Village President Vicki Scaman and Trustee Ravi Parakkat are each running to fill the seat of Oak Park’s village president for four years, after the local election April 1, 2025.
Scaman and Parakkat have served in their respective roles since the last election for their seats in 2021. Wednesday Journal is not yet aware of any other candidates for village president.
To get on the ballot, each potential candidate will have to acquire a certain number of signatures from Oak Park residents qualified to vote based on a percentage of voter turnout in the last regular municipal election. The filing dates are Nov. 12 to 18.
Why they’re running
Parakkat
Parakkat said he’s not running against anybody, but rather for a vision of Oak Park, that he believes he shares with most residents: A safe, affordable, sustainable and inclusive Oak Park.
The last few years, the village board has spent a lot of time on topics outside of the goals members had set, Parakkat said. He said that if elected, he wants to make sure an agenda is set according to the board goals, using fact-based, comprehensive studies to move forward.
“We’ve had meetings that go long hours without really moving the community forward,” he said. “I personally don’t have any interest in sitting and discussing a distracted agenda, which I think is a waste of board time and the community’s time.”
When agendas are aligned with board goals, Parakkat said there’s less contention and discussions are shorter. The longer meetings come from topics that deviate from those goals with no clear consensus, he said.
If elected, Parakkat said he’d work to build consensus early on and keep goals to a manageable number so village staff can also know what to expect.
“When you have a lot of board goals, you can call it ambitious, but that’s a euphemism for lack of focus,” he said. “You don’t end up accomplishing much.”
Scaman
Scaman said “the insinuation that I always anticipated running for two terms, is kind of true.” It takes time to finish what you started, she said.
“I do firmly believe that my skill set is still the leadership style that our community needs right now to advance the goals that we have,” she said.
Valuing the other trustees’ input is key, Scaman said. Her overarching goal as village president has been to ensure more people feel heard and in communication with the government, she said. The community was more divided before her leadership than it is now, she said.
Scaman describes her leadership style as “servant-style.” She said she works to understand multiple perspectives and host complex conversations at the board table, appreciating the vast nuances that often emerge in discussions. The village still needs that, she said.
“My leadership style is undeniably about collective impact and bringing different voices together to fully vet decisions and ultimately decrease our division,” she said. “And identify where it is that we agree most and then move forward from there.”
Key issues
Scaman
Scaman said the key issues she’d like to address if reelected are the issues she’s already been working on, such as sustainability, economic vitality and affordability.
Oak Park is a regional leader in sustainability, said Scaman pointing out the village receiving a gold designation in the EV Readiness Program in 2023. Under her leadership, she said the village has worked with other local entities such as the Park District of Oak Park, the Oak Park Public Library, schools and other neighboring communities to further emphasize sustainability advancements.
Small business development is another priority for Scaman, as well as diversifying housing stock, perhaps through expanding missing middle housing, defined as “a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units – compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes – located in a walkable neighborhood.”
“When you walk into the Village of Oak Park, you know this is a community that’s prepared for the future,” she said. “Part of what makes Oak Park amazing is the diversity of all types that we have in our community.”
With development also comes the need for sustainable practices, Scaman said, such as the electrification ordinance the current board approved that required new buildings constructed after Jan. 1, 2024 to be fully electric.
Scaman also said since affordability is a common goal on the current board, budgeting has become more strategic under her direction. The board has been working to create specific policies to instill into the process for future boards, also ensuring increased transparency.
“We’ve got that consistency of this process, of understanding how our levy is going to affect everyday Oak Parkers,” she said. “It feels like we’re working together more.”
It’s also a priority for Scaman to work to be proactive in addressing issues in the community rather than reactive, like with traffic concerns or community safety.
Parakkat
Parakkat said he has three focus areas for his campaign: Safety, affordability and community development.
In terms of safety, Parakkat said ensuring the police department is properly staffed and implementing the recommendations in the BerryDunn study are key priorities. Another is ensuring the alternative police response to calls for service program is built out, as well as investing in technology and infrastructure.
In terms of affordability, Parakkat said he wants to focus not only on responsible tax levy and use, but also on ensuring residents of all backgrounds receive the “expected value for the taxes they pay.” A lot of people who come to Oak Park find value in the school system for their kids, he said. But plenty of residents are in other stages of life, and he said he’d like them to find the same value.
Oak Park has one of the largest amounts of affordable housing stock in the state, he said. But the village is also missing the people in the middle of the affordability spectrum, Parakkat said. In addition to that focus area, it’s equally important that trustees contemplate use of taxpayer dollars with just as much consideration as they would their own finances, he said.
In terms of community development, Parakkat said he wants to focus on sustainability and equity. He said he wants to work on an economic vitality plan and world-class infrastructure while not losing sight of core municipal functions such as fixing alleys or streamlining trash collection.
“Rather than looking back, looking forward into the future and building the world that we want to see in our community,” he said.
