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this Thursday Page 11

QuikTrip seeks permit to redevelop Mohr site

Gas station giant QuikTrip is in early stages of bid for blighted Mohr Concrete site that’s in foreclosure in south Oak Park

Barnes & Noble promises new store at Lake & Harlem

Plans to open in 2026. Oak Park says deal is not done

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

The for mer Marshall Field and Company building at 1144 Lake St. in Oak Park will likely be home to a chain bookstore — again.

The historic building will soon feature a Barnes & Noble location, as leadership at the bookseller told Wednesday Journal it’s reached an ag reement to tur n part of the building into a 25,000 square foot, two-level store with a cafe. The store is expected to open next summer,

according to Janine F lanigan, Barnes & Noble’s vice president of store planning and design.

“We’ve been very successful with our new store openings, and we’re really

See BARNES & NOBLE on pa ge 15

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

The future of the long vacant Mohr concrete site may be coming into focus.

Village leaders are aware of interest from nationwide gas station chain QuikTrip to redevelop the for mer H.J. Mohr & Sons co. concrete site. Oak Park’s Development Services Head Craig Failor confirmed to Wednesday Journal this week that QuikTrip had “submitted a preliminary application for a special use approval,” for the village to review.

Oak Park’s Plan Commission holds public hearings concerning planned developments, re zoning, special uses and other development matters and typically meets on the first Thursday of the month. The body did not hold

See MOHR SITE on pa ge 17

JAVIER GOVEA

Calling all WJ carriers

Dear Wednesday Journal readers,

It was about 44 years ago tha my wife Mary and I spent several days driving up and do every block in Oak Pa not an architectural tour

We were counting ev single family house in this burg as Wednesday Journal prepared to start free home delivery to every house. I was there as the publisher of our fledgling ef fort. Mary was there as our sports editor, features editor, bookkeeper and soon to be circulation manager.

Why bring this up? Well, we are about to mark our 45 th anniversary and part of the charm of this place is that fo r decades we had young girls and boys who delivered the WJ to their neighbors. Over

had hundreds and hundreds of car riers. It was a eat first job. You could make $20 bucks or so a month. More with Christmas tips.

, many families the

Journal route was passed down from child-to-child sor t of like a light blue uniform shirt if you re a Catholic kid like me

w, Jessica Mackinnon, one of our great freelancers, is interviewing surprisingly old people who used to be WJ carriers. You up for talking to Jessica? Tell her your tales of tossing a paper on the porch roof. How it felt to have some coins jangling in your pocket.

Reach out through me. And do it soon as the anniversary is around the corner. My email is dhaley@wjinc.com.

A Wednesday Journal carrier hands out copies of an EXTRA edition at the Green Line el. Before digital publishing, we did EXTRAs when big news broke.

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Nurses escorted out of West Sub amid Family Birthplace closure

West Suburban Medical Center abruptly and inde nitely shuttered its labor and deliver y, postpartum and nursery units on July 3

By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter

The afternoon of July 3, six staf f members in the middle of their shifts at West Suburban Medical Center’s Family Birthplace were escorted out of the hospital by security, according to multiple sources who work on the floor that consists of the labor and delivery, postpartum and nurs ery units.

West Suburban staff said they were told the three units would be closed indefinitel and they would be suspended without pay, be cause of a shortage of nurses. But timesheets shared with Wednesday Journal show nurses were fully staffed on Thursday, July 3 and through that weekend.

Manoj Prasad – CEO of Resilience Healthcare, which bought West Sub and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood in December 2022 – and Carolyn Fitzpatrick, the hospital’s chie medical officer, have not responded to multiple interview requests.

As of July 10, suspended staff have received no official documentation or communication from any form of leadership at West Suburban. They don’t know if they should call off scheduled shifts or if they’ll be penalized if they don’t, and they’re using paid time off during the period of radio silence. Family Birthplace nurses haven’t heard any explanation to clarify why they were suspended from the floor or when it might reopen – including on the day they were dismissed.

On July 3, Family Birthplace nurses heard rumblings of the floor closing from three doctors and a custodian, but no one told them directly. Just before noon, the hospital’s head of security, four security guards and re presentatives from operations and HR came to the unit and asked the floor’s staf f to meet. The operations re presentative told staf f the unit was suspended for the weekend, and until further notice, because of a shor tage of nurses

The operations re presentative did not return Wednesday Journal’s request for comment.

Staf f told the hospital re presentatives that they had adequate coverage – typically three nurses working in the labor and delivery unit and one in the nursery – and asked how long the suspension would last, but a re presentative said they wouldn’t be answering questions at that time and told staf f to turn in their unit phones, badges and gather their items to be escorted from the hospital.

“They wouldn’t even let us ask any questions. They were aggressively against it,” said one Family Birthplace nurse, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. The nurse added that they feared physical forced removal from hospital administration.

“They might as well have had a cattle prod,” another nurse said. “This treatment was very traumatizing.”

While it’s not illegal to abruptly terminate employees this way, an Illinois Department of Public Health spokesperson

previously told Wednesday Journal that the move is “concerning” and that the department would “be gathering more information about this action to ensure the hospital complies with its obligations under the Hospital Licensing Act.”

Nurses say they’ve been working as a skeleton crew since November, when midwives and family medicine physicians at West Sub were told they could no longer deliver babies at the hospital.

“They were bringing in most of our patients,” said the Family Birthplace nurse. But even with fewer mothers and infants on the floor, “if we were short [on nurses], no one cared.” Seemingly, until this month.

When the Family Bir thplace floor closed on July 3, sources say there were no patients on the floor. Though one doctor was re por tedly told to not cancel scheduled

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 Design Manager 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

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

JESSICA MORDACQ

River Forest bans gas-powered leaf blowers

Phase -in period lasts 5 years, includes incentives to switch

By ROBERT J. LIFKA Contributing Reporter

River Forest officials voted at the July 14 village board meeting to ban gas-powered leaf blowers but will phase in the action over a five-year period.

Officials voted unanimously to accept the recommendation from the Sustainability Commission to adopt a three-step, phased-in ban and to incentivize landscape companies to switch to electric leaf blowers with a rebate for a year-round commitment in years 2026 through 2029. Contractors making the commitment to electric leaf blowers would receive a reimbursement for their annual license fee of $125 and be listed on the sustainability section of the village website as a company committed to only using electric leaf blowers.

& FRESHLOCAL

Under the phase-in, gas-powered leaf blowers will be banned from May 15 to September 15 in 2026 and 2027; will only be permitted in April, October and November in 2028 and 2029; and be banned year-round be ginning in 2030.

In addition, fossil fuel-powered generators to operate and charge leaf blowers will be banned beginning in 2026.

In a memo to Village Administrator Matt Walsh, Seth Jansen, management analyst, said the commission has been considering and collecting feedback on a potential ordinance to address the use of gas-powered leaf blowers within the village “for the past several months.”

To obtain feedback from landscape contractors, mail and email notices were sent twice to those licensed with the village and several of those contractors presented their input at the June 2024 and September 2024 meetings of the commission. Residents were able to provide feedback specific to leaf blower usage via the community survey conducted in fall and winter of 2024 and 2025.

Jansen said the recommendation was based in part on feedback from officials in Oak Park, which adopted a full ban on gaspowered leaf blowers last month, and from a report of the North Suburban Multicommunity Leaf Blower Working Group made in 2022.

majority to adopt the phased-in ban, Trustee Bob O’Connell called the proposal “unsustainable for landscapers.”

He said the battery life for an electric leaf blower is 90 minutes and batteries cost $199 each.

“Where do they go when the battery runs out?” he asked

Jansen acknowledged that battery life is “the biggest concern” of landscapers but noted that technology improvements over the next three to five years are expected to lengthen battery life.

O’Connell suggested that Jansen contact landscapers in Wilmette, which was part of the North Suburban working group and instituted a nine-month ban in 2023.

Trustee Erika Bachner agreed that additional feedback from landscapers should be obtained. She also suggested that landscapers could carry additional charged batteries on their trucks.

In response to her question, Jansen said staff members have shared information regarding the pending changes with the park district and college campuses as well as the village public works staff.

Trustee Katie Brennan also supported contacting landscapers, noting that many landscapers who work in River Forest also work in Oak Park and would be able to share their experience with the ban there.

Walsh noted that officials will be able to make changes to the action over the five-year period.

“We can always prolong each step if the technology is not improving as predicted,” he said.

Oak Park Migrant Ministry has ‘urgent need’ for help

Catholic Parishes’ ministr y seeks donations and volunteers to suppor t local immigrants

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

An Oak Park agency that helps local immigrants says it has an “urgent need” for community support and donations

Migrant Ministry, an effort by Oak Park’s Catholic Parishes to provide aid to recent immigrants, is asking for donations of money, time and items as the group looks to help migrants and asylum seekers get settled in the area amid federal calls for a ramp-up in deportations

Migrant Ministry relies on community support to fulfill its mission, agency leaders told Wednesday Journal. Donations of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing and personal care items are a great need at the moment, according to Celine Woznica, its head of program development.

“Clothes are the most obvious donation, but we are only accepting summer clothes and our greatest needs are men’s small and medium T-shirts, shorts, and sweatpants,”

Woznica said. “We can also use older boys’ and older girls’ clothes. We accept bedding, towels, shoes, and personal hygiene products. We always need new socks and new underwear for men, women, and children.”

She said monetary donations don’t just support basic agency operations, they are needed to support a legal defense fund to support clients’ cases, rent assistance and help paying the newly increased fees related to asylum applications and work permits instated by the federal budget bill passed earlier this month.

“Financial donations are most welcome to help cover the cost of running the ministry as well as anticipated expenses with the newly passed budget bill which calls for charging $100 per asylum application and $550 for a work permit,” she said.

Donations of time are also deeply appreciated, as is engagement with the group’s core mission and beliefs. Woznica hopes that local volunteers can spend time and build relationships with the agency’s clients.

“Donations of time to get to know migrants and discover what a gift they are to our communities and our nation,” Woznica said. “We can always use overall solidarity and support. These are really difficult times, and many migrants are losing their jobs because their legal status is being stripped away. Subsequently, they lose their work permits and their jobs. Helping these young and eager workers to find other jobs would be a great support.”

This call for support in Oak Park, comes as nationwide Catholic charities face new federal scrutiny over their work with refugees and asylum seekers.

Earlier this year, the federal gover nment terminated cooperation agreements with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for work related to children’s and refugee services. The bishops announced in April that they would not be seeking a renewal of that contract.

“The decision to reduce these programs drastically forces us to reconsider the best way to serve the needs of our brothers and

sisters seeking safe harbor from violence and persecution,” the bishops said in a statement. “As a national effort, we simply cannot sustain the work on our own at current levels or in current form. As USCCB cooperative ag reements for refug ee resettlement and children’s programs end, we will work to identify alternative means of support for the people the federal gover nment has already admitted to these programs. We ask your prayers for the many staff and refugees impacted.”

The bishops were also seeking payment of $24 million from the gover nment for services already performed related to those agreements as of last month, according to OSV News, a wire service that covers the Catholic Church

Both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities USA were also among the more than 200 organizations to receive letters in a congressional probe of NGOs accused of using federal funds to aid “inadmissible aliens,” last month.

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D200 board terminates accused teacher

By GREGG VOSS Contributing Reporter

An Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher who was the subject of an investigation into alle gedly touching a female student inappropriately has been terminated by the District 200 Board of Education.

At its meeting July 10, the board voted 6-0, with one ab stention, to terminate tenured teacher Aaron Podolner, an OPRF graduate who was prominently featured in America to Me, the 2018 documentary series about OPRF. Podolner received notice, Nov. 22, that he was being placed on paid administrative leave after a female student re ported to school officials that he’d touched her inappropriately, according to documents obtained then by Wednesday Jour nal through a Freedom of Infor mation Act request.

Podolner to appeal decision with Illinois State Board of Education

ed,” Podolner said via an email statement Friday. “I will be appealing the board’s decision,”

When pressed further, Podolner referred a re porter to his attorney, Steve Glink, who specializes in school law, teacher rights and DCFS defense.

Glink said the appeal will go through the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), where an arbitrator will be appointed to review the facts of the case.

“This is like a full-blown trial” Glink said. “The hearing officer will write a re port That re port will provide findings of fact and will make conclusions of law.”

From there, the OPRF school board will receive that re port and determine if it would like to change its collective mind on the matter.

“Sometimes it influences and sometimes it doesn’t,” Glink said. “They can look at that and the board can do what they want.”

ing the closed session, Glink said.

New board member Josh Gertz abstained from voting.

“We always want to make sure to take these types of re ports very seriously so impacted individuals feel comfortable coming forward,” Gertz said in an email Friday. “Due to a technical issue, the administration was informed that Mr. Podolner may not have received some communications about the Title IX determination with as much advance notice as possible. We were also infor med that Mr. Podolner recently retained new counsel to re present him. While Mr. Podolner presented to the board and indicated he was prepared to do so, I felt it was best to continue the matter for a future meeting

board President Audrey Williams-Lee said. “We don’t know if it will come back; it depends on the hearing of ficer for ISBE.”

As for a timeline when that might happen, Williams-Lee couldn’t say, but she ag reed with Johnson that the situation is “difficult. It’s not something that’s taken lightly.”

She also added that the district’s investig ation was conducted under Faith’s Law, which uses as its basis Illinois school codes and statutes, which is different from the DCFS model.

