Incoming Oak Park trustees will look to make Oak Park a “greener” place during their four-year terms, they said in their first meeting last week.
“Let’s try to move to the cutting edge of this issue,” said new Trustee Jon Hale, a member of the Citizens for Progressive Action slate that swept the April election, adding that he hoped to usher in “an era of sustainability in Oak Park.”
Hale said he and fellow incoming trustees-Jan Pate and John Hedges-and incumbent Ray Johnson named commercial and retail revitalization the No. 1 priority coming in. But all new developments should be judged with four “touchstones,” Hale said: economic viability, respect for history, architectural quality and sustainability.
Pate said the village should “take real steps” toward sustainability, as it once did with Fair Housing. Promoting sustainability was one of six “action initiatives” the four candidates laid out in their campaign platform.
“We will take action to protect and enhance our local environment,” the platform reads in part.
They propose creating a Sustainability Commission “to help us develop sustainability as a guiding philosophy and to propose, promote and monitor sustainability initiatives.” Read the entire statement at http://www.progressiveaction.net/sustainOP.html.
Johnson urged the board to “bridge real and perceived gaps,” treat everyone with respect and “seek discourse over discord.”
“We will represent everyone,” Hale said. “We will listen to your concerns.”
“Whether you voted for us or not, we will do our level best to earn your trust,” said Hedges, who’s serving the remainder of the term vacated by former trustee Geoff Baker.
The new trustees also thanked the other candidates in the race.
“Especially I would like to thank Rose Meyer,” Hedges said. “She teaches us all, no matter where you are in life, it’s important to express your views in a positive, energetic way.”
In delivering his final remarks as a trustee, Robert Milstein urged the new board to listen to dissent, adding that “one newspaper is trying to marginalize people with different opinions.”
He also urged them to start meetings on time, come prepared, and question everything, even your own opinion, saying it takes “greater courage to change one’s mind that anything else.”
In quoting a letter from state Senator Don Harmon that said his voice would be missed, Milstein responded: “We lost an election. We didn’t die.”
Outgoing Trustee Elizabeth Brady said it was “an unbelievable pleasure to serve.”
And former Trustee Galen Gockel made predictions about Oak Park news stories that would be read in a May 2017 issue of the Wednesday Journal. He used the literary device to urge the new board into action on a development proposed for Lake Street and Forest Avenue, the Historical Society’s proposed move into the historic Cicero Fire Station building at Lake and Lombard, and intergovernmental cooperation.
Gockel said he predicted the future Journal article would name 2007 as a “second renaissance” in Oak Park.