuit. The city settled the case for $2 million. In 2021, county officials considered him to lead the public defender’s office, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Between 2011 and 2018, Thedford and his wife faced state and federal liens seeking about $249,000 in unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties. Thedford told Injustice Watch his state debt had been resolved and he continues to pay the IRS. He said he “will be able to wrap this up pretty soon.” Thedford said his debts ballooned after he and his wife bought a home and borrowed money to improve it shortly before the 2008 housing crisis. He noted that the Illinois Supreme Court vetted him before appointing him to the bench.
RADIANCE WARD
43, Kenwood
Experience:
• Cook County assistant public defender, serving as lead trial attorney in fi rst-degree murder cases. She previously worked in the felony trial, misdemeanor, and juvenile justice divisions. (2013-present)
• Case manager, Cook County O ffice of the Chief Judge, in the mortgage foreclosure division (2012-2013)
• Solo practitioner focused on domestic relations and tra ffic cases (2009-2012)
• Sta ff attorney, Life Span Center for Legal Services and Advocacy, representing domestic violence survivors in divorce and order of protection proceedings (2007-2009)
Law school: Loyola University Chicago (2007)
NATALIE L . HOWSE
52, Near South Side
Experience:
• Solo practitioner focused on contracts and civil litigation (2025-present)
• Assistant general counsel, Illinois Commission on Equity & Inclusion, reviewing agencies’ procurement decisions and equity policies and responding to Freedom of Information Act requests (2024-2025)
• Manager in the banking division of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees banks’ compliance with equitable lending laws (2024)
• Litigation attorney, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, representing the department in administrative cases against parents and legal guardians (2018-2024)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in several divisions, including felony review, juvenile court, and felony trials (2001-2018)
Law school: Howard University (2000)
Notable: Howse is the sister of Illinois Appellate Court Judge Nathaniel Howse Jr.
In 2018, Howse was terminated from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ffice. She told Injustice Watch in an interview she had no complaints about being fi red and reflected warmly on her experience there. “I think it was probably time for me to go,” she said.
Between 2007 and 2019, Howse faced two foreclosure cases and two eviction suits from her condominium unit, all of which were dismissed. In that period, she was also sued on three occasions for alleged unpaid debt and had her wages garnished for a default on a student loan. All cases were eventually dismissed and the judgments satisfied.
Howse has also been a landlord, and between 2005 and 2006 fi led a halfdozen evictions against tenants of a 12-unit building in Greater Grand Crossing that her family owned and has since been demolished. Howse said these experiences “would make me a little bit more compassionate for the litigants that appear before me. I understand those fi nancial hardships that they face.”
Howse is a past president of the Cook County Bar Association and has been the director of its foundation’s legal clinic since 2023.
ASHLEY GREER SHAMBLEY 41, Avalon Park
Experience:
• Cook County assistant public defender, mainly handling felony cases, currently assigned to the multiple defendant unit (2012-present)
• Review board member, Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to hear appeals in attorney disciplinary cases (2025-present)
• Associate at the law office of John Lyke, now a Cook County judge, focused on criminal defense (2011-2012)
Law school: DePaul University (2010)
Notable: Shambley is on the executive board of the public defenders union and has been outspoken about issues of racial justice and equity in the court system.
In 2020, Shambley spoke at a Black Lives Matter rally outside the Cook County criminal courthouse. “It is a di fferent life being a Black public defender, because these are our people every day who are ushered through those doors,” Shambley said at the time.
She also spoke with the Chicago Tribune in 2021 about the backlog of criminal cases as the court came back from the Covid-19 shutdown. She expressed frustration with elected officials who were blaming each other for the court closures and not addressing the root causes of violence.
Shambley represented Paris Sadler, who was accused of shooting a Chicago police officer in 2012. The case became controversial after a prosecutor was caught lying under oath. Sadler eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
GINGER ODOM
56, Avalon Park
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing tra ffic cases (2025-present)
• Director of expungement, O ffice of the State Appellate Defender, overseeing a program educating people with eligible criminal records about how to expunge or seal their records (2020-2025)
• Assistant appellate defender, O ffice of the State Appellate Defender, representing criminal defendants in direct appeals (2004-2020)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2003)
TIFFANY N . BROOKS
49, South Shore
Experience:
• First deputy commissioner, Chicago Business A ff airs and Consumer Protection (2025-present)
• Chief of sta ff, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (2023-2024)
• General counsel, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (2020-2023)
• Assistant commissioner, Chicago Business A ff airs and Consumer Protection, serving as a liaison to the mayor’s office and to other officials (2018-2020)
• Investigator, Civilian O ffice of Police Accountability, reviewing police misconduct complaints (FebruaryJuly 2018)
• Legislative aide, Chicago City Council committees on economic development and education and child development, responsible for reviewing and drafting ordinances (2015-2018)
• Solo practitioner on a range of cases, including evictions, probate, criminal defense, and domestic relations (2013-2020)
• Senior lending manager and, later, sta ff attorney, Urban Partnership Bank, reviewing contracts and managing residential foreclosures (2004-2013)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2009)
Notable: Brooks previously ran for judge in the 5th subcircuit in 2022, but lost in a four-way race. In 2015, she ran for 5th Ward alderperson, losing to incumbent Leslie Hairston.