“When you look at the definition under Faith’s Law, how sexual misconduct is defined, Faith’s Law is a bit more broad than DCFS,” she said.

The district re ported the incident to the Department of Children and Family Services and launched a formal Title IX investigation, according to the documents.

“I’m disappointed because both DCFS and the Oak Park police investigated the alle gation and determined it was unfound-

WEST SUB

from page 3

c-sections for the following week, he was later told to reschedule them at different hospitals.

With the current uncertainty of the Family Birthplace, sources said locals are still showing up at West Suburban to give birth.

“Although the unit is closed, the community has not been adequately notified,” the nurse said, citing several women who have been turned away

Rising temperatures at West Sub

In late June, West Sub admitted 22 patients from Weiss Memorial after the Uptown hospital’s HVAC system failed. While a hospital

The termination decision came after an hours-long, closed-session board discussion, July 10, that delayed the beginning of the open portion of its meeting from 7:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. The board prof fered virtually no discussion on the matter prior to voting. Podolner spoke on his behalf dur-

spokesperson said West Sub replaced its HVAC system last year, a Freedom of Information request filed with the village of Oak Park to see public records of the hospital replacing its HVAC yielded no results.

And now there are re ports of dangerously high temperatures at the Oak Park hospital, too.

The Family Birthplace closure comes after multiple nurses on the floor filed complaints with OSHA about the rising temperatures and lack of cooling measures inside West Suburban.

According to documentation showing one such complaint on June 27, OSHA responded that it had contacted West Sub administration and given them five business days to correct the hazards, or until July 4.

“You can’t help but think it’s retaliatory,” said a Family Birthplace nurse, who was among those suspended the day before.

“Additionally, given the severity of the matter and the fact that DCFS and OPPD did not decide to take action after investigating, I did not believe I was able to make a decision last night with which I would have felt confident,” he said. “I would have personally welcomed additional time to investigate further and contemplate. At the end of the day, I stand by the board’s decision on the matter.”

Supt. Greg Johnson of fered no comment, other than saying such decisions are very difficult.

“We’re just waiting to hear what will come out of any opinion that would be filed,”

According to multiple sources, temperatures have reached up to 90 de grees on the floor’s postpartum unit and 87 de grees in the nursery.

“It should not be that way,” a nurse said.

The nurse added that rising temperatures aren’t just an issue at the Family Birthplace, but also in operating rooms on other floors, which have been temporarily closed down because of the heat. “We are a micro-

Glink said he wasn’t surprised at the board’s decision to ter minate Podolner

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “They are a political entity, so they have a high school student who is claiming Aaron sexually touched her. What do you think is going to happen if they don’t fire him? There were a lot of rumors going around about him being a ‘weirdo,’ and I think this provided a perfect opportunity to get rid of a problem.”

Glink noted that Podolner has indicated he would like to return to OPRF if given the opportunity

“He’s tenured there and not quite in the retirement chain right now, and I think there’s a moral victory there,” he said.

cosm of the whole hospital right now.”

And though the nurses want to know what their future looks like at the hospital, they are also wor ried about their patients.

“We care about our community, and we care about our coworkers. We don’t want to abandon the people we serve. We work in a hospital in an underserved community for a reason,” one nurse said. With a closure like this, “It’s the community that suffers.”

AARON PODOLNER

U.S. Bank closing Oak Park Ave. branch.

What’s next for historic building?

Developer purchased building in 2023 for $5.02M currently seeking tenants

By GREGG VOSS Contributing Reporter

With the announcement last week that U.S. Bank will close its location in the historic bank building at 104 N. Oak Park Ave. questions turn to the future of the 104-yearold structure.

Mitch Goltz, principal of Chicago-based GW Properties, bought the building in 2023 for $5.02 million. He said Monday that the bank’s lease expires in January, but it hasn’t given any indication that it will reup

“They’ve been quite quiet,” Goltz said, adding that, “We haven’t made any decisions yet. We’re in the midst of redeveloping it, the bank is still in there and we’re seeking tenants.”

In an email message last week to its Oak Park customers, U.S. Bank announced it would close the Oak Park Avenue location on Oct. 1.

For years, U.S. Bank has rented the entire space then leased out the portions of the property not used by the bank to other entities.

“We’ re in talks with each of them entering into new leases, but it’s very fluid,” Goltz said.

Currently the building has a combination of commercial tenants and vacant retail space on the ground floor and some office tenants on the upper floor.

Goltz said 104 N. Oak Park Ave. “has been a beautiful bank building for 100 years.”

The most intriguing leasable space in the bank building is its two-story interior facing banking space. Eleg ant and oversized, the future use of that space is to be determined.

Frank Lipo, executive director of the Oak Park River Forest Museum, said groundbreaking for the Avenue State Bank building began in 1919, with its grand opening in February 1921. The original Avenue State Bank opened in 1899 and its first building was next door

which became U.S. Bank in 2002.

That structure is also known as Scoville No. 1, named for James Scoville, who owned the land where the first water reservoir in Oak Park was built. He drilled nine

“Historic buildings like this are one of a kind. It’s a neoclassical architectural style, a distinctive element. It brings value and charac ter. This is a source of pride.”

ATEFA GHA ZNAWI Urban planner

artesian wells, Lipo said, and launched a private utility, Cicero Gas, Water & Light Company, which became the village’s water supply from 1880 to 1912, when it began buying Lake Michig an water.

Meanwhile, Avenue State Bank was one of 17 banks in Oak Park prior to the Great Depression, and one of only five that survived the economic calamity. Avenue State Bank was in business until it was acquired by First Colonial Bankshares Corp. in the mid-1980s. First Colonial was then acquired by Firstar Bank in the mid-1990s,

In recent years, U.S. Bank has closed multiple other local branches including at Austin and North Avenue, Austin and Roosevelt Road and Madison and Des Plaines in Forest Park. It continues to operate facilities at Austin and Madison Street and on North Avenue.

Lipo said that any building exterior alterations would have to go through the village’s Historic Preservation Commission.

According to Atefa Ghaznawi, an urban planner focused on historic preservation for the village, the U.S. Bank building is not considered a landmark, but instead is a historic building. This means that any changes to the building’s exterior would require a certificate of appropriateness for historical material from the village. If the material is not historical, it would require an advisory review.

“Historic buildings like this are one of a kind,” Ghaznawi said. “It’s a neoclassical architectural style, a distinctive element. It brings value and character. This is a source of pride.”

Lipo added that his hope is that any redevelopment would “kee p the historical aspect, but blend that with what the new tenants will do.”

JAVIER GOVEA

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‘Strength in disability’ is core to Disability Pride March

Oak Park library hosts thir annual event bringing together local organizations and families

By ELIZABETH SHORT Contributing Reporter

Battling against the stigmas attached to those with disabilities, the third annual Disability Pride March and Rally came to the Oak Park Public Library on Ju with 100 people proclaiming the strength they find in a disability and rejecting ing cuts to federal health care that many rely on.

“Be proud of yourself no matter you have,” said Jillian Hummel from Oak Leyden. Staf f and clients of Oak Le which serves local children and adults with developmental disabilities, gathered tables to work on posters. As she work hers, Hummel said disability pride means finding strength in yourself.

The event occurs every year during Disability Pride Month and celebrates those living with disabilities. It is also an opportunity for disabled people in this area and allies to build community. This year’s event was bigger than in the past, with roughly 100 people attending.

cheered for the group and waved ribbon wands. “We can yell in the library?” said one demonstrator.

The event started at 9 a.m. on a busy Saturday morning at the Main Library on Lake Street. Org anizers set up tables with craft supplies outside of the Idea Box, decorated in honor of Disability Pride Month. Participants created posters for the march and made ribbon wands using the colors of the disability pride flag (red, gold, white, blue, and green).

Several local organizations set up information tables outside of the library in the morning, including Disability Lead, Disability Access Commission, Alliance for Community Services, Progress Center for Independent Living, Chicago Disability Pride Parade, Community Mental Health Board, and Rush University and Medical Center.

At 11 a.m., organizers led demonstrators of all ages through every floor of the library. Library employees and patrons

A rally outside the library followed the march. Shelley Harris, children’s librarian who org anized the event, was first to speak: “I am so proud of my neurodivergence,” she said. Later she promised the crowd to be her “full, proud neurodivergent self.” She opened the microphone for other attendees and org anizers to speak about disability pride.

Finally, Alyssa Stone and Jessica Benjamin from Dynamic Lynks, a music therapy center in Oak Park, performed a disability pride version of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” The crowd passed around lyric sheets and joined in for the chorus: “Disabled and proud,” they sang. “I’m gonna keep on jammin’ I’m disabled and proud!”

Kruti Parikh Shah first had the idea for the Disability Pride Parade in 2022 while collaborating with Harris. “I think (the parade) is a very meaningful way of bringing

people together,” she said. Parikh Shah, who has hearing loss, said she grew up feeling that disability was very stigmatized. At the first annual pride parade, held in 2023, she said she “felt seen” and that she “belonged.”

“There’s so many signals out there that send a ne gative message about disability, and we’re taught that … disability is something to overcome,” said Gary Arnold, chairperson of Oak Park’s Disability Access Commission. “But for so many people, disability is permanent and it’s part of our lives. In many ways, the disability enhances our lives, adds more texture and color to our lives, and exposes us to things that we would not have had the chance to experience otherwise. … This is a chance for people who feel that way to come together and express that.”

Celebrations during Disability Pride Month this year are clouded by the passing

ELIZABETH SHORT

Is ECHO effective? Trustees review the early data

New program is part of alternative police response e ort

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

Oak Park village trustees are set to review statistics outlining the impact of one of its new programs at their meeting Tuesday, July 15.

Trustees will review statistics on the operations of the village’s Engaging Community For Healthy Outcomes program, otherwise known as ECHO. Launched in February, the program is meant to provide a variety of social service support to people in the community, with the statistics provided to trustees meant to outline where the pilot program has made its biggest impacts so far.

“These roles are providing service connections and case management to community members who have eng aged with emergency responders and may need additional services that are not available through a traditionally dispatched/ emergency response,” village staff wrote in supporting documents. “Community care navigators follow up with neighbors and/ or their families and provide a warm introduction to other care or service providers in the community. Community care navigation also includes rapid response to calls made directly to the village or village-initiated calls for service related to unhoused community members and traumatic community events and generally serve as subject matter experts housed within the village.”

lage’s Community Services division led by Vanessa Matheny.

Most recently, Naughton served as the director of a community treatment program, where she led a multidisciplinary team providing intensive, community-based behavioral health services to individuals living with severe and persistent mental illness, according to the village

The program was first approved a year ago via a unanimous vote at a June 11, 2024 board meeting, in which trustees gave the greenlight for the pilot program to enter its first phase. The program was billed as providing alternative responses to issues without involving police officers amid “community calls for a reimagining of public safety,” according to a board presentation last year.

The program’s development followed a 2022 study by consultant group BerryDunn that the village commissioned to help outline a vision for alternative response in Oak Park.

According to the board presentation, ECHO has received referrals to clients from a wide variety of sources, although they are most commonly connected to clients via the Oak Park Police Department, the Oak Park Fire Department and through people walking in for service.

Create Your Own Good Trouble

Tomorrow, July 17, marks the John Lewis Day of Action in honor of the congressman and civil rights leader who died five years ago. He advocated for peaceful, nonviolent action to challenge injustice, urging followers to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

Rallies in Chicago and across the nation are in support of his fight for justice, voting rights and dignity. Join the League downtown tomorrow at Daley Plaza beginning at 5:30 pm. Speakers include Justice Marcia Johnson of the US League and Becky Simon, president of the Illinois League.

What else can you do to protect democracy?

• Call senators and congressmen – even those out of your district – to oppose the anti-voter SAVE Act

• Volunteer to be an election judge

The discussion follows the village hiring a new leader for the program.

Mary Naughton started earlier this month as the new Program Manager for ECHO according to the village. ECHO was launched with the hiring of two care coordinators — Maxie Moses and Kimberly Smith — and is managed within the vil-

Of the many types of issues that ECHO staffers help provide services for, staffers most often helped clients needing help with senior services issues, homelessness, housing instability and mental health issues, according to the presentation.

ECHO’s services saw a peak in their utilization last month, according to the presentation.

T he progr am had 54 total “repeat engagement” clients, according to the presentation.

• Raise your voice about illegal deportations

• Write letters to the editor of your favorite local newspapers

All League programs are free and open to the public.

e Daly Bagel’s lemon lavender bagel

By RISE SANDERS-WEIR Eats Reporter

When Ann Farrell finds a flavor she likes, it becomes more than food. She sees it as treating herself to something that makes her happy. That’s how she felt when she discovered the lemon lavender bagels at The Daly Bagel, 130 Chicago Ave. in Oak Park

“It’s like buying yourself flowers, in bagel form, right?” Farrell said.

For bagel shop co-owner Adrienne Guldin, this bagel is special too, a weekly special!

with the shop’s famous “vampire killer” sandwich, slathered with roasted garlic. Not a combo made in heaven.

Daly bagels are baked fresh each day.

“There are three generally accepted styles of bagels,” Guldin said. “There’s East Coast style, which is what we do. They are a slow ferment. The dough is always made at least the day before and then the bagels are boiled before they’re baked. That’s what gives them the signature shine and texture on the outside and then that chewy inside.”

