Northbrook residents: Still not sure if you're going to vote?

Tomorrow is election day. I know, we just had one in November that was exhausting enough. Must we do this again so soon? If you’re debating whether to vote at all, or planning to vote but not sure how to get good information on who to vote for, this letter is for you.

FIRST QUESTION: Why should I vote at all?

For residents of Northbrook, your ballot will include an array of local offices including Village President, three Board of Trustees seats, two different school boards with open seats, township offices, park district boards, library boards, even a community college board. And guess what? Those taxing bodies are the ones who get most of the money from your property tax bill. They also take a portion of the sales taxes you pay, they get some funding from state and federal governments that are also taxpayer dollars, and they collect local taxes on businesses in the village. That’s a big chunk of your taxes.

And how do they impact your life with that money? These governmental units are responsible for most of the roads in the village, your schools, your parks, government facilities and assets, water and sewer systems, your local police, fire and EMS agencies, parts of the public health apparatus, licensing of businesses and so much more. Put it all together and that’s more effect on your daily life than the federal government by a long shot.

Local elections matter. A lot. You can vote and have some say in these matters, or you can give that power to random strangers by not using it. Your choice.

SECOND QUESTION: If I’m not involved in local politics and don’t already have a “side” in these elections, how do I make a meaningful decision on who to vote for?

It is challenging to get good information on local candidates. Salacious mailers, patriotically colored yard signs, paid advertisements masquerading as news, and all the noise on social media can make it difficult to know how candidates and local parties would represent your interests. What if, for some office or board, none of the candidates or slates fully align with your views? What if you have reservations about both or all the options? What if you just don't know anything useful about most of them?

I can’t think of a single political candidate or party in my lifetime with whom I agreed precisely on every single issue. I'm guessing you're in the same boat. So for me, often times it comes down to a very simple question: does their behavior match their rhetoric?

Let’s use some campaign buzzwords as examples. We’ll start with ‘transparency’. Challengers for local office almost always profess their mission to provide greater transparency and more communication with constituents. But how to know which ones really would be? Well, what would you think of a candidate or slate of candidates who turns down debates or town halls with community groups during the campaign, unwilling to even face their voters? Or candidates who get requests from local papers for interviews or the like and just decide not to respond? Sounds hypocritical, doesn’t it? Seems like the opposite of transparent.

The United4Northbrook slate running for Village President (Gene Marks) and three Board of Trustees seats (Burns, Lay, McGuinnes) refused the opportunity to participate in the Go Green Northbrook forum to which all candidates were invited. The Northbrook Caucus slate (Kathryn Ciesla for President; Collison, Ebhomielen & Pepoon for Board) showed up and faced the voters. United4Northbrook also refused to answer a Q&A request from the Daily Herald for their decision on who to endorse, while the Caucus slate answered as asked. Which one is more transparent and communicative with their constituents?

Example 2: Candidates love to promise to look out for the best interests of all the people in the community, instead of “special interests”. Again using the village leadership roles as an example, one slate of candidates (Northbrook Caucus) has mostly smaller donations (tens or hundreds of dollars), almost all from within Northbrook. The other (United4Northbrook) pulled in tens of thousands from out-of-town executives of a real estate firm with a financial interest in a large property seeking development approval from the village (Green Acres). Does it sound like United4Northbrook will really have your best interests in mind?

Example 3: Honesty. Candidates of all stripes all like to cast themselves as truth-tellers. They also pretty universally attempt to spin things in the best possible light for their candidacies. This is not news. I like to focus in on the statements that candidates make that can be verified by hard facts as being true or false, instead of the fuzzier characterization assassinations that are just noise. Candidates who are willing to outright lie, and consistently lay out provably false statements, clearly are not the honest operators they present themselves to be.

Here again in the Village of Northbrook races we have clear differences to look at. Many of United4Northbrook’s main campaign themes are built on statements that can easily be proven false. There are so many I can’t list them all but here are a couple they’ve leaned on heavily throughout the campaign:

• U4N likes to scare people by saying the current Board of Trustees has been "defunding" the police, and/or that they plan to do so. But the village budget is publicly available information and it is right there in black and white: the Northbrook Police Department budget has gone up for three straight years and the draft budget for the upcoming year shows another 4.4% increase. U4N is lying.
• U4N says the Affordable Housing ordinance changes were done with little or no public input, were rushed in, that Section 8 housing is coming in, and that the changes went against the public’s wishes. The Affordable Housing changes that Northbrook made (and which the state required action on) were the subject of at least 14 public meetings where anyone could attend or review, provide comments and feedback over a period of a year and a half – a longer process with more meetings than any other policy topic to come up in Northbrook in many years. They do not involve Section 8 housing whatsoever. And as for public opinion being taken into account, 76% of the comments provided and emails sent in were in *favor* of the ordinance. Those were read into the public record. U4N is lying on all counts.

If you don’t want my examples, just go to their Facebook page. Nearly every recent post is making up an accusation no one is making or rewording them to have a different meaning, then refuting it in their self-made echo chamber. Seriously. Look at the supposed claims, then try to find where their opponents have said those things. You won’t. There are so many straw men on their feed it’s a fire hazard.

Please vote. Your local elections are very important. And when you do vote, look for the candidates that are at least attempting to run campaigns with some integrity. Feel free to do the research for yourself, not just on the village roles I used as an example but across all the contested races. I think you’ll find for the critical Village President and Board of Trustees roles, the Northbrook Caucus slate (Ciesla, Collison, Ebhomlielen, Pepoon) is the ticket with that integrity.