One of Brooks’ largest campaign donors, giving $2,500, is housing developer Elzie Higginbottom, whose East Lake Management & Development Corp. has been criticized for the conditions of its apartment buildings.
3RD
JOHN CARROLL 55, Riverside
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing domestic violence cases (2025-present)
• Deputy chief of sta ff, O ffice of the Illinois Attorney General, focused on legislation and criminal justice policy (2019-2025)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in several divisions, including felony trial, sex crimes, narcotics, and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He also worked for nine years in the legislative unit. (2000-2019)
Law school: Loyola University Chicago (1999)
Notable: In 2021, Carroll was appointed to a four-year term on the Riverside Township Board. He has applied multiple times to be a judge.
3RD SUBCIRCUIT | SHERLOCK VACANCY
MARTIN DOUGLAS REGGI 74, Cicero
Experience:
• Solo attorney in Berwyn focusing on criminal and civil law, including real estate closings and bankruptcies (1985-present)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, drafting appeals and working in suburban courthouses (1980-1985)
Law school: Northern Illinois University (1979)
Notable: This is Reggi’s fourth run for judge. At 74, he is the oldest judicial candidate this year. He has run a limited campaign, reporting no contributions since mid-2024. He declined an interview, but in response to Injustice Watch’s candidate survey, he called his experience an asset. “My 45 years of independent legal practice, as a former prosecutor and longtime general practitioner, have prepared me to bring stability, integrity, and neutrality to the bench.”
RACHEL MARRELLO 51, Riverside
Experience:
• Operations counsel, Cook County Health, serving as a legal adviser for hospital leaders and ensuring compliance with employment laws (2022-present)
• Investigator, Cook County O ffice of the Independent Inspector General, leading investigations into alleged fraud, waste, and mismanagement (2010-2022)
• Attorney for the Cook County Shakman Compliance Administrator and the Forest Preserve of Cook County, investigating systemic patronage hiring practices (2007-2008; 2009-2010)
• Attorney at several small law fi rms, representing employees and labor unions in arbitration and employment benefit cases (2000-2010)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2000)
Notable: Marrello was an elected board member of Riverside School District 96 from 2013 to 2017. The Riverside-Brookfield Landmark described her as “not afraid to ru ffle feathers, asking tough questions and speaking her mind.” She was a critic of two former superintendents, one of whom she allegedly reported to the State’s Attorney’s O ffice for “questionable expenses,” the Landmark reported. No charges were fi led.
Her husband, Daniel J. Marrello, is a retired Riverside police officer.
5TH
STEPHANIE S . KELLY 52, Grand Boulevard
Experience:
• Contract attorney for a national legal recruiting fi rm (2023-present)
• Associate general counsel for labor and employment, Cresco Labs, a national cannabis company (2022-2023)
• Senior corporate counsel, Harley Davidson (2021-2022)
• General counsel, Chicago State University. She started as deputy general counsel and was promoted in 2018. (2017-2020)
• Partner at a national law fi rm, representing employers in labor cases (2014-2016)
• Partner at a large global law fi rm representing employers in labor law cases (2005-2014)
• Associate at a national fi rm (2001-2005)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2001)
Notable: Kelly is married to Cook County Circuit Court Judge David L. Kelly.
8TH SUBCIRCUIT | GAMRATH VACANCY
46, Lincoln Park
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney serving as deputy supervisor of the labor and employment litigation division. She started in the civil actions bureau in 2017 and was promoted in 2019. (2017-present)
• Associate at an international law fi rm, focusing on complex commercial litigation and fi nancial services transactions and conducting internal and external corporate investigations (2010-2017)
• Law clerk for U.S. Appellate Judge William Bauer (2009-2010)
• Law clerk for U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm (2008-2009)
• Associate at a small law fi rm, focusing on commercial litigation cases (2007-2008)
Law school: Loyola University Chicago (2007)
Notable: Ori recently represented the Cook County Health and Hospitals System in a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the health system failed to accommodate a pharmacy technician who refused to receive the Covid-19 vaccine on religious grounds. The county successfully argued vaccination was the best way to protect vulnerable patients and sta ff at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital.