“Every week we have a new or different specialty flavor,” Guldin said. “Because of the way the sugar behaves on this bagel, it’s actually just a spring and summer flavor. It doesn’t behave as well in the winter.”

The dough creation is flavored with lemon zest and lavender flowers, then sprinkled with sugar. Making it a genuinely sweet option when it comes to bagel choic-

Other styles are Montreal, which are smaller, sweeter and chewier; and St. Louis which uses a quicker fermented dough that is steamed in the oven. Most largersized bagels are St. Louis style.

Getting back to the bagel flavor in question. Inspiration for lemon lavender started with The Great British Baking Show.

“Somebody used it in a signature bake and Paul Hollywood said this is the new, up and coming flavor combination.” According to Guldin her co-owner Amanda Daly ing on the flavor even before they opened their brick-andmortar store. “We have our own process for putting all the ingredients together. You can’t get them anywhere else. And when we have lemon lavender weeks, we are actually usier than any other weeks.”

The shop carries a variety cream cheeses that are mixed on site. The one that Farrell likes to pair with her lemon lavender bagel is rhubarb strawberry. It’s a touchstone for childhood memories.

“I grew up with a rhubarb bush in my backyard and I was the only one in my fam-

Guldin also shares a love for rhubarb, “I have occasionally taken a tub of strawberry rhubarb cream cheese home and frozen it and eaten it like ice cream.”

When Guldin first created the strawberry rhubarb cream cheese flavor, lemon lavender bagels were one of the specials that week. “Lemons and strawberry and rhubarb goes so well together that I tried it, and I have never looked back.”

Ann Farrell stops by The Daly Bagel one or more times a month. But it’s not always for her own dining pleasure. She re gularly picks up leftover bagels that the shop donates to Soup and Bread, an organization that raises money for local organizations addressing food insecurity.

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Also open those same hours on Mondays through Aug. 25.

“I don’t know if everyone knows how much they give back to the community,” Farrell said. “I think this place is a great community partner. That’s partially why I picked it. I thought, OK, they deserve this.”

If you have a favorite dish that you’d like to see featured, drop us a line at eats@oakparkeats.com.

RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR

Ann Farrell with co-owner Adrienne Guldin

RISÉ SANDERS-WEIR

Lemon lavender bagel with strawberry rhubarb cream cheese.

Another anti-Trump protest planned for Oak Park

July 17 ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ protest is being planned by a local inter-faith group

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

Another protest against President Donald Trump is planned for Oak Park this week.

This protest is being planned by Congregations Networking for Social Justice, the Oak Park inter-faith group responsible for planning the Hands Off! protest which drew thousands of demonstrators to downtown Oak Park in April as well as the No Kings protest. It is set for July 17 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Longfellow Park, organizers told Wednesday Journal. Longfellow Park is at Ridgeland Avenue and Jackson Boulevard

“Our moral outrage continues unabated,” said Cynthia Breunlin of Congregations Networking for Social Justice.

This protest in Oak Park, like the previous Hands Off! And No Kings demonstrations in the village, is part of a nationwide series of protests against the presidential administration. This week’s series of protests have been dubbed the “Good Trouble Lives On” rallies,

in honor of famed congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.

Lewis died on July 17, 2020, becoming the last of the “big six” leaders of the American civil rights movement to pass away. He is associated with using the phrase “good trouble” to describe his activism over his many decades in politics and political action and he used the phrase frequently as a call to action for his younger allies, according to the Library of Congress

Lewis was one of the most outspoken critics of President Trump’s first term in the White House. He rose to national prominence in his early 20s as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, speaking alongside Dr. Martin Luther King at the March on Washington in 1963.

National protest organizers expect more than 1,500 communities to participate in the protest, including demonstrations in downtown Chicago near Daley Center Plaza and in other suburban communities including Park Ridge, Naperville and Arlington Heights.

TODD BANNOR

Kings rally in Scov ille Park and march on Lake St reet on June 14.

Park district’s Lindgren gets top parks job in Wilmette

Former

deputy direc was a key gure in major Oak Park projects

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

A key figure in Park District of Oak leadership has left for an opportunity to lead another suburban park district.

Following a nationwide search, mette’s park district commissioners selected Chris Lindgren, PDOP’s deputy director of properties and planning, as the No Shore community’s next park district leader Lindgren will officially begin his new on July 21, according to Wilmette of “What really drew me to Wilmette was the passion I saw in the people, both in the organization and the community,” said Lindgren. “I look forward to listening, learning and working together to shape a future that keeps Wilmette’s parks, facilities and programs thriving for everyone.”

Wilmette park commissioners saw applications from over 50 highly qualified candidates from across the country, according to Wilmette officials.

Chris Lindgren

out as a clear choice. He is strategic, communicative, and leads with the values that matter to this district.”

“From the start, the board was focused on finding a leader who could move our mission forward while staying grounded in the community and its long-term priorities,” said Patrick Lahey, president of Wilmette’s park district board. “Chris Lindgren stood

Lindgren is credited as one of the key players in bringing major capital projects to the finish line for Oak Park parks. Lindg ren’s accomplishments in that area include the construction of the landmark Community Recreation Center, a $22 million building designed to function at netzero carbon emissions and provide a host of wellness amenities to Oak Pa rkers.

Lindg ren’s move from PDOP follows several village of Oak Park government employees who made the move to Wilmette. Former Development Services Director Emily Egan and for mer parking services manager Sean Keane have both started jobs with the North Shore community’s village gover nment in recent months.

Lindgren will lead the Wilmette Park district following a controversial chapter for the body. Steve Wilson, longtime Wilmette park’s executive director, resigned in January on the heels of an internal investigation over alle ged misconduct, resignations by department staf f and a civil lawsuit concerning alle ged retaliation, according to re porting by The Record Nor th Shore.

Best friends prepare to launch Oak Park bookstore in August

Will take portion of former Book Table space

By LEAH SCHROEDER Contributing Reporter

For the last 20 years, both Heather Nelson and Sophie Schauer Eldred have lived in Oak Park For just as long they’ve been best friends. And now, in just six weeks, they are planning to open a new bookstore to gether: The Book Loft in Oak Pa rk.

The new store will take over space at 1047 Lake St., the same storefront where The Book Table initially launched its business.

Nelson’s family has owned a bookstore in Florida for the past 40 years, which has always been an inspiration. After The Book Table shuttered in Oak Park early this year, this inspiration, as well as the pair’s desire to open a retail business, served as the “perfect stor m” for The Book Loft to be

BARNES & NOBLE

Done or undone deal?

from page 1

looking forward to opening this store,” she said. “We have a plan to really tailor our assortment to the community and what the community likes.”

Barnes & Noble signing on as a flagship retail offering for the building would be welcome news for Oak Park leaders, as the location has long struggled to find an anchor tenant. Plans for a Dom’s Kitchen & Market grocery store location to take over the space were scrapped before the company closed all its locations in 2024.

Oak Park’s new Assistant Village Manager for Economic Vitality John Melaniphy said he hadn’t reviewed any documents suggesting that the deal was done. Considering the history of the building and the many businesses who’ve “kicked the tires” on leasing the space, he warned against jumping the gun.

“I generally don’t acknowledge real estate deals until they are completed,” said Melaniphy, who started in the position three weeks ago. “I look forward to the day that we can

born, Nelson said.

“It was a little bit based on a dream of both of ours,” Nelson said. “When we started to really think about it, it was fulfilling something for both of us, and we both are really committed to the community.”

Both Nelson and Schauer Eldred raised their children in Oak Park and wanted to give back to a community that gave so much to them. They said throughout the planning process, the village of Oak Park, Downtown Oak Park and all of their local business neighbors have been very helpful.

The pair even plans to collaborate with some of their local business partners, having discussed a special “read it before you see it” section of the bookstore in collaboration with the Lake Theatre.

“It’s made us even more giddy and just

declare that a retailer is fully occupying that space and that we have a fully executed deal for the landlord, for the village and for the end user, but today is not that day.”

He also said that any redevelopment of the property will likely require a village partnership involving economic incentives to help any retailer who moves into the building overcome some of the structural challenges that have kept the nearly 100 year old building vacant for so many years.

“In my opinion, it will take a public-private partnership with the village and the landlord and any potential retailer to reach consensus on how each of those entities shares in paying for the extraordinary costs to revitalize this property,” he said. “These economic development tools are used to provide incentives to help a landlord, or developer or retailer reoccupy a vacant space that may be dealing with chronic vacancy or other extenuating circumstances.”

Still Melaniphy said that getting an anchor tenant into 1144 Lake Street is a priority for the village as it would be a major boon to Oak Park’s economy and has the potential to draw more people from around the region to shop in Downtown Oak Park

The building at the intersection of Lake Street and Harlem Avenue was for merly a Borders bookstore, prior to that nationwide

thrilled to enter this community,” Schauer Eldred said.

The 3,000 square feet of retail space will be filled with general books, as well as a special children’s section dubbed “the roost,” in honor of the owl on the bookstore’s logo. The duo said they worked to cultivate a store design that was very welcoming.

To further eng age the community, Nelson and Schauer Eldred said they will be having outreach for teachers and librarians and will encourage young readers to spend time in the bookstore with a bookthemed photo opportunity.

“We’ re really excited,” Nelson said. “We’ re hoping that it’s well received, and we hope that we are the place that’s top of mind for people to come and explore books

“In my opinion, it will take a public-private partnership with the village and the landlord and any potential retailer to reach consensus on how each of those entities shares in paying for the extraordinary costs to revitalize this proper ty.”

JOHN MELANIPHY

Assistant Village Manager for Economic Vitality

chain going bust in 2011. Barnes & Noble acquired the rights to the chain’s intellectual property assets shortly after.

“We know that there’s an appetite for a bookstore in the neighborhood,” Flanigan said.

Following the closing of The Book Table early this year, two independent and locally owned bookstores have either opened or are about to open in Oak Park. Dandelion Bookshop is open at 139 S. Oak Park Ave. And, as the Journal reports today, The Book Loft will open in August in a portion of the space previously occupied by the Book Table.

and ultimately buy books and that they feel welcome here and want to come here.”

Starting Aug. 16, The Book Loft will be open seven days a week. Monday through Thursday, the store will be open from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. On Friday and Saturday, the store will be open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. On Sunday, the store will be open from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

The new Barnes & Noble location is just the latest location announced in a push for more stores in Chicagoland over the last few years, following the opening of new stores in Chicago’s Wicker Park and Lincoln Park neighborhoods and a return for the bookseller to Old Orchard Mall in Skokie.

“A few years ago everything in our Chicago markets seemed to be underserved, we’d closed a bunch of stores, we hadn’t opened any, so there’s been a real concentration in that area to open new stores,” she said.

While some nationwide retailers have looked to cut back on brick-and-mortar real estate in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, Barnes & Noble has looked to capitalize on making their stores a welcoming shared space for communities, Flanigan said.

“What we became either during COVID or coming out of COVID was really being a gathering place for people,” she said. “We really create the environment for people to come in and br owse and really just be comfortable in our stores.”

The design and architectural heritage of the Marshall Field building gives the company the opportunity to bring a stand-out location to Oak Park

“The structure of the building, the exterior of the building, is just beautiful,” F lanigan said.

COURTESY OF HEATHER NELSON AND SOPHIE SCHAUER ELDRED e Book Lo in Oak Park’s logo features an owl named Parker.

Oak Park police arrest woman on attempte d murder charge

A Chicago woman is facing several violent felony charges in connection with an Oak Park incident

By BRENDAN HEFFERNAN Staff Reporter

A 31-year-old Chicago woman is facing charges including attempted murder in connection with a violent incident after being arrested by Oak Park police

Oak Park police arrested the woman in the 1100 block of South Boulevard just before midnight on July 7, according to police activity reports.

In addition to one count of attempted murder, she has been charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery great bodily harm and aggravated battery on public way, according to police. She is currently being held in the division three annex of the Cook County Jail and will appear in court July 24, according to county records.

The victim in the incident was also a Chicago resident, according to police.

Shots red investigation

Police are investigating an incident in which a gun was fired inside a building last week.

Two men were re por tedly seen fighting in a hallway of a building in the 1200 block of North Taylor just before 11 p.m. on July 12. During the altercation, one of the men drew a chrome-colored handgun and fired a shot, according to police.

The suspect fled in an unknown direction, police said.

Restaurant burglary

Police are investi gating an incident where a local restaurant was re por tedly broken into and ransacke d.

S uspects re por tedly used a tool to pry open the d oor of a restaurant in the 800 block of North Boulevard overnight on

Ju ly 12. T he business’ c ash re gister was d amaged in the break-in, a ccording to p olice.

Security footage of the incident showed a man inside the restaurant building with a black backpack.

T he total loss caused by the incident is estimated at $2,000, according to police

These items were obtained from Oak Park’s Police Department re ports dated June 25 – 30 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.

MOHR SITE

What will replace this?

from page 1

a meeting this month and has not yet posted an agenda for August, according to village record s.

Located just south of the Eisenhower Expressway’s Harlem Avenue exit, the old plant has sat rusting since the company closed its doors in 2018 amid financial woes. Once home to one of the longest running businesses in Chicagoland, the site at 915 S. Maple Ave. is considered one of the properties in Oak Park in most dire need of redevelopment.

