Back to Basics for Wilmette

The Wilmette Life has an inflammatory headline, (they are backing the two incumbents and it shows) with tendentious language ("dead aim"?!!) to mischaracterize civil plain-speaking on the issues, but at least they covered the roundtable forum at Charlie's Coffee House:

Mike Basil, a lawyer making his first run at public service, took dead aim at two-year incumbents Mari Terman and Joanne Aggens, both in the forefront of the Village Board's environmental bent and affordable housing promotion and planning.

He said the board should pay more attention to studies "laying out a road map for downtown development" instead of forcing developers to include a handful of affordable units in the five-story building to rise at the former Wil-Shore Ford site at 617 Green Bay Road.

"You won't see a reference to affordable housing and the Kyoto Protocol in that road map," he said, referring to the 1997 international anti-pollution treaty, signed recently by Wilmette, joining more than 100 other U.S. cities. "It's that type of regulatory environment that is discouraging to business."[snip]

Basil chided the incumbents for the recent Kyoto Protocol vote, and "criminalizing leaf blowers, micro-managing trees, (losing sight of) the core mission of services to the community -- addressing traffic, addressing roads." He also criticized the 2007 increase in vehicle stickers as well as the discount for "green" cars.

(Taxes would only go up under the incumbents' support to subsidize housing for a select few. And the current board has gone overboard on grandstanding green initiatives not grounded in an appreciation of the true costs or impact on the community)

Basil also made this excellent point about the village board essentially adopting an adversarial position toward residents:

Basil said the restrictions on leaf blowers indicates a "lack of respect" for residents. Instead of "going next door and asking a neighbor" to control his landscapers, he said, people are being asked to call the police.

Karen Spillers, another challenger, also suggested a more cooperative approach:

"Everybody's talking about business vibrancy, but the actions of the board are focused on ... regulations, not vibrancy," Spillers said.

She suggested that the village recruit local banks to give downtown businesses low-interest loans for improvements of facades. Spillers took a seat on Wilmette's Business Development Advisory Group after narrowly missing election as a trustee in 2005.

Thankfully we have two candidates for village trustee who are committed to a more cooperative, a more neighborly Wilmette with a back to basics approach.

(Note: A videotape of the forum, held at Charlie's Coffeehouse, 1126 Central Ave., can be seen on public access Channel 6 at 6 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and 4 p.m. Monday. Election Day is Tuesday.)

Related posts:AH Subsidies on Wilmette Agenda, Prickly Public Policy, Taxes an Issue for April 17th, Wilmette Adopts Kyoto Protocol