Dr. Susan Buchanan resigned from Oak Park’s Village Board of Trustees Friday morning.
Buchanan had served as a village trustee since earning election in 2019 and established a reputation for herself as one of the strongest voices among village leadership advocating for making Oak Park more environmentally sustainable. The announcement comes just days after the board swore in two new members at its May 6 board meeting.
The new board will enter its first regular meeting Tuesday, May 13 with 6 members.
Buchanan told Wednesday Journal that she decided to resign from the board after reckoning with several months of “burn out.”
“I think it’s been building up for a couple of months,” she said. “I used to find going to board meetings really engaging, but I’ve just started to feel really burned out.”
Buchanan said that both of her parents passed away recently, and that those losses had taken a great toll on her.
“I spent several intensive years taking care of my parents and then they both died within seven months, I think it affected my bandwidth,” she said. “My dad’s death was unexpected, so it’s been really hard. It affected me in a big way.”
She said she was inspired to run for village trustee during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, after hearing Hillary Clinton say in an interview that the country needed more woman with “thick skin” to run for local office.
“I was very enthusiastic about politics and playing my role to keep Trumpism from spreading,” she said. “Over the years, and this may have to do with losing my parents, I feel like my skin isn’t quite as thick anymore. I don’t want to be in the public eye right now; I don’t want to read my name in the paper. I just feel like I’m not emotionally equipped right now to hear from people in the village about my decisions at the board table.”
Buchanan works at UI Health as a professor and as associate director of its Occupational and Environmental Medicine residency program. In her practice she evaluates the impact of workplace or community environments on health issues.
Buchanan said she is proud of what she and her colleagues accomplished over the last six years, and she hopes that her successor will share her passion for environmental justice.
“I think I served on the board at a time where we faced some incredible political incidents and forces,” she said. “I want my successor to be a staunch sustainability advocate, that’s my priority. I’ve always promoted progressive values, increasing the approach to equity at the village, affordable housing and police reform, so I hope my replacement will be a supporter of those things as well.”
Village President Vicki Scaman said that Buchanan’s decision came as a surprise, but that she respected her colleague’s decision to do what she felt was best for her wellbeing.
“I consider Susan a close friend, I greatly appreciate what she has brought to the board table the last six years and have enjoyed working with her tremendously,” she said. “It is a little shocking to have this situation immediately after a swearing in like this, that’s the part I’m still processing. But mostly you know we care about each other as human beings and when it’s someone’s time to move on we defer to supporting that person in their decision.”
Scaman said she won’t hurry through the process of appointing Buchanan’s successor, and that it’s important to her that all the sitting trustees get to provide feedback and that the person who takes over Buchanan’s seat has similar legislative priorities to her.
“I don’t know that I’m going to rush to make a decision,” Scaman said. “Last time, I did an actual application process and I sought to try and put some real effort into listening to what the community was voting for when they voted for the trustee that had resigned, and so in this case I will reflect upon that with Susan and the gap that she might be leaving from the community’s perspective.”
As she looks to take time away from the public eye, Buchanan’s final thoughts dwelled on a favorite topic in recent Oak Park politics – leaf bagging.
“I want to leave the residents of Oak Park with a scientific equation, which is ‘leaves + oxygen = dirt,” she said. “Leaves don’t need to go in bags, they’ll turn into dirt if you leave them alone in the corner of your yard.”
