I have known Kathryn Jonas for many years and know her to be extremely knowledgeable about Oak Park history and architecture. She believes in the need to preserve and maintain Oak Park as a beautiful community that residents can be proud of and newcomers will find attractive, both aesthetically and financially. As a forestry commission member and an arborist by profession, Kathryn has been a staunch advocate for maintaining and preserving the natural beauty of our village. Kathryn is a strong proponent of development that reflects the great historic character of Oak Park and is fiscally responsible. She was involved with revising the zoning guidelines so that single-family homes would be protected against multi-family developments in their neighborhoods.
Kathryn possesses the critical thinking skills to look at the big picture to see what Oak Park is doing right and where we need to improve. A case in point is her dedication to preserving mature trees in the village, which are being decimated in several areas, including the newly reopened Field Park. She spoke out against the danger of removing mature trees at Field, only to replace them with a new soccer field, among other new features. While the park district maintains that it didn’t do any harm by replacing mature trees with new trees, this is not acceptable. Kathryn understands the importance of defending the benefits to our environment, as well as to our well-being. It’s better to maintain, not replace, our mature trees.
Kathryn will bring her past experience with a commercial property firm, serving as vice president of development, which involved creating design guidelines for Chicago business parks. Kathryn is concerned about the vitality of Oak Park’s downtown, which she believes has suffered from gross mismanagement by the village board over a long period of time.
In addition, to be tax increment financing eligible, the village must demonstrate that the properties are in a depressed area. TIF is designed to channel funding toward improvements in distressed or underdeveloped areas where development would not otherwise occur. TIF creates funding for public projects that may otherwise be unaffordable to localities. Kathryn is dedicated to channeling TIF dollars to where they belong – the schools and public projects, not grossly subsidized development, which we have unfortunately seen in the Whiteco development. Sadly, we and future generations will be paying for Whiteco for many years to come.
Kathryn will fight to remove the TIF and create real opportunities to improve our downtown and other business districts by invoking solid business marketing principles based on sound business management principles, not reliance on the TIF because of poor management of our tax monies by the current and previous village boards.
I highly recommend that you vote for Kathryn Jonas for village trustee on April 7.
Gloria Ryan is an Oak Park resident and local animal activist.