Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek this office? What skills, experiences, and perspectives would you bring to the Village, and why would those contributions be valuable in the role of Park District Board member?

Motivation: opportunity for public service.
Skills: analytical skills from law school education; two terms of experience on the Park Board, plus experience on other boards, such as FOPCON, for example.
Perspectives: long time resident and park user; parent of a son who grew up in Oak Park and who participated in Park District programs; deep interest in sustainability, native plants, climate change.

2. What are the three biggest challenges or opportunities you expect the Park District to face in the coming years, and how would you work with your colleagues to address these challenges or realize these opportunities?

Challenges/opportunities: all three of these are both.
1- completing the Community Recreation Center
2- viewing all programs/projects through the lenses of sustainability and inclusivity
3-continuing to be fiscally responsible, getting the”biggest bang for [the community’s] buck”
Our board is small and collegial. We discuss matters thoroughly and listen to each other carefully.

3. How will you balance competing interests, such as your own deeply-held values and opinions, input from Park District staff and fellow board members, and diverse views from the community? How would you describe your leadership style and your decision-making process generally?

I try to balance competing views by ensuring that all are heard, considering the matter carefully, then deciding what I determine best benefits the whole community. I believe my leadership style is collegial, though you’d probably get a more accurate answer to that from my colleagues!

4. What values would you bring to the budgeting process? What changes do you favor in the process by which the Park District conducts its budgeting and fiscal planning?

Seeing that the budget reflects our priorities. It does, and I see no need for changes. Our budgeting process is award-winning.

5. How will you balance the community's desire to decrease the property tax burden with the Park District’s mission of providing services and recreation opportunities and the need to maintain facilities?

The Park District contributes minimally to the tax burden; less than five cents of the tax dollar. That said, we seek economies wherever they may be found. For example, we recently refinanced our outstanding debt to take advantage of lowered interest rates.

6. How do you define equity? Have recent discussions in the larger community informed or changed your thinking?

Equity means that park programs and facilities should be available and welcoming to everyone. Financial barriers to participation are met by our scholarship program and sliding cost scales. We work to assure that all ADA requirements are met, listened to parents who requested changes in a playground, which we made, to make it more accessible.
Current events have certainly informed my thinking and sensitized me to problems I was not aware of.

7. How do you plan to solicit feedback from people who may be experiencing Oak Park’s Park District programming in a different way than you? What barriers do you believe may exist in this process?

We do a formal community survey every five years, seeking opinions from a representative sample of the community. We make every effort to reach out to those groups who are underserved by our programs, for example recently meeting with a group of Black men to discuss the CRC and how they may participate in its programming. Barriers include lack of information - unawareness of what opportunities we provide, our lack of knowledge about groups or people who should be included.

8. How will you collaborate with neighboring communities? Discuss a specific initiative you would wish to undertake. What benefits and challenges would you anticipate?

We included other communities in our initial feasibility study for the CRC. Most of the entities with whom we collaborate, and there is much, are other Oak Park taxing bodies such as the Township. Quite frankly, I cannot think of a project for collaborating with a neighboring community.

9. Private fundraising for a proposed Community Recreation Center has begun. What resources do you believe the Park District can or should bring to such a project? How do you see the Community Recreation Center leveraging existing local facilities and programs?

We bring all the resources of the District to the CRC project, starting with confirmation that it would meet expressed community needs. Planning the uses - badly-needed basketball courts, space for e-sports, a walking track especially sought by seniors. Working with the Parks Foundation in fundraising. The CRC will fill vacancies in our community’s recreational facilities, returning the less-than-adequate school spaces we have needed to use to their school uses. We expect to serve those who are not customers of commercial facilities.

10. The Park District is largely staffed by part-time employees. How will you balance the need for fiscal stewardship with the responsibility to pay employees a living wage?

We believe in paying our staff appropriately. Many of our part-time staff are in their first jobs, not yet helping to support a family. So we pay them accordingly, and pay the increased minimum wage even though as an agency we are not obliged to do so. We review salary ranges in the field to insure we are paying staff appropriately within those ranges.

11. Park districts make use of many different sources of funding, including property tax revenues, fees, and grants. Do you feel the Park District maintains the right balance for financial sustainability and equity? What do you see as the tradeoffs?

We, until Covid, had a balance of approximately 50% tax revenue, 50% revenue from other sources such as fees, grants, and sponsorships. I see this is an ideal balance, which we hope to return to.

12. What lessons learned from the services provided or not provided during the pandemic do you believe will be applicable going forward, even after the pandemic abates?

Lessons - how creative and flexible staff can still serve our community in the face of constantly changing guidelines, focusing on keeping participants and staff safe, and hewing to the rules in the face of community upset.

13. In 2019, The Park District adopted an equity policy that adds training and organizational support around equity and inclusion. How would you evaluate the success of the equity policy so far? What additional steps should be taken by the Park District?

We are doing well, I think, but improvements can always be made. We have a staff team working specifically on these issues. We will be reviewing our strategic plan in the next few months, specifically considering how inclusivity will be included in our stated values.

14. The Park District does not currently track participants in its programming by race. Please comment on whether you believe this information is necessary to evaluate the Park District’s success in promoting racial equity and inclusion, and why.

We are considering asking for this information, not only to enable us to see where we need to do better, but also to provide information grantors seek, which can result in additional financial support.

• • • • •

[The above answers were supplied on 2/19/21.]