While he declined to discuss any specifics of the preliminary application, Oak Park’s new assistant village manager for economic vitality John Melaniphy said that redeveloping the Mohr site is a major opportunity for the village “Certainly, the village would like to see that property redeveloped and returned to productive use,” he said.

In May, Wednesday Journal obtained documents related to the ter mination of Brandon Crawford, for mer economic vitality administrator, that mentioned a possible Tax Increment Financing district surrounding the Mohr property. The documents, dated April 11, 2025, said that discussions about the potential TIF had begun a year earlier, but that work analyzing the prospect had “not progressed as expected,” according to the village documents.

Any sale and redevelopment of the property will happen in context of the foreclosure case that Karen Richards, daughter of Dot and Bud Mohr, told Wednesday Journal is still ongoing.

Last October, H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. filed a foreclosure suit against an earlier developer, saying that KrohVan still owes on the mortg age loan ag reement that matured last summer.

“The defendants have not paid the balance of the loan which matured on June 2, 2024,” the October filing said. “Current principal balance due on the note and mortg age is $4,026,830 plus interest, costs, advances for taxes, insurance and fees; and less any credits for payments received.”

H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. also claimed that the developers owed $157,241 in unpaid interest in their October foreclosure filing.

The parties had extended the mortgage’s maturity date twice. The new owners were hit with a Mechanic’s lien for more than $7,000 in unpaid contractor work last summer, according to the filing.

Richards said her family is hoping to get the property sold to a new developer as soon as possible and that they ’re tired of watching the property continue to sit in blight as it struggles with consistent vandalism issues.

“I just wish we could sell it and be done with it,” she said.

“Every day it’s costing us money.”

Richards said that real estate agent Peter J. Poulos has been representing her family in finding a new buyer for the property

PRIDE

Disability parade

from page 8

of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed by President Donald Trump on July 4. The act includes deep cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, which will lead to benefit losses for many disabled Americans. The Alliance for Community Services, a coalition uniting poor people, people with disabilities, and front-line workers, posted

a banner displaying “Faces of Medicaid and Medicare” across the windows on the library’s first floor. The Alliance has used similar banners to protest cuts to Medicaid across the state, in an ef fort to highlight the real human lives impacted by these policies.

“Having access to basic healthcare, rather than being at the whim of what disease or what accident or what disability somebody’s born with, puts people in a state where human beings have the opportunity, we can have the ability to achieve our goals as humans. … In my own case, I had to have emergency surgery that was paid for

because I had Medicaid insurance,” said Fran Tobin, coordinator for the Alliance. “Without insurance, it wouldn’t have happened. I might have died.”

While challenges continue to emerge for disabled Americans, Disability Pride Month gives a reason to celebrate the disability community and honor its history.

“I’ve always loved the Disability Pride Parade,” said Guadalupe Pizon, a 2025 Disability Lead Fellow. “I love that we get the opportunity to come together and celebrate something that society has done a great job of trying to shut down and make it not a part of the world. So I think there’s a lot of

strength in disability and I just feel proud.”

The Oak Park Public Library is hosting events throughout July to celebrate Disability Pride Month. Remaining events include a showing of “Out of My Mind” on July 16 at 1 p.m.; Neurodivergent Nerdout! and Disability Pride Ice Cream Social on July 27 at 1 p.m. and 2:15 p.m.; and a Hidden Disability Peace Circle on July 23 at 7:30 p.m. The Idea Box inside the lobby is also decorated with resources on disability, including a wall of disabled celebrities, a “Let’s Chat” section to help with nonverbal communication, and information about autism.

JAVIER GOVEA

C AST IN CONCRETE: e decrepit concrete mixing plant could become a large gas station

Birds, bees & butterflies Homes

NEED

email: dhaley@wjinc.com

West

Cook Wild Ones’ Native Garden Tour comes to Forest Park and River Forest on July 26

By LACEY SIKORA Real Estate Reporter

West Cook Wild Ones will be showcasing native gardens on Saturday, July 26 with the return of its Birds, Bees & Butterflies: A Native Garden Walk.” This year’s tour includes 12 native gardens in Forest Park and River Forest. According to Beth Fiorrito, one of the org anizers for this year’s native garden tour, the purpose of the walk is to teach home gardeners about the beauty and utility of the native plants that have for med the basis for Northern Illinois’ ecosystems for millennia.

As a designer of native landscapes, Fiorrito says people wanting to go native in their gardens often don’t have a great way of envisioning what that will look like. She recalls a conversation she had with someone in an online garden discussion group, “He was frustrated about not being able to see great examples of native gardens on-line. I was able to share that we have this great tour here so that you can see native gardens in person.”

Fiorrito says the tour is great for people just getting started with native gardening and also offers ideas for people who are well-versed in planting with natives. The walk features some gardeners who are just starting out and others whose gardens are more established.

David Hoyt’s River Forest garden was featured on the West Cook Wild Ones walk in 2022, when he had just transformed his front yard into prairie from seed. This year, tour participants will see the transformation of three years.

Turning his yard into prairie was the culmination of several years of learning about native landscaping and ecological gardening. Hoyt says he started with small areas of native plantings and then, “[I] thought why not tackle that conventional suburban lawn, and why not go for a bigger area?”

Today, his prairie-filled front yard not only lets passerby enjoy the fruits of his labors, but Hoyt also gets to enjoy the space every day. “It’s lovely. It’s just wonderful,” he says. “Throughout the growing season, it’s constantly changing. A new plant blooms every week.”

Hoyt, who enjoys taking wildlife photos in his garden, appreciates the changing nature of his garden over time. “It changes year-to-year as well. The dominant plants change. The mix changes. It’s not static; it’s a dynamic system,” he says.

See NATIVE GARDEN on pa ge 20

PHOTO S BY TODD BANNOR

‘IT ’S LOVELY’: David Hoyt loves the garden he created over just three years in River Forest.

David Hoyt’s River Forest native plant garden.

NATIVE GARDEN

Better than grass

from page 18

Beyond their beauty, another benefit of native gardening is that native landscapes can serve as habitats for local plant and animal species and as way stops for migratory animal species.

Hoyt’s garden is home to chirping birds and the occasional he has seen a huge invertebrates in his Butterflies and moths ar both more numerous and more diverse than ev before. In the spring and fall, he sees more mi tory birds

Another added benefit Along with not needing to spend money on petroleumbased fertilizer, his water bil has plummeted as he hasn to water the prairie in front of River Forest home in years.

In Forest Park, gardener Katie Pittman has been working on her garden since she and her husband bought their house in 2022, when there was just “blank grass” in the front. Her home’s unique style — it was formerly a carriage house and the entire yard is

in the front of the property — lends itself to an overgrown cottage garden.

Pittman, who planted all of the plants herself, says she was going for an English garden look. She used plenty of flowers of varying heights and notes that every spring and every fall, she replaces a bit of grass with native plants

“There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to it,” she says. “I’m just on a mission to bring as many native plants to my garden as I can.”

She calls her first planting of milkweed her “gateway drug,” and says she was trying to pull in as many insects as possible. Now, she maintains a list of birds that she spies in her garden and says the bees are another favorite side benefit of all of her plants

Along with Hoyt and Pittman’s gardens, this year’s garden roster includes three groups of gardens: mature gardens, young gardens and a mix of natives and ornamentals. Homeowners and gardeners will be present to answer attendees’ questions about plant names, favorite plants, and their approach to native gardening

Fiorrito says funds raised from the walk and from West Cook Wild Ones’ annual native

plant sales help raise funds for the grants that West Cook Wild Ones offers to schools or places of worship. She notes that the Forest Park Library and Har Zion Temple are two previous recipients who developed native gardens with the help of West Cook Wild Ones

At the end of the day, Fiorrito says that tour is primarily about showcasing people planting native gardens and encouraging people to plant more native plants, “We want to get native plants in the ground,” she says.

Before you go

The native garden walk takes place on Saturday, July 26 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets costs $12 for West Cook Wild Ones members and $15 for nonmembers. Children attend for free. Ticket holders will receive a tour map two days before the event. West Cook Wild Ones recommends biking or driving.

Visit http://westcook.wildones.org for more information and to re gister.

TODD BANNOR

Katie Pittman in her Forest Park native plant garden.

TODD BANNOR

Katie Pittman’s Forest Park native plant garden. Purple poppy-mallow (inset).

p g

ont of his

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Ken Trainor at 613-3310

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Blow the whistle on bad coaching

IVIEWPOINTS

played sports for most of my life — and despite my better judgment, I still do. I’m clinging to my glory days as a washed-up weekend warrior, deter mined to keep going until every last bit of cartilage in my knees finally taps out.

I can remember almost every coach I ever had. Some were great, others at stands out most in hindsight is how little oversight there was around their behavior. Left to their own , many modeled themselves after the most ntense figures in sports, somewhere on the spectrum between Kim Mulkey and Nick Saban. They d the game, no doubt. But very few seemed to understand child development. What disappoints me today is seeing so many oaches still using the same tactics that were used decades ago. We’ve evolved in so many education and child development — why not in coaching?

s be clear: coaching is teaching. Yet it emains one of the last places where we tolerate emotional regulation from adults. Some oaches scream at kids, berate referees, and melt down on the sidelines like children who’ve run out of screen time for the day.

Imagine a teacher yelling at a student, “What’s the common denominator?” at the top of their lungs, because a child is struggling to learn fractions. It wouldn’t fly. But on the sidelines, we call it “passion.”

The truth is, most people don’t like being yelled at — especially not in public and in front of their peers. And we shouldn’t confuse volume with leadership. There are ways to bring energy, urgency, and high expectations without losing your composure. If we believe that sports are an extension of education, then we should hold coaches to the same standard we hold teachers. The goal is to teach — not just win.

My view is that one of the core purposes of sports should be to teach kids how to play the game the right way and ensure they still want to play next season. If a child leaves a season feeling humiliated or burned out, something has gone wrong — no matter what the scoreboard says.

I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t always get this right. Some of my for mer players would probably call me a hypocrite for the amount of yelling and screaming I did as a young coach. And they’d have a point. But over the last decade, I’ve grown and evolved. I look back on those moments and cringe

The coaches I admire — the ones who seem to have figured it out — are great communicators and connectors. They honor the humanity of their athletes and take responsibility for their role when there’s miscommunication. More importantly, they build real relationships with their players and show them they care. That old cliché rings true: people don’t care what you know until they know you care

Vince Gay, an active member of the Oak Park community, has over 20 years of experience in education. He is the proud parent of two school-age children.

Oak Park is fortunate to have two weekly outdoor and familyfriendly music events this summer: Concerts in the Park and Thursday Night Out. Concerts in the Park, organized by the Park District of Oak Park and sponsored by various local establishments, takes place on Sunday nights at Scoville Park (Lake Street and Oak Park Avenue) from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

On a recent hot Sunday, the park was full of lawn chairs and blankets. Children were doing cartwheels near an older gentleman using a walker. There were singles and couples, joined by several well-behaved dogs, listening to and dancing to a salsa band. Sunday concerts will take place through Sunday, Aug. 24. At the final concert of the season, The Heartwreckers, a Tom Petty cover band, will perform. As a longtime Tom Petty fan, I’m looking forward to hearing that band and also feel sad that the season will come to an end. For information on performers each week, readers can go to www.pdop.org.

While there are no food vendors in the park, concertgoers can buy ice cream and bubble tea from several food trucks parked on Lake Street or buy ice cream across the street at Courageous Cones. No alcohol or smoking is permitted in Scoville Park

Another outdoor summer event is Thursday Night Out. Each Thursday, Marion Street is closed to car traffic between Lake Street and North Boulevard. The street is filled with people of all ages, from babies to older adults, in addition to well-behaved dogs on leashes. There are often two sets of music, the first set from 5 to 7 p.m. and the second from 7 to 9 p.m. The music ranges from rock to folk, blues, reggae, Latin and country. A schedule of the musical acts can be found at https://thursdaynightout.com/music. Children’s activities like balloon-making and art & crafts are available. Especially if the weather is hot, younger kids frolic in the fountain. A variety of food and drink options can be

at’s a big gas station

Whatever re places the grim vestiges of the Mohr Concrete plant at Harlem and Garfield has got to be an improvement. Right?

We know the residential neighbors of the long-closed plant were not enamored of a long-gone plan for a midrise, mixed-use project on the site. We’re about to find out how they feel about a block-long, interstate highway-sized gas station. That’s the front page news today in the Journal.

There are arguments to be made. Oak Park has an aversion to carbon emissions so why would we want a giant fossil fuel dispensary? Oak Park really needs money so, sure let’s take this cash bonanza of gas taxes, and sales taxes from the ultra-convenience store, and the property taxes, and bank it. A non-legitimate argument is the social media chatter saying it would be a great place for some taxing body to plant an indoor swimming pool. That’s just daft.

With QuikTrip already having filed permit applications with the village gover nment for this project, it is past time for the neighbors to be clued in. They’ve endured better than a century of concrete mixing and rumbling dusty trucks in their otherwise lovely neighborhood. Conversations about QT arriving are due.

More significant is the role of village government in all this. Specifically the near total meltdown of its economic development department over roughly the same time period as this developer has been inquiring about the site.

Don’t lose sight that the Mohr property is Oak Park’s last major available development parcel. This should have been at the top of the list of development priorities. Instead we have the closure of the Oak Park Economic Development Cor p. on what seems to have been a whim. We have seen new hires in an expanded development team at village hall at war with each other while the village manager of fered failed interventions. We have mentions of a vague plan to create a new TIF district for the Mohr site – and beyond, it seems. Work on this plan was seemingly fully bollixed by a development staffer who was finally fired in April. And you have Village President Vicki Scaman making a late election season public announcement that the village should just buy the property so it could control its development.