47, Lincoln Park
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in several divisions, including felony trial, felony review, and the sexual assault and domestic violence bureau. Last year, she was promoted to deputy supervisor of fi rst appearance court, where she oversees detention eligibility hearings and trains sta ffers. (2003-present)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2003)
Notable: Dibler has prosecuted high-profi le cases, including a Michigan man who was found guilty of threatening to kill former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
GARSON FISCHER
49, North Center
Experience:
• Illinois assistant attorney general, who has spent his career in the criminal appeals division, becoming a supervising attorney in 2019 and deputy chief in 2022 (2005-present)
Law school: Georgetown University (2005)
Notable: Fischer has represented the state in hundreds of cases before state and federal appeals courts. Last year, he defended the state’s concealed carry laws in a case before the Illinois Supreme Court. In 2016, Fischer helped prepare a case for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court that was ultimately dismissed.
ELIZABETH CHRISTINA DIBLER
KATHLEEN CUNNIFF ORI
68, Lincoln Park
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing tra ffic and domestic violence cases (2025-present)
• Worked at a large, national law fi rm focusing on appeals and complex motions on malpractice and workers’ compensation cases (2022-2025)
• Solo practitioner handling appeals and complex motions in civil and criminal cases (2021-2022)
• Cook County assistant public defender, who started out as a trial attorney in juvenile court and later handled felony trials and appellate cases. In 2003, he became a supervisor of the legal resources division, which handles appeals and post-conviction cases. He was promoted to chief of the division in 2008. He became chief of sta ff to then-Public Defender Amy Campanelli in 2015. (1984-2021)
Law school: DePaul University (1982)
Notable: Finkle was Campanelli’s chief of sta ff when she and the county were sued in 2017 by female assistant public defenders who said she and Sheri ff Tom Dart were not doing enough to address sexual harassment at the jail. The county settled the lawsuit for $14 million in 2020. Finkle was not named in the suit or accused of wrongdoing.
Finkle has been a fi nalist for Cook County associate judge twice and ran for circuit judge in 1996.
In January 2025, the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Finkle to a six-year term on the Board of Commissioners for the O ffice of the State Appellate Defender, which represents indigent defendants in appellate cases.
Former colleagues said Finkle has a “brilliant” legal mind, and attorneys who have appeared before him said he is very professional. But some domestic violence advocates have said he lacks patience to preside over a high-volume courtroom where emotions run high. They asked to speak anonymously because they don’t want their clients’ cases to be negatively impacted. In an interview, Finkle said he doesn’t believe he’s been unfair. “I understand sometimes someone can be dissatisfied with my ruling, and I’m sorry for that dissatisfaction,” he said.
DAN BALANOFF
46, Near West Side
Experience:
• Top aide to Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele, acting as a legal adviser and overseeing office operations. He also served as a lead litigator at the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board, where he defended the county’s property assessment values. (2023-2025)
• Chief deputy commissioner, Cook County Board of Review, overseeing administrative functions and internal policies (2022-2023)
• Managing partner at Balanoff and Associates, focusing on estate planning, real estate, and consumer bankruptcy law (2007-present)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2007)
Notable: Balanoff comes from a prominent family of judges, politicians, and labor organizers. His father, Robert Balanoff, was a Cook County Circuit Court judge for 20 years until retiring in 2025. His grandmother, Miriam Balanoff, was a Cook County judge and state representative. His uncle, Clem Balanoff, was also a state representative as well as national political director for one of the largest unions representing public transit workers.
Balanoff ran unsuccessfully for judge countywide in 2022.
In June 2024, Balanoff was named as a co-defendant in a federal whistleblower lawsuit against Commissioner Steele. Frank Calabrese, a former employee, accused Balanoff of retaliation, alleging Balanoff demoted him and fi led false disciplinary complaints against him after Calabrese refused to leak information about the Chicago Bears’ tax appeal on their new Arlington Heights property. In January 2025, the county settled the lawsuit for $180,000 without admitting wrongdoing. In an interview with Injustice Watch, Balanoff denied the lawsuit’s allegations and said decisions related to Calabrese’s employment were made by Steele.
