Perspectives

Did you know the Caucus Committee is looking for new ward committee members to be placed on the ballot for this spring’s Committee mailer? Also, that at this very moment, there are three open committee rep positions in Ward 3 and one in Ward 2 where people are needed to step in and fill vacated terms?

Admittedly, joining the Committee at this time seems especially daunting. It is unclear what direction the Committee is taking since the defeat of the Caucus Preservation Act. The Act’s proposed bylaw changes, one of which would have removed the general Caucus members’ vote, generated the largest voter turnout in nearly thirty years. The Act failed to gain the required two-thirds majority vote to pass and our right to vote was successfully preserved. Last Tuesday, the whole Committee met for the first time since that vote and reportedly nothing was said regarding it, nor were there plans announced for reaching out to the community to restore trust and confidence.

While no one is quite sure how the Committee wants to move forward right now, what we can be sure about is that it will not move towards reform unless residents interested in establishing community relationships step forward to serve. People are needed who can recommend and establish best practices for this important volunteer board that has so much influence on our city government.

One of the most interesting and purposeful times to serve in an organization is when it is going through a reassessment of its practices. It is often easiest to see yourself making a difference within an organization that’s open to change and reform. Restoring trust in our Caucus Committee is an important step in establishing responsive city government that welcomes citizen involvement. A healthier, more responsive Committee will look for board, commission, and elective office candidates with similar outlooks.

Serving on the Committee will expose you to many interesting, accomplished people who are seeking to serve our community in various ways. You will understand the responsibilities and purposes of our boards and commissions and how the city intersects with and supports several organizations, including Gorton Center. You will know who is being considered for positions and you’ll have opportunities to recommend, interview, debate and vote on who to recommend to the mayor and which elective office candidates to bring forward for final approval by the general Caucus.

To volunteer, go to the Caucus website and fill out a Volunteer Profile Sheet (VPS). Be sure to select that you are interested in serving as a ward representative. You can also opt to be considered for other boards and commissions. Any Lake Forest resident who has not already served on the Committee is eligible to apply. Basic responsibilities are to seek out, interview and recommend officials for city government and for the Caucus Committee.  The whole Committee (which includes Executive Officers) meets twice a month, from September through April, usually on the first and third Tuesday evenings.  All committee members are expected to attend. Individual ward or subcommittee meetings are also held on an as-needed basis, sometimes during the summer, depending on the upcoming year’s workload.

Caucus Committee representatives serve three year terms. Reps can extend their terms if they become part of the Executive Board. For anyone who would like to be part of the Committee but does not want to commit to a three-year term, please contact your Ward Chair. Open positions for partial terms come up fairly regularly, and as noted above, there are current open positions in Wards 2 and 3

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The Committee, too, has some responsibilities to live up to in order to find people willing to serve. In addition to the banner on their website asking for candidates, emails need to go out to all residents, like they did during the last election season, letting people know volunteers are needed and what the deadline is to apply. A link to the Volunteer Profile Sheet should be included, along with a description of the process and an idea of approximately when and how interviews will take place. Publishing their expected meeting dates for the upcoming term would also be helpful.

Challenging the Committee to make changes will not be easy. Peer pressure to think alike seems to be prevalent on the Committee right now. Organizations do better when they are aligned under common goals, but for the last two years, the Committee has seemed disconnected from their historical ideals of non-partisan, non-agenda driven volunteers and are stubbornly pursuing quite the opposite. We, as general Caucus members, can reform the Committee if people step up who will realign themselves with the Caucus’ historical ideals and push against proposals contrary to democratic values. For their part, the Executive leaders must be open to reform and responsive to us, the general public for which they serve.

It’s long past time to have a discussion on blue/red partisan mudslinging in Lake Forest.  Why raise this topic now?  Whether our community faces contested elections or not, it is important to remind those in and seeking elected offices of our non-partisan stance through the Lake Forest Caucus.

Partisan views are held by many, if not most, residents of this community.  People are proud of and entitled to their Democratic, Republican, Independent, etc. affiliations.  However, in Lake Forest, skewering residents for their political preferences in order to discredit them is a despicable practice. Partisan mudslinging is especially heinous when used to attack, smear and disparage a well-intentioned neighbor, one who simply tries to engage in community service.