This is bad governance. And there ought to be consequences.

The Illinois writer Ray Bradbury up in Green Town. So did Ernest Hemingway. For Bradbury, Green was Waukeg an. For Hemingwa Oak Park. I can’t imagine a greener town than Oak Park, where summers are filled with cicada and songbird choruses, front porches and fireflies. But most us up in some Green Town or another.

Last Sunday morning in the park, I read Bradbury’s introduction to his book, lion Wine, as lovely an introduction as y find for the best book about summer ev written. It’s also about growing up and discovering, to his surprise, that he’s alive

Summering in Green Town

fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now I must remember that.

“Here is my celebration, then, of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete ter ror, written by a boy who once hung upside down in the trees, dressed in his bat costume with candy fangs in his mouth, who finally fell out of the trees when he was 12 and went and found a toy-dial typewriter and wrote his first ‘novel.’”

He ends his intro with a lingering memory from one magical Fourth of July:

TRAINOR

“Thus I fell into surprise,” Bradbury writes “I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of the bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true. …”

To his surprise, he found enough in his past to fill his book with poetic, back-looking wonder.

“I had plenty of memories and sense impressions to play with, not work with, no, play with. Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boyhid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord on the green grass of other Augusts in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old …”

Much of his other writing focused on futurism, the fantastic, and life’s darker side (Something Wick ed This Way Comes). With Dandelion Wine, however, set in the semi-autobio graphical community of Green Town, he plumbed the past and the positive

“Waukeg an,” he said, “is neither homelier nor more beautiful than any other small midwestern town. Much of it is green. The trees do touch in the middle of streets. The street in front of my old house is still paved with red bricks. In what way then was the town special? Why, I was born there. It was my life. I had to write of it as I saw fit.”

I’ve often wondered why Hemingway didn’t revisit his Green Town, if only in his mind. He was born here, grew up here. If he had written of his childhood as he saw fit, it might have done him a world of good.

As it did for Bradbury.

“Waukeg an was Green Town was Byzantium, with all the happiness that that means, with all the sadness that these names imply. … And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at that damned

“Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped, red-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself. …

“I see my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this. No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn’t they? And that one is me.

“The wine still waits in the cellars below. My beloved family still sits on the porch in the da rk. The fire balloon still drifts and bur ns in the night sky of an as-yet-unburied summer.”

I hope all of you have Green Town summer memories yet unburied, and may you make more this very summer, which someone dear to you will tell and re-tell somed ay with a long, loving look back.

This weekend marks Hemingway’s 126th birthday, by the way, and the Hemingway Foundation has several events planned to highlight the impact his Green Town had on him. If you’ re looking to reacquaint yourself, you can probably find a few of his books at Oak Pa rk’s brand new Dandelion Bookshop, co zily tucked underneath our of fices on Oak Park Avenue. Hemingway is well worth the read. Wouldn’t surprise me if they also had a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine as well.

And maybe even a copy of Our Town Oak Park, where you can read plenty about summer memories in my version of Green Town.

NSeeking input on equity and Project 3

ow that OPRF High School is halfway done with construction of Project 2, the school’s new physical education wing, the district has begun preparing for the next phase of our long-ter m facilities plan, Project 3.

As part of this planning, we’re looking for interested community members to join a two-part meeting series that will help ensure that Project 3 reflects the values, needs, and diversity of our broader community Performing arts will take center stage in Project 3. The current music spaces, which were built in the 1960s, will be replaced with a new wing for band, orchestra, and choir facilities and the black-box theater. Potential improvements to the two existing theaters are also being considered. The plans include a few new PE/Athletic spaces, as well as sustainability features such as a green roof and the potential for solar energy integration. Project 3 is not yet approved to be built.

Currently, the district’s architects are working on a high-level, conceptual design that will be presented publicly at the board’s September meetings. If the board votes to proceed, the next step will be developing a more detailed design and an estimated cost.

TRANSFORMED: OPRF High School construction on the site of the old eld house.

This process includes completion of a Racial Equity Analysis Tool (REAT) that examines various dimensions of equity, including race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, learning dif ferences, and so for th.

APPLEWHITE

At this early stage, hearing from community members is an essential part of our process to ensure that Project 3 facilities equitably meet the needs of all students

In a One View printed last week in Viewpoints [Serious questions about Oak Park leadership, July 9], it was stated that Village Manager Kevin Jackson and the new interim CFO are for mer colleagues in “Long Beach,” but one came from Long

The schedule for the community meetings series is below. If you’ re interested in joining the conversation, please RSVP so that we can ensure we have enough facilitators (bit.ly/OPRFREAT).

REAT Meeting 1:

Community Focus Group

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 6:30 p.m., OPRF Board Room

Learn about the goals and scope

Clari cation

Beach, New York and the other from Long Beach, California.

Also, the municipal experience of the director of finance prior to arriving in Oak Park is more than the two years stated. As an accountant in Rolling Meadows, she was part of

of Project 3, and share your experiences, concerns, and aspirations.

REAT Meeting 2: Complete the REAT

Monday, Aug. 25, 6:30 p.m., South Cafeteria

Receive the summary of findings from community, staf f, and student focus groups, then participate in answering the questions for the Racial Equity Analysis Tool.

Whether you’ re a parent, neighbor, alum, or community member, your voice matters. To gether, we can help ensure that future facilities at OPRF are welcoming, accessible, and affirming for everyone. We look forward to hearing from you.

Dr. LaTonya Apple white is executi ve director of Equity and Student Success at Oak Park and River Forest High School.

WEDNESD AY

JOURNAL

of Oak Park and River Forest

Viewpoints Guidelines

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

We reser ve the right to edit submissions. We do not have time to allow the writer to review changes before publication. We also do not have time to do more than super cial fact-checking, and because of our national epidemic of misinformation and conspiracy theories, when writers include statistical evidence to support their opinions, we require them to include the source of that information, such as credible websites, print publications, titles of articles and dates published, etc. Be as speci c as possible so that we and our readers have some way of assessing the credibility of your claims. Links may also be included for the online version. We follow the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics: seek the truth and report it and minimize harm. As a result, we will do our best not to publish pieces that espouse doubtful or debunked theories, demonstrate harmful bias, or cross the line into incivility. While we will do our best not to engage in censorship, we also do not intend to be used as a platform for misinformation. Your sources for fact-checking are a critical step in keeping the discourse honest, decent and respectful.

All submissions must include your rst and last name and the municipality in which you live, plus a phone number (for veri cation only). We do not publish anonymous letters. One View essays should include a sentence at the end about who you are.

If we receive your submission by 5 p.m. on Sunday, you can expect your opinion to be included in that week’s paper (and online), space permitting.

Pieces can be submitted through our online form at oakpark.com or directly to Viewpoints editor Ken Trainor, ktrainor@wjinc.com. For the latter, we prefer attached Word les or plain tex t included in the email.

the Finance Department there for two years prior to her two years in Bloomingdale.

Finally, the village’s FY2023 GFOA distinction was received on April 9, 2025. FY2024 and FY2025 winners have not yet been announced.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

■ 350-word limit

■ Must include rst and last names, municipality in which you live, phone number (for veri cation only)

‘ONE VIEW’ ESSAY

■ 500-word limit

■ One-sentence footnote about yourself and/or your connection to the topic

■ Signature details as at left

SCREENSHOT

Adopt the new bike plan

If you think of a bike as a kid’s toy you’ll never understand the need for a bike network in Oak Park. Many of us grew up on bikes and then graduated to cars as soon as possible. Many, however, still prefer bikes over cars as an effective and enjoyable mode of transportation. As electric bikes and other modes of electric transportation become more common, the demand for a complete network of safe streets will increase.

As part of a strate gy for addressing climate change, some cities are implementing safe bike networks to encourage more cycling as an alternative mode of transportation. Minneapolis, a city with lower population density than Oak Park and a harsher winter climate, has established a goal of making 60% of all trips by either walking, biking or public transit. When they reach that goal, they will have gone a long way toward reducing the impact of transpor tation on climate change in that city.

Oak Park, like many municipalities around the world, has embraced Vision Zero — the idea that it is possible to have zero

deaths and serious injuries due to car crashes. Getting to zero deaths won’t happen without systematically addressing every aspect of the road-based transportation system — especially places where walkers and bikers are close to cars.

Unfortunately, a comprehensive bike network can by stymied by a small group of vocal residents who feel their needs and wants should be prioritized over the needs and wants of the broader community. A network with gaps isn’t really a network and won’t get as much use as a comprehensive network where all users feel safe traveling with their chosen mode of transport everywhere in the village

A network of safe bike streets in Oak Park can satisfy the growing demand for such streets, can be a key element in the village’s response to climate change and can help the village achieve its Vision Zero goals — but only if it is a fully implemented network.

Oak Park can be different than it is today. It’s time to adopt this new bike plan.

Karl Lauger Oak Park

Are you cut off from a family member and not happy about it? This conference is for you. Getting Beyond Cutoff in the Family is the subject of a conference being held at the Carleton Hotel on Friday, July 25.

The conference is being hosted by the Center for Family Consultation, an organization of family therapists who base their practice on Bowen Family Systems and teach mental health professionals. The conference is open to the public and will be of special interest to anyone who feels a loss from being cut off from a family member or friend and is looking for a way to reconnect.

“Emotional cutoff” is a term that was defined by Murray Bowen as “the process of separation, isolation, withdrawal, running away, or denying the importance of the parental family.” He added this concept to his Family Systems Theory after observing

Whole Foods blew it

As a longtime Whole Foods shopper (since the ’90s) I was excited to learn of their expansion plans for the River Forest store. As one of the first Chicago-area stores, it is the smallest and most cramped.

But after seeing the proposed layout, I believe they have missed a huge opportunity to improve the shopping experience of their customers!

The main reason I shop at Whole Foods is their selection of organic produce. However, the produce selection is so poorly designed that two small carts cannot pass each other. Like an old-fashioned, covered-bridg e scenario, only one person can pass at a tim e. I find it extremely unpleasant.

That is why I was so disappointed to learn that no improvements will be made to the produce section. This expansion will only add room for more high-profit prepared foods. Since Whole Foods was purchased by Amazon, I have seen a decline in the quality of products and the morale of staf f. Where possible, I have sought out other alternatives. It is only the selection of organic produce that has been dif ficult to re place. I will continue to seek out alternatives.

Kate Wester River Forest

Whole Foods needs more space in produce

I’m a longtime Whole Foods shopper — since the late ’90s when I believe it opened. They made finding and buying delicious food, especially organic produce, attainable and attractive.

Like a lot of us I’m excited that the store is going to expand. The customer base has grown over the years — also great. Howe ver

Getting beyond family cuto

that it was common for family members to distance themselves from one another and even to stop contact.

STEPHANIE FERRERA

It is a response to increasing emotional intensity as people encounter the difficulties of resolving their differences It often involves seeing the other as the problem, blaming and sometimes labeling them as narcissistic or “toxic.” Cutoff in one generation be gets cutoff in the next, as children who grow up in more intense family emotional climates are likely to replicate the pattern as a way of managing relationship tensions

One View

re-established, and people can reclaim to a significant extent the emotional connection that has been lost through cutoff. Study of one’s family and moving toward a more objective and systemic view are first steps. With an enlarged perspective, one begins to see cutoff as a product of the family emotional system and to see one’s own part in the reactive family patter ns. With this view, possibilities for change open up. It is a well-proven avenue for growth in one’s own maturity.

… the most vital and crowded part of the store appears to be unchanged. The produce section will stay the same size, no expansion, and probably even more crowded. C’mon, WF execs, it’s not too late to do better by your loyal shoppers with more space in produce.

Frank

McNichols

River Forest

illustrating the creative ways they or their clients have reversed family cutof fs

In the after noon, we will watch the documentary, Everything’s Kosher, a delightful story of how one family reconnected and resolved their differences. CFC faculty member, Lisa Moss, will interview the film’s director and main character, Adam Fried, on his experience in his family. It is hoped that our audience will take home a host of creative ideas and a spirit of hopefulness regarding their own families.

This conference will focus on alter natives to emotional cutoff. With knowledge of the emotional process that sparks cutoff and motivation to work on one’s own part in it, cutoffs can be bridged, contact can be

The great documentarian, Ken Bur ns, says he thinks people learn best through stories. This conference will be a day of lear ning about the family emotional system through stories. In the morning, CFC faculty members, Stephanie Ferrera, Cecilia Guzman, and John Bell will present stories

For more information and to re gister for the conference, check out the Center for Family Consultation website: thecenterforfamilyconsultation.com or email Ms Ferrera at: sjferrera7@gmail.com

Stephanie Ferrera is a faculty member of the Center for Family Consultation and has a therapy practice in Oak Park

How to go Plastic Free this July, and beyond

Sadly, you won’t see Go Plastic Free at the Far mers Market this month, so you won’t have a hands-on experience of the many plastic-free items on the market. Instead, we’ll describe some here, focusing on products for your kitchen and for travel/takeout:

■ Stretchy, silicone items for wrapping and covering bowls and glasses.