Contrasting candidates
Parakkat
Parakkat said the upcoming local election is a question of focus, experience and effectiveness. He said he hasn’t seen that evidenced recently.
Some of the discussions that Parakkat said diverted the board from its goals were discussions on the fall leaf collection, the Village Hall remodel, and to some extent, the migrant crisis. The migrant crisis came to the village board unexpectedly, Parakkat said, and had an emergent nature.
But leaving that crisis aside, he said the others “not only did … not contribute to us moving forward, they actively are hindering us in pursuing our goals.”
There may be some surprises the village board has to react to, Parakkat said, but most items should be clear.
When a new board sits, there’s a facilitated goal-setting process with the village manager. Parakkat said he thinks that is the time to go back and forth, understand everyone’s commitments to the community, backgrounds, and perspectives, in order to arrive at reasonable goals.
It’s important, Parakkat emphasized, to create that shared basis for consensus upfront, give clear direction to village staff, and not change direction at the “drop of a hat.”
Scaman
Scaman said she’s navigated difficult conversations by genuinely listening to the community and her colleagues. She said she thinks Parakkat feels he can narrow an agenda to match his own.
“What I do know from my experience working with him at the board table is that his reaction to an agenda that doesn’t perfectly match his, is that it, to him, apparently feels like a waste of time,” she said.
Scaman said she’s proud of the village’s migrant response. It was an emergency, and people count on the government at every level to be responsive. Oak Park chose to help, she said. The board had lengthy discussions regarding the nuance of funding for the crisis, she said, but without that time spent, the issue could’ve divided them like it tends to nationally. Sometimes responding to an emergency means, however, that other issues have to be put on pause.
“We could either be part of the solution or we could make it worse,” she said. And she said she won’t apologize for the extra time it took to respect all positions and come together to respond.
“It was an actual emergency of which it would have been a failure of our jobs to have not responded,” she said.
In terms of the discussions about changes to leaf collection procedures, Scaman said it was once again important for the board to respond to community concerns including safety considerations. She said she felt Parakkat was unclear on his position regarding leaf collection and options presented by staff.
“Potentially he should reflect upon how it is that he might have handled it differently as village president,” she said, referring to both issues. “I feel that I have an obligation to value the perspectives of my colleagues … To not host conversations in a way that provides some space to speak and have their sometimes differing opinions is not valuing the residents of Oak Park … That is going to mean longer meetings sometimes.”
And the board can’t ignore the renovation issues at Village Hall, either, she said. It’s not accessible and the police station is in desperate need of change.
“Every single member of the board loves Oak Park and wants to do right by Oak Park,” she said. But to be a successful village president, Scaman said one has to be able to work with others.
Scaman, like Parakkat, said she’s not running against her opponent. But rather, she said she’s running to continue the work she’s already doing. That includes allowing for the board to occasionally agree to disagree but figure out how to work together. It includes understanding why there might be disagreement and constantly growing in perspective.
“Unfortunately, Trustee Parakkat is the exception,” she said. “But that’s by his choice.”
Experience
Scaman
Scaman was elected village clerk in 2017. In this role, she wrote she increased transparency and worked to increase diversity on commissions. She’s served as the Oak Park Township program coordinator for the Positive Youth Development Coalition.
Scaman was on the village’s liquor control review board, and later chaired the commission. She’s also served as president of the North and Northwest Municipal Clerks Association.
Additionally, Scaman has experience running a restaurant and has a record of volunteering in the community and serving on other local committees including the Oak Park River Forest Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business Committee.
If she is not re-elected, Scaman said she’ll remain active in the community and supportive of any future board. She said her volunteer work won’t stop. Eventually, she said she wants to let the next generation lead Oak Park.
But for now, Scaman said she’s received an outpouring of support for the job she’s done as village president.
Parakkat
Parakkat is the founder of Takeout 25, a movement to support local restaurants and maintain public health started during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In addition to serving as a village trustee, he has served on the Oak Park energy and environment commission and on Chicago Waldorf School’s board of trustees. Parakkat also serves as vice president of digital transformation at Junior Achievement of Chicago, a nonprofit that prepares young people for success.
He said the experience in municipal governance has helped him understand policymaking, budget appropriation and other procedural aspects. But as the founder of Takeout 25, Parakkat said he has experience bringing community members together to solve crises in a focused manner.
In Takeout 25, Parakkat said he has a close understanding of local economic challenges, sustainability issues and food insecurity. He said he feels he can be effective and relate well to Oak Park residents due to all his experiences, including as an immigrant.
Parakkat emigrated from India to the United States, and became a citizen in 2016. He said he’s trying to give back to the community that’s given himself and his family a lot.
At the end of the day, “everybody at the board table wants similar things for Oak Park,” he said, such as safety, affordability, sustainability and inclusivity. “Making sure that we stick with those is going to be the big difference.”
Scaman and Parakkat both said they’d like to see increased voter turnout and engagement with local elections. A love for democracy is prevalent in Oak Park, and debates between local candidates will likely be forthcoming in the new year.