In June 2025, a month after Balanoff resigned from the Board of Review, the county’s Board of Ethics fi ned him more than $5,000 related to two investigations, records show. The fi rst alleged Balanoff conducted legal work for his own fi rm, engaged in personal travel, and attended two Cubs games on county time. The second said he wrongly allowed a
sta ffer to attend a conference on county time. Balanoff challenged the ethics board’s fi ndings, arguing that the board didn’t have jurisdiction, that he did not knowingly violate the county’s rules, and that his use of county resources did not interfere with his duties or impose extra taxpayer cost.
In an interview with Injustice Watch, Balanoff claimed the controversies surrounding his employment at the Board of Review stemmed from his attempts to unionize the office.
“When you come into an agency like the Board of Review, which has been fraught with corruption, bad decisions, and shadiness for years, and you try and change that, you get a lot of pushback,” Balanoff said.
KATHERINE CAROLE MORRISON
39, Near West Side
Experience:
• Partner at Burns Noland LLP, a small law fi rm, representing state and local governments, including the City of Chicago, and police officers in civil rights lawsuits. She has also defended hospitals, nursing homes, and medical professionals in malpractice cases. (2018-present)
• Associate at a national law fi rm, defending corporations, hospitals, and municipalities in civil lawsuits (2013-2017)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2012)
Notable: Morrison has helped represent the City of Chicago in high-profi le lawsuits, including a 2013 wrongful death case alleging the Chicago Police Department’s “code of silence” protected a former homicide detective who killed two young men when he crashed into their vehicle while driving drunk. The city settled the lawsuit in 2017, and City Council approved a $20 million payout.
Morrison is the daughter of state Sen. Julie Morrison, a Democrat representing parts of Chicago’s northern suburbs. Morrison’s judicial campaign has received $72,800—the legal limit—from her mother’s campaign fund, as well as $30,000 from Illinois Senate President Don Harmon’s campaign committee.
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LESTER FINKLE
11TH
44, Oak Park
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, in the child protection division (2019-present)
• Supervising administrative law judge for the Illinois Department of Human Services, presiding over hearings on public assistance eligibility (2018-2019)
• Attorney at the O ffice of the Cook County Public Guardian, representing minors in abuse and neglect proceedings (2011-2018)
• Sta ff attorney at a domestic violence legal clinic, representing survivors in order-ofprotection hearings (2011)
• Fellow at the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services, representing victims of elder abuse and exploitation (2008-2010)
Law school: DePaul University (2008)
Notable: For more than 15 years, Knox and his wife have been licensed foster parents with the Hephzibah Children’s Association in Oak Park.
48, Elmwood Park
Experience:
• Solo practitioner based in River Grove primarily handling criminal defense, real estate law, probate, and estate planning (2009-present)
• Associate at a small Chicago law fi rm (2005-2009)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2005)
Notable: Carrozza is a fourth-degree member of the Knights of Columbus, whose leaders have historically opposed abortion rights and same-sex marriage. In an interview, Carrozza said he takes no issue with same-sex marriage, and although he opposes abortion on religious grounds, his views would not impact his decision-making as a judge. “Obviously, I would do my absolute 110% best to always be fair and impartial. I do truly believe that my beliefs— whatever they may be—would not come into play with regards to any type of rulings,” he said.
11TH SUBCIRCUIT ROBERTS VACANCY
43, Park Ridge
Experience:
• Circuit Court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, assigned to the domestic violence division (2025-present)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, who prosecuted felony cases at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, served in the grand jury and felony review units, and prosecuted felony and misdemeanor cases at the Skokie courthouse (2008-2025)
Law school: DePaul University (2008)
Notable: Przekota ran for judge in the 11th subcircuit in 2024 but lost in a close race. She was a Division I college swimmer and water polo player and is the head coach of the Loyola Academy girls water polo team. She is married to Wilmette police Sgt. Chris Przekota.
13TH SUBCIRCUIT CURRY, JR. VACANCY
54, Inverness
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney assigned to the Skokie courthouse, where he handles felony preliminary hearings, grand jury indictments, and alternative to prosecution programs. Previous assignments include felony trial, child sex crimes, and felony review units. (1999-present)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (1999)
Notable: Groebner’s wife, Susanne, died in 2022 at the age of 46, less than two years after she was elected as a Cook County Circuit Court judge. Groebner’s mother is bankrolling his campaign with a $344,300 loan.