For example, an article published last November in the Lake County Gazette alleged that a former mayoral candidate held a fundraising event for Hillary Clinton on November 14th.  It blathered on about her specific financial contributions to Democratic candidates; it reiterated the same nonsense promoted during the previous mayoral race.

Not only are certain statements in this piece blatantly false, one must ask what conceivable purpose this article served.  At the time it published, over seven months had passed since the last mayoral election.  The former candidate had made no statements regarding another run; yet, this issue (of the candidate’s political preferences) cropped up again.  The writer(s) of this piece hid behind a veil of anonymity, foreclosing any attempt to ask about their intent.  There is no question however, that the piece itself fanned the flames of discord.

What, if any political ideologies apply to Lake Forest?  How do liberal or conservative ideals even enter our government’s decision-making?  Our City Council does not deal with immigration control at the border, has no say in whether Social Security or Medicare will be funded and take no action on women’s health rights.   Their priorities include, among other things, adequately funding employee pensions, securing the beach bluff, fixing sewer pipes, purchasing fire trucks and supporting organizations within the community (like Elawa Farm and the library).  There’s nothing “blue”, “red”, “white”, or “orange”  in any of these tasks.

So, again we ask, what prompted this past article from the Gazette?  That begs a second question of how seemingly endless, vitriolic partisan campaigning entered our last mayoral election.  Nasty, partisan-based diatribes not only came from the Lake County Gazette, but also from the Lake Forest Podcast and other places.  We really don’t know what caused these entities to promulgate these attacks.  We can only assume they hoped to stoke fear and divisiveness.  It’s an “agenda” focused on winning at all costs; one that fuels significant division and discord in our community!  

A most notable result is a drop in our community’s participation in the very organizations who need it.  Who will want to serve on the Caucus Committee, on Boards or Commissions and on City Council if they fear their political leanings will result in a public smear of their reputation and/or direct attacks on their families?  This question is easy to answer – no one!

We need to turn this trend around.  Our community can soundly reject anyone and any publication that goes down this noxious path.  The Lake Forest Caucus Committee, which is charged with keeping our City non-partisan, and in years past did not object to independent candidacies, should lead this effort by publicly denouncing this kind of rhetoric wherever and whenever it occurs.  That didn’t happen in the last mayoral election; in fact, the Committee remained conspicuously silent to all forms of political mudslinging.  Furthermore, they never distanced themselves from right-wing groups who supported their recommendation for mayor.  The Committee should have (but didn’t) make clear that they were not affiliated with any politically aligned group, whether that group agreed with their recommendations or not.  The Committee’s behavior needs to change.

Condemnation of vitriol also extends to statements made outside of a campaign environment.  These are statements that don’t call out political affiliations by name, but imply wrongdoing by unidentified ”partisans”.  An example comes from our current Mayor who in a Chicago Tribune article was quoted as saying that unnamed “partisans” were “digging in their heels” regarding the Caucus bylaw amendment, an amendment which would have eliminated our right to vote at the Caucus Spring and Fall Annual Meetings.  A majority of Lake Foresters voted against the amendment because they wanted to preserve their long standing right to vote for or against Caucus Committee recommendations at those meetings.  They were not partisans, or anti-Caucus or anti-government for doing so; they were merely concerned citizens.  The Mayor should recognize this, refrain from accusing citizens of partisanship simply for exercising a democratic right and learn, along with the Caucus, to denounce them publicly.

Again, we recognize that most residents in Lake Forest have favored party affiliations.  However, it is bad for our community to verbally attack residents or viciously accuse them of being “partisan” simply because their choices for local government diverge from those currently in power.  Political mudslinging, whether by innuendo or directly, never should be acceptable, especially when it comes from our “non-partisan” Caucus Leadership and our Mayor.  Lake Forest will be much better off for it.

Lake Forest for Transparency

-John Trkla

-Jennifer Karras

-Susan Sailor Daly

-Dianne Casuto