■ Waxed linen wraps for food

■ Collapsible silicone containers for food storage Take to restaurants for leftovers, and if (when) you forget them, ask for tin foil for your food. Clean foil is re cyclable.

■ Silicone zip-lock baggies for food storage and sandwiches.

■ Paper towels from recycled materials, packaged in paper. (The packaging is important!)

■ Bulk liquid dish detergent, refillable in your own container.

■ Dishwasher detergent in powder fo rm, packaged in a cardboard box.

■ Sponges made from plant materials.

■ Compostable kitchen gloves made of rubber

■ Small (or larger) compost bins for your kitchen counter, making the need for a

plastic liner in your trash pail unnecessary. (There are community compost bins in our villages.)

■ Bamboo or metal travel utensil sets with retractable straws that you can have ready when you eat on the go.

■ Metal and silicone straws that are, of course, reusable.

Luckily Sugar Beet, our local grocer, carries some of these items, and the Container Store, not too far away, has others. Also look online. We’ll never be completely free from plastic, but we can sure be freer! And when you have found a

ose white poles are not

bike-friendly

new item and like it, tell friends and family and give one item as a gift for others to try. Don’t tell – show what you are using. When company comes, invite them into your kitchen to see what you use. Give guests a hands-on experience. Your plastic-freer behavior could multiply! You will be part of the solution to make our environment cleaner and our Earth stay livable longer.

Start in your kitchen!

Members of Go Plastic Free River Forest

Oak Park has been introducing white, flexible poles around school or certain parks to increase pedestrian safety. However, they do not help bikers. Around nine months ago, I was biking home from school on Berkshire next to Taylor Park. The streets are too small for there to be two lanes with cars parked on both sides.

I was biking down the hill on the street when two cars came from behind and in

Despite a last-ditch ef fort to delay Donald trump’s sweeping and coercive domestic policy bill, it passed the Congress of the United States. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) broke a House record for the longest floor speech, eight and three-quarter hours, denouncing the bill as cruel, immoral and profoundly un-American. At one point he called the House chamber a “crime scene.”

We all should agree with Jeffries: A crime against American democracy was being committed

In the end, trump prevailed. The House vote was 218-214. And in doing so, trump didn’t just get a bill passed, he marked a 249-year turning point in the nation’s moral trajectory. With cruel irony, trump signed the bill into law on the nation’s Independence Day, a bill that systematically strips millions of the most vulnerable of food, health care, life-saving medication, and even their hospitals. This is not reform. It is giving trump and his oligarchical followers

front of me. I was maneuvering to get out of the way of the car behind me and it was perfectly fine up until I reached the poles and my handlebar got caught on one. I fell to the ground causing scars I still have I looked up the poles and on the manufacturer’s website, and it says they are pedestrian friendly, but not bike friendly. Oak Park put objects in the road that, from the manufacturer, are not friendly to one of the

most common for ms of transportation in Oak Park.

However, these poles are not all bad. They do help pedestrians by limiting the space in the road and are a much better solution than pouring expensive concrete and tearing up the road. They are much faster to put in as well.

But my opinion still stands. These poles are not helpers when there is no pedestrian

trump’s plan for his america

their long-awaited and desired retribution.

We are no longer gover ned by a representative democracy We are gover ned by a system engineered to protect wealth and punish those in need. The bill slashes more than $930 billion from Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, all while raising our future debt by $3.1 trillion. It guts food assistance and student aid. It expands immigrant detention and increases nuclear weapons spending — all while lavishing tax cuts, 80% of which benefit the very comfortably rich. These outcomes are not side effects. They are the aim, the actual goal and intent of the legislation. This so-named “beautiful” bill is the signature of a democracy in decay, a gover nment that no longer reflects the will or welfare of its people. A political system where a party can seize the presidency with less than half the popular vote (trump still claims the “people” gave him a “mandate” to

JEANNE MATTHEWS

One View

change the system) while imposing an agenda that serves primarily the wealthiest among us trump’s one big bill caters to the ultra-rich — the donors and dynasties who bankroll campaigns and expect returns. Those it punishes — the sick, the poor, the elderly, the undocumented, the young — constitute the true American majority. But that majority no longer matters. Our democracy no longer operates on the principle of representation. It runs on wealth.

This bill doesn’t just take from the poor — it punishes the poor. It weaponizes red tape, imposes heavy work requirements, significant asset tests, and bureaucratic barriers designed not to manage aid but to deny it.

Meanwhile, it lifts the wealthy higher still — through estate tax breaks, corporate giveaways, and fossil fuel subsidies — all packaged as “growth.” But whose growth? Whose freedom?

Not the single mother whose food lifeline,

issue like that next to Taylor Park and are limiting how traffic can move, causing it to be a one-lane road with no place to pull over to let cars through coming the opposite direction.

Bikers are unsafe and forced into the middle of the road and are susceptible to being forced into the poles, causing a crash for them.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, is cut. Not the student who loses a Pell Grant over a scholarship. Not the life-threatened asylum-seeker, with no waiver and no mercy

This isn’t gover nance. It’s a slow-motion purge of compassion from public life. trump has never shown an ounce of compassion in his life; now he wants this country to do as he does.

This one, big, shameful bill reveals the truth: We are ruled by the wealthy few. This is the slow funeral of the moral foundations of the republic — compassion, justice, decency — sacrificed at the altar of plutocracy We are left to ask: What kind of nation do we want to be? What kind have we already become?

The answer lies buried in the fine print of this 940-page bill. It reads like an obituary for a democratic republic that once dared to care for its own.

Jeanné Schulte Matthews is an Oak Park resident.

Harrison Miller, Age 13

Let me get this straight — again

The Chicago Tribune reports (7/8/25) that in 2023 my state senator, Don Harmon, “contributed $100,001 to his own campaign,” one dollar over the amount “that allowed him to accept unlimited funds” under a provision of state law (written by him) that was designed to level the playing field for poor candidates running against rich ones who could spend unlimited amounts of their own money. If somebody did spend over $100,000, then the poor one could accept unlimited funds, too. Harmon then collected $4,000,000. You’d think he would have put in a provision disqualifying himself, as a candidate, from triggering this with his own personal funds.

FRANK STACHYRA

One View

planning ahead.

The result is that Harmon is effectively free to abolish all contribution caps in a state ethics law that he himself wrote, simply by paying himself 100 big ones. Proving the old saw that the scandal is not what people do that is illegal, but what they do that is legal!

Who was the rich opponent spending unlimited funds of his own that “poor” Har mon had to be made equal to?

Such a law would seem appropriate only when it was somebody else who contributed the trigger amount — not when it was the candidate himself contributing to his own fund. But apparently the law says otherwise, and Harmon can do it, as he writes in his opinion piece (Tribune 7/9/25), asserting that this was included in the very purpose of the law — which he wrote Perhaps he was

Harmon goes on to argue a technical defense against some $10,000,000 in penalties for doing so, based on the purpose of the law being to give Senate candidates equal treatment with House candidates, an argument completely irrelevant to, and missing the most important point — the ethical point. I don’t care about le gal defenses; only ethical ones, and in my opinion there is none here. Harmon, who is supposed to be Mr. (squeaky) Clean, an ethics refor mer, is only proving that Springfield is a town that “ain’t ready for reform,” and enhancing its reputation as being less interested in real ethics than in something it can call ethics, but is not. If this is what Mr. Ethics is up to, heaven help us!

This is apparently not Mr. Har mon’s first bout with questionable ethics in 2023. As the Tribune reported (2/21/24) the State Board of Elections unanimously (8-0) upheld $108,500 in fines for late filing of disclosures

Iby a PAC backed by Harmon personally (to the tune of $500,000 of his own money), that was involved in the Supreme Court election campaign and run by a close associate of his who played what can only be called a shell game — transferring $149,516 out of the PAC to another one, leaving it penniless and “unable” to pay the fines (despite Tribune reports that it offered a settlement payment of $30,000 which the board rejected).

When I wrote about that (Wednesday Journal Viewpoints, 12/12/23) I said it stinks to high heaven. And I publicly pledged not to vote for him until I lear ned that his pet PAC had paid the fines it owed. I have just checked with the board and been told it was never paid. I guess Harmon needed the $100,001 to contribute to himself, to evade the contribution caps on his own campaign.

This new ethical challenge is too much.

I’m a lifelong, super-progressive “lefty,” and ready to presume Mr. Har mon’s substantive policies largely coincide with my own. But I cannot vote for a candidate with ethics like this. I doubt Mr. Har mon will miss my vote, but I will not vote for him as my Senator until I see assurance by him (public or private) of what he has done to clean up his ethics on both of these matters.

Frank Stachyra is a 50+ year resident of Oak Park

JOY AARONSON

Music and the food of life from page 21

found at Thursday Night Out. The first is a four-ticket dine-around booklet for $25, featuring specials from local restaurants and stores. Another option is to order food directly from an area restaurant and bring it back to your table. I often call and order while I’m listening to the music instead of waiting for the food to be prepared at the restaurant. You can also get takeout from Q-BBQ or Kyuramen and sit at their outside tables. Some concertgoers bring food from home or other restaurants. During Thursday Night Out, Marion Street is filled with round tables and chairs. I have found that many of the tables are occupied unless you arrive near the beginning of the evening. I’ve enjoyed sitting at tables with people I know and people I don’t; however I often bring my own lawn chair. This allows me to move to different locations and get to Thursday Night Out later in the evening and still get a seat.

Joy Aaronson is an Oak Park resident who writes about her favorite things in the village. Previously, she contributed to Chicago Parent and wrote the Kids’ World column for the former Logan Square Free Press.

Equity must anchor our housing solution s

read Josh VanderBerg’s recent column, “Everything Is Housing,” [Viewpoints, July 9] with great interest and considerable agreement. His sense of urgency is not misplaced. We are both deeply concer ned about the housing crisis in Oak Park and Illinois more broadly. I share his belief that housing lies at the heart of many of our most urgent social problems — homelessness, educational inequity, segregation, and even climate change.

Where Mr. VanderBerg and I fully agree is on the premise that our current housing policy is outdated and inadequate. The system is broken, and too many of our residents are being priced out of the communities they love We also agree that the practice of exclusionary zoning — particularly singlefamily zoning — has long contributed to racial and economic separation. These are undeniable truths. I respect VanderBerg’s clarity in stating them, and I commend his call to build more housing as one part of the

solution.

But while we stand on common ground in diagnosing the crisis, we differ in how we prescribe the cure.

ROBERT MILSTEIN

VanderBerg rightly sees housing as a root cause. He makes a strong case that restrictive housing policies are linked to a wide range of social ills. His argument — bold and data-driven — points to housing supply as a fundamental lever of justice. His tone is insistent, even urgent, as he pushes for rapid expansion of housing stock, including in communities like ours.

One View

affordability standards — new development can attract higherincome residents, increase property values, and displace the very people we are trying to support. We cannot assume that simply increasing the number of units will ensure access for those in greatest need

Where I diverge is not in principle but in approach.

I believe that VanderBerg’s vision, if implemented without key affordability safeguards, may unintentionally worsen the very inequalities he wants to solve. Without guarantees — such as inclusionary zoning, income-linked unit set-asides, or enforceable

I do not subscribe to a “not in my backyard” philosophy. I welcome thoughtful development. But I lean toward an equityfirst model: any increase in density must be accompanied by structural guarantees of affordability. Otherwise, the change may primarily benefit the affluent and leave behind the low-income families, seniors, and working people that both VanderBerg and I hope to protect.

He emphasizes scale and momentum. I emphasize balance and guardrails. He sees policy inertia as the chief barrier to justice. I see the lack of enforceable protections as our

greatest risk. His voice is an important one, rooted in moral clarity. Mine is grounded in cautious pragmatism. Both are necessary. Perhaps what this debate reveals is that we are not opponents but counterparts — representing two wings of the broader housing justice movement. One side urges rapid reform to reverse entrenched injustice; the other seeks to tether that reform to equity protections to avoid repeating past mistakes Both perspectives deserve a seat at the table.

The question now is not whether we should act, but how. We have research on both sides. What we need is dialogue that moves us forward — not just boldly, but wisely. Perhaps in that middle ground we can design policies that are both ambitious and equitable, that build more housing and build it right.

Let’s have that community discussion. Robert Milstein is a former Oak Park village trustee.

e laws only apply to Democrats

“State Senate President appeals potential $9.8 million fine” (p. 3, Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2025):

It must be galling to Don Harmon to be fined $9.8 million for “improperly acce pting campaign cash” when the President of the United States openly accepts gifts and bribes from foreign leaders! Trump has used his infamous tarif f declarations to extort donations directly to his own pocket. We all know of the $400 million luxury jet given by Qatar (which will cost U.S. taxpayers over a billion to retrofit). Vietnam ne gotiated a reduction in tarif fs from 46% to 20% after the country’s gover nment approved a plan by the Trump Org anization and local business Kinh Bac City Development to invest $1.5bn in hotels, golf courses and luxury real estate there.(1) Foreign or domestic countries or individuals who want to buy influence with Trump can feed money directly into Trump’s memecoin ($TRUMP). A Chinese company GD Culture Group secured funding to buy as much as

$300 million of $TRUMP.(2) On June 27 a United Arab Emirates-based fund bought $100 million worth of digital tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture of U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, becoming its largest publicly known investor.(3) Forbes estimates that Trump has cashed in on his cryptocurrency scams to the tune of $1 billion thus far.(4)

Poor Don Harmon, the laws still apply to him!