13TH
46, Elgin
Experience:
• Managing partner of Pedersen & Irvin Ltd., in Kane County, working with former Aurora mayor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin on criminal defense and civil litigation (2017-present)
• Partner at the Law O ffices of Tegeler & Pedersen, which became Pedersen’s private practice following her former law partner’s election to the Kane County Circuit Court (2012-2017)
• Kane County assistant public defender, representing indigent individuals, including those involuntarily committed to Elgin Mental Health Center (2009-2012)
Law school: Loyola University Chicago (2008)
Notable: Pedersen ran unsuccessfully for Kane County judge twice, in 2020 and 2022. In both races, Pedersen was not recommended by the Illinois State Bar Association, based on negative reviews from dozens of fellow attorneys.
Pedersen has been charged with driving under the influence three times since 2004, court records show. In the fi rst two cases, she ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving. Her latest arrest came in September 2023, after police in Streamwood pulled her over for speeding and the officer noted signs of impairment, records show. The DUI charge in that case was ultimately dismissed, and Pedersen successfully petitioned to expunge the charge from her record over the objections of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ffice, records show. “I’ve made mistakes in my life, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t pick myself back up and keep going because that’s the type of person I am … and that’s why I believe that people deserve second chances, and third chances, and maybe sometimes a fourth,” Pedersen said in an interview.
Pedersen is the president of her father’s landscaping company, which was sued in federal court over wage theft allegations in 2018 and 2019, court records show. The earlier lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount. The most recent lawsuit, which also named Pedersen as a defendant, was certified as a class-action suit and settled in 2020 for about $100,000. Pedersen said that her father runs the business and she helps with its fi nancial and legal dealings and that the company’s attorneys recommended settling the wage-theft claims.
13TH SUBCIRCUIT | THOMAS J. KELLEY VACANCY
WILLIAM F. KELLEY 71, Schaumburg
Experience:
• Managing partner at Kelley, Kelley & Kelley, a law practice founded by his father that specializes in commercial law, business law, and estate planning (1984-present)
Law school: Loyola University Chicago (1980)
Notable: Two of Kelley’s brothers and former law partners, Martin C. Kelley and Thomas J. Kelley, are former Cook County Circuit Court judges. Martin Kelley died in 2024, and Thomas Kelley, whose seat his brother is running for, retired in 2025.
Kelley is the chair of the Board of Trustees of Harper College in Palatine. He has been on the board since 2003 and previously served as dean of graduate studies.
BRITTANY MICHELLE PEDERSEN
JARRETT KNOX
JOHN R . CARROZZA
KIM PRZEKOTA
ROBERT ‘BOB’ GROEBNER
DAN NARANJO
53, Barrington
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court and assigned to the domestic violence division (2025-present)
• Cook County assistant public defender, serving most recently in the multiple defendant and felony trial divisions (2000-2025)
• Associate in a small law fi rm in Miami specializing in criminal defense (1997-2000)
Law school: University of Miami (1997)
Notable: For more than 20 years, Naranjo’s primary residence was in Lake County, according to interviews and property records. Naranjo said he applied to become an associate judge in Lake County in 2024, but was unsuccessful. In December that year, the Illinois Supreme Court began accepting applications to fi ll the vacant Cook County Circuit Court seat previously held by Shannon P. O’Malley, who lost retention after Injustice Watch questioned whether he lived in Cook County, as required. By then, Naranjo said he had moved into a rental in Cook County in order to submit his application. In February 2025, Naranjo and his wife purchased a condo at the edge of the 13th subcircuit. Naranjo was appointed to the O’Malley vacancy in June and put his Lake County house up for sale a month later.
Naranjo was born in Cuba and immigrated to the U.S. as a 1-year-old with his family.
54, Calumet City
Experience:
• Lead attorney, Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ffice child support services division, litigating civil cases on behalf of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services and criminal cases related to unpaid child support, currently supervising about 12 attorneys (2008-present)
Law school: Thomas Cooley Law School (2006)
Notable: As a child, Moore was a member of the performance troupe Emmett Till Players. Moore also worked as an personal assistant to Mamie Till Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, and continues to serve on the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation executive board.
In the 1990s, Moore was the host of a popular gospel radio program on WYCA.
In 2024, Moore disclosed to the state’s attorney’s office secondary employment in a real estate investment business she runs with a friend and as a distributor for two multilevel marketing companies: Organo Gold and LifeWave. Moore told Injustice Watch she does not currently have active distributors working under her through either company. “I never sought to move up the ranks,” she said.
