Wilmette elected officials at the “State of the Village” evening Oct. 15 made pleas for civility and citizen involvement, touted their fiscal frugality, talked about taxes and proclaimed pride in projects like the New Trier Township High School expansion, the elementary school library modernization and flood-control efforts.
The event, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wilmette and held at the Lakeview Center in Gillson Park, drew officials from the village, Wilmette’s park and library districts, and three local school districts. The discussions, held with dozens of League members and Wilmette residents, were intended to foster “a spirit of community and civility,” League President Gail Thomasen said at the evening’s start.
In fact, the League’s emphasis on polite dialogue inspired Wilmette Park Board president John Olvany to ask for the same at the beginning of every park district meeting, Olvany said when he addressed the audience.
After the district’s contentious 2015 election and failed lakefront referendum request, he said, he was impressed by a League letter that asked residents to respect others’ opinions and integrity, “and I’ve tried to open every meeting with something like that.”
Olvany joined Wilmette Village President Bob Bielinski and Wilmette Public Library President Kathleen O’Laughlin in giving brief overviews of each government’s top priorities. New Trier Township High School District 203 board President Mac Harris did the same, as did Alice Schaff and Jeffrey Greengoss, his counterparts at Wilmette Public Schools District 39 and Avoca School District 37. All five then answered audience questions.
Bielinski talked about Wilmette’s ongoing budget process and how it could be affected by the state’s budget impasse. He also referred to the village’s ongoing flood-control program and downtown Wilmette development.
“Government is about prioritizing, and we’ve been focusing on the fundamentals of governing,” Bielinski said.
Olvany told listeners the park district did a lot with the 6 percent of every property tax bill that comes from the district.
“We touch almost every community group you can possibly think of,” he said, urging the audience to complete a pending park district survey on what residents would like to see happen at Gillson and Langdon parks. “They tell us that if we get a 20 percent return on the survey, about 2,000 households, we’ll be doing very well. I’d like to blow that 2,000-household (return) away” with even higher responses.
Harris assured the audience that New Trier Township High School’s $100.3 million campus modernization project is currently about $2 million over budget, but that he expects it will eventually be brought in on time and on budget. He said other District 203 priorities include succession plans for when Superintendent Linda Yonke and other administrators retire in 2016, and holding negotiations with union-represented employees including teachers, whose current contract expires in 2016.
“It’s like fighting with people in your own family,” he said of the negotiating process. “You love them to death, but still you have to fight things through.”
Schaff, who heads the District 39 board, told listeners district officials “run lean” but plan to, over the next two to three years, update school libraries she called antiquated. She also said they would seek to integrate more technology into the classroom. Greengoss said his district was in the midst of amicable teacher negotiations and said the district has had a balanced budget for four years in a row.
O’Laughlin said library trustees are working to keep the library building, much of which is more than 60 years old, in good shape, and added that “we consistently have 1,000 people a day come into the library.”
Bielinski fielded the lion’s share of written questions from the audience, which ranged from whether Wilmette should actively pursue economic and racial diversity to what it could do to re-energize the Linden Avenue business district and whether it waited too long to develop the former Wil-Shore Ford property in downtown Wilmette.
He dismissed the latter suggestion, saying that the planned upscale mixed-use Wilshore apartment and retail building on the 600 block of Green Bay Road is exactly what Wilmette’s downtown master plan calls for.
“I would disagree 100 percent on that,” he said. “I think we were patient and we now have a project there that will last the next 50 years.”
Bielinski acknowledged that recent and pending retail closures in the business district at Fourth Street and Linden Avenue, also known as Linden Square, are troubling, but said there was a limit to what government could do.
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“I think what Fourth and Linden needs is a destination establishment,” he said.
Bielinski wouldn’t say that Wilmette’s board had a role to play in expanding racial or economic diversity in town, asking instead, “What does promoting diversity even mean?” He did say the village had a hand in bringing what could be 20 affordable apartment units to the former American Legion Post 46 property on Wilmette Avenue.
Olvany told people asking about the lakefront’s future that the district is “in a listening mode” on the topic.
“We want to hear what people are willing to pay for, what they’re not willing to pay for,” Olvany said. Based in part on that feedback, the district could review several options, from doing nothing to making a decision about a potential future lakefront-oriented referendum.
He answered one question about whether the district could charge non-district residents more to park at district parks, by saying that the parks are not just for Wilmette residents.
Greengoss and Schaff sparked audience laughter when they chorused “no” to a question about whether the two districts would ever consider merging, and Schaff answered a question about instituting full-day kindergarten by saying parents have asked about it but that it would be expensive and would require more classrooms at each school.
O’Laughlin also made listeners chuckle when she answered one question about whether the library might consider putting in a cafe by saying studies don’t indicate that library cafes are successful.
“You can bring your own coffee, though,” she said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy