When we arrived in River Forest, the village board was dominated by a village president who had reigned from 1993-2009. An interregnum of four years ensued, followed by the current board president, in place since 2013.
Ours is a small town next to a large town. River Forest has about 12,000 residents. Our neighbor to the east, Oak Park is home to about 54,000 people.
We pay attention to Oak Park’s political goings-on with great interest for several reasons, a major one being the very different Oak Park style of governance. Each village has a seven-member board and a separately elected president, but in recent times, Oak Park has not had the sort of presidential dynasties that River Forest has endured. Oak Park’s village board is, by comparison, far more dynamic and not beholden to the president.
In River Forest, three members of the village board are independent of the village president. The rest of the board votes almost always as a bloc with the president, who votes only to break ties, which is fairly common on controversial items, given the 3-3 split. Decisions on most controversial issues have, at least implicitly, been decided upon ahead of time, no matter the opposing view from the three non-adherents or from citizens.
While the process seems orderly and well-oiled, it has led to some truly unfortunate, even maddening, things.
One of them is the long-ongoing project on the parcel abutting our condo building’s property, “in development” for the better part of a decade. It’s smack in the center of our village, and could have been a signature building. It’s not. After several years of sometimes risible, probably fraudulent developer activity, the project was closed down by the village and, more importantly, by the bank. What’s left is a shoddy concrete platform and some cinder block columns.
In short, an eyesore. Over time, several citizens expressed outrage about the village president persistently extending project deadlines for an incompetent, almost totally unfunded developer. He was required again and again to show “activity” on the site. In one memorable instance, as he came up against another “drop-dead” date, he managed to “borrow” a very large piece of construction equipment, placing it on the site for one day, then once the deadline passed, sending it back to its original location. We who view the site from above frequently observed two workers (for long stretches, the entire construction crew) “moving dirt,” using a small front-loader to relocate a large pile of dirt, then back again. We really don’t know how the “developer” got away with it for so long, but he is the son of a former village president.
River Forest’s government has a longstanding insider ethos. You’d probably guess that, given the long tenures of the aforementioned village president (16 years) and current president (13 years). On the surface, it’s very difficult to discern why someone would want to hold onto such unpaid jobs. It’s the pinnacle of an old-line network that exists for its own purposes.
Power in towns like River Forest is closely guarded by the old network. And it has teeth. When the current president was last challenged, at the end of the election cycle a vicious and grossly fabricated advertising mailer appeared in our mailboxes, alleging the challenger’s hidden agenda: to turn housing along a main street into “Section 8” apartments. This mailer was not only a lie, but a racist warning that our village would become a refuge for “them,” ruining our pristine housing stock. Such fears are an undercurrent in this small town, one that rises to the surface any time such ideas as multi-unit apartment buildings are proposed.
Meanwhile, in Oak Park, citizen input is, in many ways, an indoor sport. People speak up, their opinions printed in detail in the local newspaper, and the Oak Park Village Board (not to mention the two school boards) pays at least some attention to the input. The give and take in Oak Park can be quite rough-hewn and bruising, and the village board often goes its own way. But there is give and take and it helps guide that village’s affairs. This variety of democratic activity does not exist in our village to the west.
Sadly, in River Forest a new construction development is in the works. The village government’s shepherding of this project eerily echoes that of the prior failed development. The citizens are very gun-shy about this project and are not reassured by the blandishments of the River Forest board majority or its staff. The “don’t worry your little heads; we know what we’re doing, so butt out” mentality, while hidden behind “open forums” to listen to citizen input, prevails. It’s the village way.
A growing contingent of River Forest’s people have become quite attuned to the insularity, tone-deafness and inside-the-fortress dealings of current village government. They speak out and are persistent. That single candidate who a few years back ran a courageous campaign for village president, only to discover the power of the entrenched few, would likely find more support this time.
Not that the knives wouldn’t come out again. They would. But she, or any good candidate, would have a shield wall upfront and a stronger force behind. A stable of independent-minded candidates for the board wouldn’t hurt, creating a majority acting as a check on the village president.
We can hope.