Sources:

(1) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ c4gd66q0q7go

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/ us/politics/trump-crypto-purchase.html

(3) https://www.reuters.com/business/ finance/uae-fund-buys-100-million-trumpsworld-liberty-tokens-2025-06-27/

(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/06/05/this-is-how-muchtrump-has-made-from-crypto-so-far/

Tom DeCoursey Oak Park

Oak Park Bingo

My girlfriend and I took a recent trip to downtown Oak Park, as we often do. We could tell we made it downtown along North Boulevard outside the CTA due to the mélange of hot asphalt, urine, and marijuana, our arrival cemented by unsupervised children selling candy while their inattentive guardian played a mobile phone game under the shade of a nearby awning. Close by was a homeless man in a shouting match with the owner of a Marion Street restaurant, threating to physically accost him. Upon entering a café for a drink, we were followed in by a different woman selling candy who, after we respectfully declined her wares, decided to stand outside the window where we were seated and rap on the glass while we drank our coffee.

After finishing up at the café we decided to get some ice cream, walking past a few empty storefronts to the Cold Stone. When it came time to perfor m the signature “mix-in” of ingredients, the employee was so absolutely baked out of his mind that after standing motionless for about 15 seconds, decided to shove his gloved fingers up to the knuckle and mix our ice cream by hand, squeezing it so that it extruded between his fingers. Much like Wonka’s waterfall, it’s the only way to get it just right.

If I had gotten a parking ticket, that would’ve been an Oak Park Bingo! Quite a pleasant village we have here.

Alex Papadakis Oak Park

Send letters to the Editor

Ken Trainor, Wednesday Journal

141 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, IL 60302

E-mail: ktrainor@wjinc.com

Fax: 708-524-0047

Please include name, address and daytime phone number for verification.

Iere is hope – just not today

t bears repeating: the current occupant blathers on incessantly because he deeply needs attention. It doesn’t matter to him that he’s lying almost all the time. He does not have a belief system, just a visceral need to be noticed. He does have very ef ficient antennae for detecting what his “base” seems to want, and he re peats back to them what they say so that they themselves believe he’s on their side. He’s not. He manipulates them. His purpose is constant attention and the power he can wield.

ED MCDEVIT T

One View

His closest enablers and others fall into two camps: truly dim-brained, uninfor med and fawning followers and a large behind-the-scenes crew enacting their agendas while using the person ostensibly in charge as cover. They are a thoroughly anti-populist cadre of government-hating ideologues who derive from a long genealo gy of government-haters.

Those historical figures from whom these agenda-driven agents descend hated everything about the federal government: taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights law and protections of marginalized people, national parks and forests, environmental protection (it is anti-biblical), public education, almost all immigrants allowed into the country (especially non-white and non-Christian people), relations with and respect for other countries, and many other things

Those hatreds have not diminished over time. They have little or nothing to do with traditional conservatism. They are driven, instead, by strict adherence to fringe Christian beliefs, a pernicious belief in the primacy of the individual over the interests of society, and a strong sense of the less for tunate that their lack of for tune is their own fault and not to be relieved by any sort rnment help.

ent occupant parrots, in his own scattered fashion, what these but his understanding y is shallow. The one their ideolo gy that is of use to him is that their anti-government activities help him consolidate a sense r that would be impossible in , useful government. His

ultimate understanding of the real meaning and consequences of such power is weak, and he is incapable of a consistent, coherent plan to realize the full extent of such power.

That is what will save us from utter ruin. Can he do real damage? Of course, and he is doing real damage, but he’s doing it in a most scattershot, ad hoc fashion that shows how addled he is. In the service of his need for attention, he has multiple autocratic impulses. But his impulsiveness, his extreme sensitivity to ridicule and criticism, his “Oh, look, a squirrel!” mentality all make him dangerous, yes, but not in the ways so many people fear. Meanwhile, the ideological squad doing the real damage really don’t care what he does outside of things that accomplish their ends. A cadre of them sits with him like the people in a royal court, laughing with him, cajoling him, and distracting him while their compatriots do their damage to the country. Is this sustainable? Of course not. It’s temporary. The congressional ideologue component of the governmentbusting team appear to be doing the current occupant’s bidding. Don’t be fooled. He’s doing their bidding. Do they feel threatened by him if they don’t toe the line? Certainly. But their marching orders don’t come from him. They come from the Bannons and Russell Voughts and big-money rightwingers, with the current occupant as the agency through which their expectations flow.

This apparatus will cause great destruction. But don’t despair. The government itself exerts strong inertia. The destroyers know they have only until January 2027 to do their worst. After that, they’ll be hounded out of office, into inaction, or threatened with serious legal action.

Hang in there. Turn toward the light. It’s there. Find it and fix on it. These jackals in the living room, these unwelcome guests, will be shoved out the door and back into the wilderness where they belong. Our job is never to let them near the door again.

Ed McDevitt is a Ri ver Forest resident. This first appeared in his blog, Art Can Save Us and Life’s Ideas.

Democracy is a false promise that, like a skilled magician, wows, dazzles and ultimately misdirects away from the true centers of power. The citizenry has become convinced that, because once every so often we push a button in a voting booth, we are in charge.

If democracy works anywhere, it should work in a place like Oak Park. An educated, civically engaged community with a longstanding progressive ethos. Local government is small, accessible, and structurally responsive: elected trustees, open meetings, public comment, town halls. It’s the textbook case of participatory democracy. And yet, time and again, it fails.

The village board pushes through multimillion-dollar projects that residents overwhelmingly oppose. Taxpayer money flows to private developers under the guise of revitalization. Public meetings are packed with dissent, petitions circulate, op-eds warn, but none of it seems to matter. The plans move forward. The people watch. The outcome never changes.

Contractors and developers, along with their friends in village hall, control policy by framing the Overton window — the range of views deemed acceptable on a given topic. Suddenly the discussion changes

An Oak Park parable

from “Should we renovate village hall, or does its current form suffice?” to “Should we do the $80 million renovation or $150 million?”

ANDREW JOSEPH

This isn’t an anomaly — it’s a demonstration. If democracy cannot function in a village of 50,000 people, where leaders are neighbors and the stakes are visible, how can it possibly function at the state or national level, where power is abstract and influence industrialized?

One View

National politics has become little more than a perverse, mediated spectacle designed to alarm and agitate. The Blue Team vs. the Red Team. A public melodrama akin to pro wrestling, where the Faces and the Heels duke it out on stage and then high-five back in the green room. Instead of real estate developers pulling the strings, it is the military-industrial complex, multinational conglomerates, financial institutions, and tech companies. Not a single presidential candidate since JFK has succeeded without backing from these stakeholders, and we all know how it tur ned out for him.

But as long as everyone believes their team is the good one and the other team

A Bike Plan referendum

Imagine throwing a dinner party and not showing up — while your guests are left with only the caterers. That’s what recent public meetings in Oak Park felt like. Instead of attending to hear resident concerns and answer questions, our elected trustees sent village staff. A side room was offered for residents to record video messages, but with no live dialogue, what kind of public process is that?

Why are Oak Park trustees avoiding face-to-face engagement? Perhaps they hope residents will grow weary, stop asking questions, and quietly accept the Bike Plan. But they are mistaken. At a recent town hall — where only Trustee Jim Taglia appeared — public frustration was palpable This debate has been misframed as pro-bike vs. anti-bike, or safety vs. parking. That’s a distraction. The real issue is gover nance.

Are special interest groups steering public policy? Are lobbyists and loyalists

populating commissions? Is public input being marginalized? Is a multimillion-dollar infrastructure plan advancing without robust vetting, clear benefits, or direct accountability?

Oak Parkers deserve better We deserve transparency, a responsive gover nment, and a voice in shaping the future of our community. When stadium lights were proposed for OPRF High School — a much smaller, localized project — it required a public referendum. Why doesn’t this?

Ask yourself: Are you prepared to lose up to 25% of on-street parking, and risk future tax hikes for this plan? Cyclists have long ridden safely through Oak Park. This isn’t about whether people bike — it’s about whether our leaders are willing to listen before reshaping the village with no public vote

Let the people decide. Put the Bike Plan on the ballot.

Kurtis Todd Oak Park

is the bad one, and dutifully marches off to the polls to collect their “I voted” sticker, the con goes on.

Here, Ivan Illich offers clarity. In his critique of modern institutions, Illich proposed the concept of conviviality: the idea that society should be built around tools, systems, and relationships that support individual autonomy and voluntary cooperation. A convivial society is one where people are not just permitted to participate, but are needed to make things work — where the structures of life are scaled to human judgment and shaped by local knowledge. By Illich’s measure, Oak Park’s democracy fails not because it lacks participation, but because it doesn’t require it. Its complexity, scale, and professionalization ensure that citizen involvement is peripheral. The individual has no meaningful control over the tools of gover nance. Decisions are made with the polish of process but without the substance of self-rule.

If democracy cannot function meaningfully in a place like Oak Park — where education, wealth, and civic norms are all favorable — then perhaps the form itself is broken. Or rather, it has been evacuated

of its purpose. Democracy that does not foster autonomy becomes administration. Participation that does not shape outcomes becomes pageantry.

To recover the promise of democracy, we must recover the principles of conviviality. This means building smaller, simpler, more transparent systems — ones in which people’s actions matter, not symbolically but materially. Illich’s vision calls us back to the roots of democracy — not as a system of voting and procedures, but as a lived experience of freedom, cooperation, and shared responsibility. Anything less is not democracy. It is its simulation.

What Oak Park reveals is not a failure of process, but a failure of premise. If democracy means being ruled — even locally — by decisions we did not make and do not want, then the system merely sanctifies coercion with procedure. Real democracy, if it is to mean anything, must be rooted in autonomy: in the ability of individuals to govern their own lives, free from imposed authority masked as collective will. Without consent, representation is just a prettier form of domination. Oak Park is not the exception — it’s the rule dressed up in civic language

Andrew Joseph is an Oak Park resident.

OBITUARIES

Gus Boudros, 53 Oak Park Food Mart proprietor

Gus N. Boudros, 53, has died. Born on November 6, 1971, in Oak Park, he was a lifelong resident and proudly called it home. There he lived and over the famFood Mart. He led it with dedication and heart until his retirement in 2012.

In retirement, he embraced life with joy and gratitude, splitting his time between Illinois and Florida and sur-

rounding himself with the people he loved. Despite the challenges of kidney disease, he lived courageously and fully until his passing.

He will be deeply missed.

Gus was the son of the late Nick K. Boudros and the late Athanasia “Sue” (Soula) nee Anagnostopoulos, the brother to Henrietta, Alex, and Christopher; and a friend, cousin, and nephew to many across the globe, including in Greece, Canada, and Australia.

Visitation was held on July 10 at Transfiguration of Our Lord Greek Or thodox Chapel (located in Elmwood Cemetery), 2905 N. Thatcher Road, River Grove, followed by inter ment at Elmwood Cemetery.

Arrangements were handled by Nicholas M. Pishos Funeral Director Ltd (Hellenic Funeral Service), Info: 847-833-9522

SPORTS

Renteria gets a hold on OPRF wrestling

Collins steps down but remains as assistant

By MELVIN TATE

Contributing Reporter

For the last 20 years, Paul Collins has coached the Oak Park and River Forest High School wrestling program – ten as an assistant, followed by ten as the varsity head coach. Collins recently decided to turn over the program to Jason Renteria, a 2017 OPRF graduate and one of the most-accomplished wrestlers ever for the Huskies. At a District 200 Board of Education meeting, July 10, the board approved Renteria as the new head coach. Collins will remain on Renteria’s staff as an assistant.

Renteria, who was one of Collins’ assistant coaches the past two seasons, told Wednesday Journal in an interview that he’s thrilled to lead OPRF, which has been one of the state’s top programs for the past two decades.

“It’s definitely a little nervous because I know what it’s like being in the program,” he said, “but the way it’s turned around the last two years, I’m excited about what’s to come this year. We have a great group of

kids who’ve put in a lot of work together.”

While Collins said there’s never a perfect time for a change, the desire to spend more time with his family played a role in his de cision to step down.

“To be honest, I’d been thinking about it for a little bit,” Collins said. “I started my family late (he has three children). It puts thing in perspective, and I thought it was time. I didn’t want to get to point where I was not spending enough time with my family.”

Renteria was a four-time state finalist for the Huskies, and the program’s only wrestler to reach the championship match all four years. He won Class 3A titles at 120 pounds in 2016 and at 132 pounds in 2017. He was also runner-up at 106 in 2014 and at 113 in 2015. He finished his OPRF career with a sterling 1448 record

“Jason is going to be awesome,” Collins said. “He did really well as a wrestler, but

he’s come in as an assistant for the last two and a half years and was ready to take over the reins. We wanted to move forward and make sure the program was taken care of, and I think we’re in a eally good spot.”

Before returning to OPRF, Renteria served as head coach at IC Catholic Prep for two seasons That proved to be an invaluable experience which helped prepare him for this moment.

“It helped me see the other side of wrestling,” he said. “All the little things you never paid attention to as a wrestler, you see now as a coach.”

Renteria, who recently turned 26, adds that being a head coach at his age can be of great value for the entire program.

“It plays a big part in the trust and connection,” he said. “They see my name in the [wrestling] room. It wasn’t long ago, so everything I’m telling them is the same it was when I wrestled.”

