In June 2025, I joined the Oak Park Village Board. With the start of a new year, it seems like a good time to pause and reflect on what I’ve learned, the major board votes I made, and what I expect to see and do in 2026.
Oak Park Bike Plan
My first major vote was on the comprehensive Bike Plan, many years in the making, whose goal is to create a safe village-wide bike network for all ages and abilities. This vote was an easy Yes for me, and it passed 6-1. More bike trips mean fewer car trips, which is a win for the environment, as 27% of our emissions come from cars and trucks. As an avid cyclist, I can attest to the convenience and health benefits of biking. Safety and perceived danger from cars has always been the biggest obstacle for mass adoption of biking, and the Bike Plan puts in new protected, raised, striped and marked bike lanes, new crossing signals, and intersection upgrades.
Flock contract
I voted along with the 5-2 majority to cancel our contract with Flock Safety and deactivate the eight Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras that have been operating in our community since 2022.
With the increased presence of immigration enforcement from ICE in the greater Chicago region, Flock’s willingness to share and sell access to our residents’ data to the Trump Administration, ICE, and Texas police enforcing anti-abortion laws, made this technology too dangerous not only to our immigrant community, but to the entire nation.
ICE-free zones
In September, ICE began ramping up immigration enforcement in Chicagoland. In Oak Park, we saw many of our neighbors stopped, abused and abducted just for having brown skin. Our community’s reaction, with hundreds of residents forming rapid response networks and whistle brigades in solidarity, was a bright spot in these dark times. While our own Welcoming Village Ordinance and the IL TRUST Act prevented local law enforcement from helping ICE, they were also not allowed to interfere.
What we could do was restrict their use of village property by not allowing it to be used as a “staging area, processing location, or operations base for the purpose of civil immigration enforcement.” I brought this forward with Trustee Jenna Leving Jacobson and the board voted 7-0 to adopt the changes. The Township and Library boards passed similar ordinances, and my hope is that the school and park districts do the same soon.
2026 budget
The final vote in 2025 was to pass the 2026 Village Budget. We did so 7-0, though it took 11 Finance Committee meetings and five full board meetings to work through all the details. We debated the items to prioritize in the 5-Year Capital Improvement Plan; how to fund a Living Room Pilot request by Thrive Counselling Center; how to address staffing and coverage concerns raised by our Firefighters Union; and how to maintain our sustainability budget.
I successfully advocated to keep the expanded funding for our Energy Efficiency grants fought for in 2024 by my predecessor Susan Buchanan.
Looking forward to 2026, I am particularly interested in finding additional revenue sources for our Sustainability Fund, having continued discussions on the use of technology by village police, and doing a comprehensive review of our zoning ordinance and missing middle housing, and strengthening our Inclusionary Housing Ordinance. We also anticipate that ICE will be back with more immigration raids, and we will need to use all of our available legislative tools to continue to protect Oak Park.
Derek Eder is an Oak Park village trustee.