MERIDTH HAMMER
55, South Chicago
Experience:
40, Garfield Ridge
Experience:
• Partner in a small law fi rm focused on criminal defense (2018-2025)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, prosecuting criminal cases and enforcing child support matters (2013-2018)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2013)
41, Near West Side
Experience:
• Deputy general counsel, Illinois O ffice of the Comptroller, providing legal advice on public records requests, contracts, labor and employment, and other issues (2023-2025)
• Senior trial associate at a midsized Chicago law fi rm, managing litigation while conducting trial work and mediations (2016-2023)
• Associate at three Chicago law fi rms, working on personal injury, product liability, and other civil litigation (2012-2016)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2012)
• Attorney in private practice focused on probate, mortgage foreclosure, and estate planning (2009-present)
• Hearing board member for the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, issuing recommendations on attorney discipline (2023-present)
• First deputy general counsel, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (2024-2025)
• Supervising administrative law judge for the Illinois Department of Employment Security, hearing appeals of unemployment benefits decisions (2023-2024)
• Deputy general counsel, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (2019-2021)
• Corporate counsel, Crosstown Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit in Indianapolis (2009-2012)
• In-house counsel for a software company and a technology consulting fi rm (2004-2009)
Law school: Indiana University (2001)
Notable: Hammer previously ran for judge in a 2022 countywide race and received not recommended ratings from the bar associations. She also unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the South Chicago (4th) Police District Council in 2023.
On a resume submitted to Injustice Watch in early December and posted on her campaign site, Hammer listed her current job as fi rst deputy general counsel for the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County even though she left the role in August 2025. She updated her resume in mid-January after Injustice Watch raised questions, but her website’s About page remained unchanged as of Feb. 2.
Between 2010 and 2020, Hammer faced Indiana and federal tax liens over more than $34,000 in unpaid taxes, all of which were repaid. A number of civil credit judgments were also entered against her in that period, court records show. Hammer has also faced foreclosure on property she owned in Indianapolis and been sued in eviction court. All cases were dismissed. Hammer said experiencing fi nancial setbacks would inform her perspective as a judge. “I do understand people having to be in that position,” she said. “It’s a tough decision to have to choose between paying your mortgage and feeding yourself.”
JULIAN SANCHEZ CROZIER
JESSICA KARINA VELEZ
NATALIA MOORE
AMARI DAWSON
52, Homewood
Experience:
17TH SUBCIRCUIT | CARROLL VACANCY
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in several divisions, including felony review and felony trials, and currently serving in the appeals division (2007-present)
• Director of community corrections at Beloved Community Family Services, a nonprofit organization based in Englewood, where she supervised juvenile diversion programs (2005-2007)
Law school: University of Mississippi (2004)
Notable: At the age of 19, Dawson was sentenced to two years of probation and fi ned $510 in connection with a federal drug tra fficking case, according to news reports. Dawson, who referenced her criminal record when she applied to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ffice, did not respond to Injustice Watch’s requests for an interview. Her campaign website refers to Dawson as a teen experiencing “challenges such as dealing with emotional trauma caused by violence, managing motherhood while still in adolescence, and confronting the flaws present within the justice system.” Before law school, Dawson worked as a parole agent for the Illinois Department of Corrections.
BIANCA B . BROWN
40, Lynwood
Experience:
• Associate at a Chicago law fi rm specializing in personal injury defense and wrongful death litigation (2025-present)
• Chief attorney, Chicago Transit Authority, handling complex civil litigation (2021-2025)
• Hearing board member, Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, issuing recommendations on attorney discipline (2016-2025)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, in the civil division, defending agencies and employees in federal civil rights and other litigation (2018-2021)
• Regional director and assistant attorney general, consumer protection division of the Illinois Attorney General’s O ffice, representing the state in lawsuits against businesses and employers accused of fi nancial fraud and discrimination (2013-2018)
• Assistant corporation counsel, City of Chicago, focused on municipal misdemeanor prosecutions,
particularly violations of the city’s gun ordinance (2011-2013)
Law school: Thomas Cooley Law School (2010)
Notable: Brown is the granddaughter of Ethel Skyles Alexander-Taylor, who served in both the Illinois Senate and House between 1979 and 1993.
ANDRÉ THAPEDI
57, South Chicago
Experience:
• Illinois state representative, serving the 32nd District on the South Side. In 2020, he investigated the Covid-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home that killed 36 residents. (2009-2021)
• A biography by the Illinois General Assembly’s Legislative Review Unit said Thapedi had previously worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ffice and the law department of the Chicago Transit Authority, and spent eight years as an attorney at two law fi rms before becoming a partner in Thapedi & Thapedi. Injustice Watch could not verify the dates of these positions.
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (1996)
Notable: Thapedi is the son of the late Cook County Circuit Court Judge Llwellyn Greene-Thapedi. They practiced law together before her death in 2014. As a member of the General Assembly, Thapedi was the fi rst Black chair of the House judiciary-civil committee.