Collins said he’ll miss being around the wrestlers all the time. It’s something he’s always enjoyed

“It’s going to be an adjustment,” he said. “The camaraderie, the ability to build relationships, those are things I’ll miss. Working with the kids is why you get into teaching. My hope is that I’ ve built relationships and done good things for people as they’ve made their way through our program.”

Renteria is thankful that Collins is sticking around to help out. He’s appreciative of showing him the ropes and preparing him to take over. And he’s determined to keep OPRF among the state’s best. To do so, Renteria says he’ll focus on details and keep doing what’s proven successful, while adding a few tweaks.

“It’s a matter of fine-tuning everything,” he said. “The kids know the standard they want to keep, and it’s going to be an easier transition since I’ve been working with the boys the past two years. Nothing’s really changing; everyone’s still playing their part.”

Giovannie Ortiz named new Fenwick boys soccer coach

Program’s third head coach in as many months

By MELVIN TATE Contributing Reporter

Last month, Fenwick High School introduced Adrian Remeniuk as its new varsity boys soccer head coach, re placing Craig Blazer, who led the Friars the previous five seasons. Just over a month later, there’s yet another change in the position.

In a press release July 11, Fenwick announced that Giovannie Ortiz has been appointed the new boys soccer coach. He re places Remeniuk, who left for a counseling position at another school.

“I’m incredibly excited to join the Fenwick soccer program and help evolve the

culture both on and of f the field,” Ortiz said in the release. “I look forward to continuing the success and building of f the strong foundation that Coach Blazer has established here at Fenwick.”

Ortiz comes to Fenwick from Morton, where for the past three years he served as juniorvarsity one head coach and a varsity assistant coach. Moreover, he has served as a colle ge and career liaison as well as a school counselor intern on Morton’s West Campus in Berwyn.

A Berwyn native, Or tiz graduated from Morton in 2017 and was part of the 2015 Mustangs squad that placed third in the IHSA Class 3A boys socce r state tournament. Colle giately, he played at Purdue University Northwest for two seasons, then transfer red to Dominican University in River Forest for his last three years, gaining a bonus season in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A startback, he helped the Stars qualify for the NCAA Division III tour nament in each of his three seasons

Ortiz, who will also ser ve as a f ull-time c ounselor at Fenwick, recently rece ived his Master of Arts in School C ounseling de gree from C oncordia Unive rsity Chicago. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Psycholo gy de gree, along with a minor in marketing

He still plays competitively with Wisloka Chicago – a semiprofessional team in the United Premier Soccer League, and says he’s looking forward to bringing his experience and passion for soccer to Fenwick .

“I am super-excited to work with the F riars and meet our student-athletes and their families,” he said.

JASON RENTERIA

GIOVANNIE ORTIZ

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

PRIORY PARK PROJECT - SPLASH PAD & BUILDING ADDITION

Notice is hereby given to potential

Bidders that the River Forest Park District will be receiving sealed bids for Splash Pad and Building Addition Improvements at Priory Park, 7354 Division Street, River Forest, IL 60305.

The scope of this project is as follows and identified in the document.

Demolition/Removal

Picnic Shelter Installation

Grading/Drainage

Drinking Fountian Installation

Splash Pad Development

Site Furnishings

Building Addition

Landscape Restoration

Bid documents may be obtained beginning at 10:00 AM on July 9, through the BHFX planroom, https://www.bhfxplanroom.com between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday. A non-refundable fee will be charged for each requested bid package. See BHFX’s planroom for the cost of both a printed copy and PDF download, or $65.00 for only a PDF download.

Each bid must be placed in a sealed envelope clearly marked “Sealed Bid: ‘Priory Park Project” and addressed to the River Forest Park District, 401 Thatcher Avenue, River Forest, IL, 60305, Attention: Michael Sletten, Executive Director. Bids will be received until 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at which time the bid proposals will be publicly opened and read aloud at 401 Thatcher Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 60305.

The River Forest Park District Board of Park Commissioners reserves the right to waive all technicalities, to accept or reject any or all bids, to accept only portions of a proposal and reject the remainder. Failure to make such a disclosure will not result in accrual of any right, claim or cause of action by any Bidder against the River Forest Park District. Bids shall not include federal excise tax or state sales tax for materials and equipment to be incorporated in, or fully consumed in the performance of, the Work. An Exemption Certificate will be furnished by the River Forest Park District on request of the Bidder, for use in connection with this Project only.

The Work of this Project is subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act, 820 ILCS 130/0.01 et seq. A prevailing wage determination has been made by the Park District, which is the same as that determined by the Illinois Department of Labor for public works projects in Cook County.

The Contract entered for the Work will be drawn in compliance with said law and proposals should be prepared accordingly and provide for payment of all laborers,

workers, and mechanics needed to perform the Work at no less than the prevailing rate of wages (or the prevailing rate for legal holiday and overtime work) for each craft, type of worker, or mechanic.

The Contractor selected will also be required to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules, regulations and executive orders including but not limited to those pertaining to equal employment opportunity.

A Certified or Cashier’s check payable to the Owner, or a Bid Bond in an amount equal to Ten Percent (10%) of the total bid amount must accompany each bid. In addition, each Bidder shall submit a proof of insurance demonstrating the Bidders insurability. Failure to provide a Bid Bond or proof of insurance shall render the bid incomplete and rejected. The Owner will require the successful bidder to furnish a satisfactory Performance and Materials Bond for the total contract amount. Once submitted, no bids will be withdrawn without written consent from the Owners Attorney.

Published in Wednesday Journal July 16, 2025

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS 24-14428 CONSTITUTION PARK

Notice is hereby given to potential Bidders that the River Forest Park District will be receiving sealed bids for the Site Improvements at Constitution Park located at 7715 Greenfield Street, River Forest, IL 60305.

The scope of this project is as follows and identified in the document.

1. Demolition/Removal

2. Grading/Drainage/ Water Service/Sanitary Service

3. Concrete Work / Asphalt Patching

4. Play Area Development

5. Volleyball Courts Development

6. Ballfield Development

7. Poured-In-Place Rubber Surfacing

8. Site Furnishings

9. Pre-Fab Shelter / Restroom Building

10. Electrical

11. Fencing

12. Landscape Plantings & Restoration

Specifications may be obtained beginning at 10:00 AM on July 25, 2025 through the BHFX planroom, https://www.bhfxplanroom.com between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday. A non-refundable fee will be charged for each requested bid package. See BHFX’s planroom for the cost of both a printed copy and PDF download, or $90.00 for only a PDF download.

Each bid must be placed in a sealed envelope clearly marked “Sealed Bid: Constitution Park” and addressed to the River Forest Park District, 401 Thatcher Avenue, River Forest, IL 60305, Attention:

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING VILLAGE OF OAK PARK ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS

CALENDAR NUMBER� 15�25�Z

HEARING DATE� August 6, 2025

Mike Sletten, Executive Director. Bids will be received until 2:00 P.M. on August 13, 2025, at which time the bid proposals will be publicly opened and read aloud at 401 Thatcher Avenue, River Forest, IL 60305.

The Park Board reserves the right to waive all technicalities, to accept or reject any or all bids, to accept only portions of a proposal and reject the remainder. Failure to make such a disclosure will not result in the accrual of any right, claim or cause of action by any Bidder against the Park District. Bids shall not include federal excise tax or state sales tax for materials and equipment to be incorporated in, or fully consumed in the performance of, the Work. An Exemption Certificate will be furnished by the River Forest Park District on request of the Bidder, for use in connection with this Project only.

The Work of this Project is subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act, 820 ILCS 130/0.01 et seq. A prevailing wage determination has been made by the River Forest Park District, which is the same as that determined by the Illinois Department of Labor for public works projects in Cook County. The Contract entered for the Work will be drawn in compliance with said law and proposals should be prepared accordingly and provide for payment of all laborers, workers, and mechanics needed to perform the Work at no less than the prevailing rate of wages (or the prevailing rate for legal holiday and overtime work) for each craft, type of worker, or mechanic. The Contractor selected will also be required to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules, regulations and executive orders including but not limited to those pertaining to equal employment opportunity.A Certified or Cashier’s check payable to the Owner, or a Bid Bond in an amount equal to Ten Percent (10%) of the total bid amount must accompany each bid. In addition, each Bidder shall submit a proof of insurance demonstrating the Bidders insurability. Failure to provide a Bid Bond or proof of insurance shall render the bid incomplete and rejected. The Owner will require the successful bidder to furnish a satisfactory Performance and Materials Bond for the total contract amount. Once submitted, no bids will be withdrawn without written consent from the Owner’s Attorney.

MBE/FBE PARTICIPATION

The Park District encourages minority contractors to submit bids for this project. The successful contractor is encouraged to utilize minority businesses as sub-contractors for supplies, equipment, services, etc. Questions will be answered in the form of written addenda and provided to all Bidders, as per State of Illinois statutes. Submit questions regarding the bid in writing to sarah.dreier@jsdinc. com, no later than 3:00 p.m. on August 6, 2025

Published in Wednesday Journal July 16, 2025

TIME� 7�00 p.m. or as soon thereafter as the Agenda permits

LOCATION OF HEARING� Room 201 �Council Chambers), Oak Park Village Hall, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois, 60302

APPLICATION� The Zoning Board of Appeals (“ZBA”) will conduct a public hearing on an application filed by the Applicant, Kendall Lynch, seeking a variance from Section 8.3�A� �1� of the Oak Park Zoning Ordinance, which restricts nonretail uses from locating within the first 50 feet of the street lot line at grade level or on the ground floor of any building. The Applicant proposes a physical therapy clinic at the property commonly known as 163 South Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois, Property Index Number 16�07�306�018�0000 �“Subject Property”), in the DT�2 Down-

town Zoning District �Hemingway Sub-District).

A copy of the application and applicable documents are on file and are available for inspection at Village Hall, Development Services Department, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois 60302, Monday through Friday between 8�30 a.m. and 5�00 p.m. All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard at the public hearing. Interested persons may also sign up to participate in-person in the hearing to cross examine the applicant and its witnesses by submitting a cross-examination form or by emailing Zoning@oak-park.us before 5�00 PM on the day prior to the public hearing.

The public hearing may be adjourned by the Board to another date without further notice by public announcement at the hearing setting forth the time and place thereof.

Published in Wednesday Journal, July 16, 2025

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING VILLAGE OF OAK PARK ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS

CALENDAR NUMBER� 14�25�Z

HEARING DATE� August 6, 2025

TIME� 7�00 p.m. or as soon thereafter as the Agenda permits

LOCATION OF HEARING� Room 201 �Council Chambers), Oak Park Village Hall, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois, 60302

APPLICATION� The Zoning Board of Appeals (“ZBA”) will conduct a public hearing on a special use permit application filed by the Applicant, KidSpace Academy, to operate a Day Care Center, pursuant to Section 8.3 �Table 8�1� Use Matrix) of the Oak Park Zoning Ordinance, at the property located at 505 North Ridgeland Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois, Property Index Number 16�06�424�023�0000 (“Subject Property”) in the NC Neighborhood Commercial Zoning District.

A copy of the application and applicable documents are on file and are available for inspection at Village Hall, Development Services Department, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois 60302, Monday through Friday between 8�30 a.m. and 5�00 p.m.

All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard at the public hearing. Interested persons may also sign up to participate in-person in the hearing to cross examine the applicant and its witnesses by submitting a cross-examination form or by emailing Zoning@ oak-park.us before 5�00 PM on the day prior to the public hearing.

The public hearing may be adjourned by the Board to another date without further notice by public announcement at the hearing setting forth the time and place thereof.

Published in Wednesday Journal, July 16, 2025

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: M25000637 on June 26, 2025 Under the Assumed Business Name of THE PINWHEEL LAB with the business located at:1545 MONROE AVE APT 2, RIVER FOR EST, IL 60305. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: JESSICA MO 1545 MONROE AVE APT 2, RIV ER FOREST, IL 60305, USA

Published in Wednesday Journal July 2, 9, 16, 2025

CALENDAR NUMBER� 13�25�Z

HEARING DATE� August 6, 2025

TIME� 7�00 p.m. or as soon thereafter as the Agenda permits

LOCATION OF HEARING� Room 201 �Council Chambers), Oak Park Village Hall, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois, 60302

APPLICATION� The Zoning Board of Appeals (“ZBA”) will conduct a public hearing on an application filed by the Applicant, Yves Hughes, requesting a special use permit to develop an Electric Vehicle Charging Station parking lot, pursuant to Section 8.3 �Table 8�1� Use Matrix) of the Oak Park Zoning Ordinance, at the property located at 6104 Roosevelt Road, Oak Park, Illinois, Property Index Number 16�17�329�035�0000 in the RR Roosevelt Road Form-Based District.

Published in Wednesday

A copy of the application and applicable documents are on file and are available for inspection at Village Hall, Development Services Department, 123 Madison Street, Oak Park, Illinois 60302, Monday through Friday between 8�30 a.m. and 5�00 p.m. All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard at the public hearing. Interested persons may also sign up to participate in-person in the hearing to cross examine the applicant and its witnesses by submitting a cross-examination form or by emailing Zoning@ oak-park.us before 5�00 PM on the day prior to the public hearing.

The public hearing may be adjourned by the Board to another date without further notice by public announcement at the hearing setting forth the time and place thereof.

Submit events and see full calendar at oakpark.com/events

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