A debate over term limits that divided Highland Park’s City Council will be going before residents in a binding November referendum, with the potential to reshape the city’s government for decades to come.
Earlier this year, the council voted unanimously to put the referendum on the ballot, but that vote belies the opposition Mayor Nancy Rotering and council members Barisa Bruckman and Anthony Blumberg voiced regarding term limits at meetings.
The referendum as written would limit the terms of the offices of mayor and council members to two cumulative four-year terms.
There are some caveats: those elected to serve out half-terms when an incumbent vacates office for various reasons can still run for another two full four-year terms, meaning someone could hold an office for up to 10 years.
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Additionally, the offices of council member and mayor are considered separate, meaning a council member reaching the term limit could run for mayor to serve another two full terms.
The limits are also not retroactive, meaning if passed, all current members will have the opportunity to serve another two full terms. The seats of mayor and at least three council members will be up for election in April of 2027.
As red signs pop up in lawns urging residents to vote yes, some advocates are saying the push for term limits reflects a growing dissatisfaction with current leadership, calling for new faces and fresh ideas in a community they believe has fallen behind its North Shore neighbors.
‘Good governance’
Rotering declined to give additional comments regarding the referendum, citing the city’s communication practices, but directed questions to comments she made during public meetings where she voiced opposition to term limits.
Her support of the referendum is a reflection of wanting to hear from voters, not her voicing approval of term limits, she said during a June 29 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Nationally, only a small minority of municipalities have term limits, she argued during the meeting, and typically those are much larger cities. “Elections themselves are the term limits,” Rotering said.
The loss of institutional knowledge with a higher turnover would exacerbate the “steep learning curve” for new council members, Rotering said, and she questioned if they would have the necessary participation in elections. The last cycle saw three people running unopposed.
And outside of city limits, “seniority holds rank in terms of our politics,” Rotering said. When working with other leaders both in Illinois and across the country, mayors with longer tenures carry more “credibility” and “gravitas.”
Meanwhile, council member Annette Lidawer, who is running for mayor against Rotering in April, voiced her support for term limits in her capacity as a candidate.
Lidawer said she’s been a proponent of term limits for some time, considering it “good governance” to have a guaranteed regular rotation for elected positions. She argues it allows prospective future candidates, such as those working on commissions or the City Council, to better plan for running for office in the future.
Incumbency carries too much of an advantage against most new challengers, she said, discouraging people from even considering a run until someone steps down. But if they know someone was guaranteed to leave within several years, there’s a clearer pathway to leadership.
It was the role of current officials to mentor new members, she said, and then “hand over the baton,” with the city’s professional staff providing the internal continuity about which Rotering has raised concerns.
The resources necessary to run against incumbents are setting the bar too high, Lidawer said. She doesn’t “buy for a minute that no one wants to serve,” rather that the expense was stopping people from coming forward.
“After some period of time we all need fresh ideas,” Lidawer said. “I’m looking at this as a way of increasing participation.”
Rotering is running for a fifth term, and she’s already the longest-serving mayor in recent memory for Highland Park, beating Robert Michael Buhai, who was mayor for 12 years from 1975 to 1987. If she wins in April, her tenure as mayor would hit two decades.
“It’s time for change in Highland Park,” Lidawer said. “We should have active elections, and we should have choice.”
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Brewing frustrations
Some community advocates share Lidawer’s view, including Irwin Bernstein, a member of Highland Park Forward, a nonpartisan civic organization.
The group previously organized around the protracted local controversy over liquor licenses, when a long-forgotten ordinance prohibiting council members from holding liquor licenses forced out Jeff Hoobler, owner of the Steep Ravine Brewing Company, formerly Ravinia Brewing.
The City Council had delayed modifying the ordinance until months after Hoobler resigned despite popular public support. The incident exposed frustrations in the community with current leadership, Bernstein said.
“The comments that I heard … people are frustrated that our community is falling behind the rest of the North Shore,” he said.
HP Forward has been working to bring those frustrations to the ballot box, between advocating for the term limit referendum and helping in the campaign of political newcomer Jon Center — a critic of the liquor license controversy who ran on revitalizing the city’s business districts — who unseated a council veteran in 2025.
Highland Park needs “new faces, new leadership,” Bernstein said, which is being hindered by the “huge hurdle” of incumbency.
Speaking with residents, Bernstein said he’s heard praise for Rotering and argued the vote “is not about the mayor,” since the changes won’t apply to her for another two terms if passed, and instead about generating healthy competition.
Still, Bernstein also said that “people burn out”; after a decade and a half of leadership, Rotering is lacking a clear vision for the community’s future, he said.
“She was a good leader after the (July 4, 2022 mass) shooting, and I give her credit for that,” he said. “I think that it’s important Nancy be recognized for the value that she’s brought to the community, and to now step aside and let someone else move us forward.”
In response to the referendum, the local chapter of the League of Women Voters sent out a letter detailing its opposition to term limits, a stance the broader organization has held since the 1990s.
According to the letter, the average tenure for Highland Park mayors going back several decades is about 11 years; it’s about 7.3 years for City Council. The letter noted the limited number of smaller municipalities with term limits. Those that do are also often successive term limits, rather than the cumulative limit proposed in the referendum.
Instead, the local league urged efforts to increase voter participation in Highland Park’s spring elections, which are significantly lower than general election turnout, to “accurately reflect community priorities and help create natural limits.”
“Our organization maintains that when community members consistently vote in local elections, the electoral process itself provides a natural check on the length of time any individual serves in office,” the letter said.