Florida land and business records show Thapedi has maintained a presence in the Fort Myers area for many years. In May 2021, Thapedi surrendered his Illinois driver’s license for a Florida license. Thapedi moved to the 17th subcircuit in February 2025, using a trust to buy a home just inside the subcircuit boundaries. His mortgage called this property his secondary residence and stated his current residence was in Florida. The following month, Thapedi updated his Illinois voter registration with his Chicago home’s address, records show.
In 2012, Thapedi contested allegations of legal incompetence after he briefly represented the family of a 3-year-old Cabrini-Green housing project resident killed after a gate collapsed. Thapedi and his mother claimed legal fees of $597,068, but the trial judge awarded them only about $79,000 after evaluating allegations the Thapedis “grossly overstated” their hours. An appellate court upheld the decision. The Thapedis denied wrongdoing. Thapedi did not respond to requests for comment.
18TH SUBCIRCUIT | ANDREOU VACANCY
SAM BAE 54, Mount Prospect
Experience:
• Attorney in private practice in Des Plaines focusing on personal injury, real estate, civil rights, domestic relations, and other civil cases (2012-present)
• Attorney at a small fi rm with his sister, Jennifer, practicing in civil court (2000-2012)
• Associate at a midsize Chicago fi rm working on personal injury, commercial, discrimination, and civil rights cases (1999-2000)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (1998)
Notable: Bae immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea with his family in 1978. He ran unsuccessfully for judge in a northwest suburban subcircuit in 2014. He was elected to the board of River Trails School District 26 and served from 2017 to 2021.
Experience:
• Cook County assistant public defender assigned to the Rolling Meadows courthouse. He previously handled felony and misdemeanor cases in Chicago and represented young people in juvenile court as well as parents in custody hearings. (2010-present)
• Worked at a small suburban law fi rm representing clients in tra ffic and minor criminal matters (2009-2010)
Law school: Northern Illinois University (2009)
Notable: Ponce de Leon’s uncle is retired Judge Edmund Ponce de Leon, the former presiding judge in Maywood and the fi rst Hispanic judge to oversee a court division in Cook County.
SARA McGANN 47, Beverly
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing tra ffic cases (2025-present)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, working as a supervisor in the criminal appeals division. She previously handled misdemeanor cases and preliminary hearings in the fourth municipal district and worked in drug, mental health, and veterans treatment courts in the fi fth and sixth municipal districts. (2009-2016; 2018-2025)
• Enrollment director at a private high school, leading a capital campaign and supervising workers (2017-2018)
• Public a ff airs director, Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, managing media relations (2016-2017)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2009)
JUAN PONCE DE LEON 42, Des Plaines
18TH SUBCIRCUIT | CHRONES VACANCY
19TH SUBCIRCUIT | FAIRMAN VACANCY
19TH SUBCIRCUIT | KANE VACANCY
MONICA SOMERVILLE 64, Beverly
Experience:
• Sta ff attorney, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, assisting clients with expungements (2025-present)
• Hearing officer, Chicago Department of Business A ff airs and Consumer Protection, hearing appeals related to business license revocations (2024-present)
• Senior attorney, Forest Preserves of Cook County, focusing on contracts and litigation (2023-2024)
• Deputy director, Chicago Department of Finance, working on collection programs and supervising the system to resolve ticket disputes (2018-2021)
• Director of the workers’ compensation program for the Chicago City Council committee on fi nance (2013-2017)
• Supervising administrative law judge, Illinois Department of Employment Security, conducting hearings on unemployment appeals cases (2009-2013)
• Attorney representing the U.S. Postal Service Law Department on employment discrimination cases (2007-2009)
• Administrative law judge, state Department of Employment Security (2003-2007)
• Chief assistant corporation counsel, City of Chicago Law Department, handling wrongful death and other civil lawsuits (2000-2001)
• Litigation counsel, Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (1997-2000)
• Assistant corporation counsel, City of Chicago, handling personal injury and negligence cases (1991-1997)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (1989)
Notable: In April 2024, Somerville’s job with the Forest Preserves of Cook County was terminated without explanation before the end of her probationary period, personnel records show. Somerville did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2001, she was fi red from the Chicago Law Department. She claimed in a 2002 lawsuit that she was fi red after she spoke out about race and sex discrimination by her boss, but the city cited poor performance as the reason. Her lawsuit was dismissed.
From 2013 to 2017, Somerville helped run the city’s controversial workers’ compensation program, which was operated for decades by Ald. Ed Burke’s fi nance committee until he was indicted in 2019. A subsequent audit of the program, which included the last year Somerville was in charge, found it did not have measures in place to detect or prevent fraud and that claims data was incomplete and disorganized.
JOHN HARKINS 55, Palos Heights
Experience:
• Assistant general counsel, Cook County Sheri ff ’s O ffice. He previously served as director of the Sheri ff ’s Work Alternative Program, a public policy aide, and as liaison to the judiciary. (2009-present)
• Trader at two Chicago investment fi rms (2002-2009)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (2017)
Notable: Harkins’ wife, Jenny Harkins, is the niece of former Cook County Sheri ff Michael Sheahan and James “Skinny” Sheahan, a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Jenny Harkins’ sister is married to 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea. The Sheahan brothers and O’Shea are listed as part of his campaign committee, along with Sheri ff Tom Dart.
Harkins was admitted to the Illinois bar in 2018. Most bar associations will not fi nd a judicial candidate qualified if they have not been an attorney for at least 10 years. Harkins did not respond to questions about his experience.
DAVE CONDRON 51, Beverly
Experience:
• Assistant corporation counsel supervisor, Chicago Law Department, representing the city in civil rights and police misconduct cases (2023-present)
• Associate at a small fi rm, litigating contract disputes (2018-2023)
• Associate at a small Chicago fi rm focused on eminent domain on behalf of various state transportation agencies and personal injury defense (2017-2018)
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney, working in the civil actions bureau, the gang crimes unit, and the public corruption and fi nancial crimes unit (2001-2017)
Law school: IIT Chicago-Kent (2000)
Notable: Condron is married to Yvette C. Loizon, chief of policy for Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke.
MICHAEL J . ZINK 46, Lakeview
Experience:
• Circuit court judge appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court, hearing civil cases in the fi rst municipal district (2024-present)
• Partner at a small fi rm specializing in housing and eviction (2004-2024)
Law school: DePaul University (2004)
Notable: Zink unsuccessfully ran for judge in 2024 in the 20th subcircuit. Zink’s campaign website at the time said he “directs his practice towards tenants’ rights and independent landlord support,” but court records showed Zink almost exclusively represented landlords in eviction cases. “What I’ve done quite a bit, in recent years especially, is try to keep tenants out of eviction court,” he said at the time.
Experience:
• Administrative law judge, Illinois Department of Employment Security (2022-present)
• Panel arbitrator, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, resolving securities-related disputes (2021-present)
• Partner at two small law fi rms, focused on civil litigation, family law, and criminal defense (2008-2010)
• Assistant defender, O ffice of the State Appellate Defender, fi ling postconviction petitions on behalf of people in prison who had previously been given death sentences (2004-2010)
• Solo practitioner, focused on civil litigation, criminal defense, and postconviction proceedings (2000-2004)
• In-house counsel to the Teamsters’ Central States Funds (1997-2000)
• Associate and partner at a midsize law fi rm handling commercial, tort, employment, intellectual property, and criminal defense matters (1985-1997)
• Law clerk, U.S. District Judge Harold A. Baker (1984-1985)
Law school: University of Minnesota (1984)
Notable: From the late 1980s until 2003, Stromsta provided pro bono representation to clients in Illinois death penalty cases. Stromsta ran unsuccessfully for a 10th subcircuit vacancy in 2020.
BELLE KATUBIG 60, Lakeview
Experience:
• Cook County assistant state’s attorney in the medical litigation unit, defending doctors and sta ff of the Cook County Health System (2018-present)
• Associate and partner at a Chicago law fi rm representing doctors in medical malpractice cases (2001-2018)
• Attorney at two Chicago law fi rms (1997-2001)
Law school: UIC Law (formerly John Marshall) (1996)
JON STROMSTA 66, North Center
20TH SUBCIRCUIT | MILLER VACANCY
20TH SUBCIRCUIT | HARACZ VACANCY
Injustice Watch is a nonprofit journalism organization that examines issues of equity and justice in the Cook County court system. We rely on donations from people like you. Our nonpartisan judicial election guides require months of research and reporting. If you fi nd our guides useful, please consider making a donation to support our public service journalism.
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Research & reporting:
Carlos Ballesteros, Aura Bogado, Alejandra Cancino, Maya Dukmasova, Kelly Garcia, Dan Hinkel, and David Jackson
Editing & project management: Jonah Newman
Engagement & promotion: Nathan Armstrong, Danny Callison, Amanda Miley, Charles Preston, Jason Schumer, and Maggie Sivit
Web development: Monkruman St. Jules and Hayley Owens
Cover illustration: Verό nica Martinez
