Fourteen Open Seats on the Village's Boards. Candidates and Alternates, vetted and teed up for your vote.
Seasoned incumbents, qualified newbies, and at least one challenger. If your $20+K average per-household tax bill weren't on the line, the drama alone might be worth zooming in. But that's a lot of cash to stash in the wrong hands.
You know what you pay.
In 2020 the Cook County Assessor said Winnetka's median property tax for 2020 was $20,740.37. (Yes, twice the national average.) (And no, no numbers yet for 2022.)
Most of it goes to our four local taxing bodies, hoping they'll get it right.
After months of interviewing, vetting, and voting, the Caucus Council billboarded its Most Likely To Get It Right.
You Decide Who Decides
Managerial chops, finance chops, land use chops. Meet the folks who will sit on the other side of the table for your beefs or better ideas. Do you know them? Do they have what you think it takes to make Winnetka your version of its best self? Can you trust them to spend your money with as much hard thought as it took to earn it?
Village Slate
President
Chris Rintz
Trustees
Robert (“Bob”) H. Dearborn
Bridget Kathleen Orsic
Kirk Albinson
Library Board Slate
Travis Gosselin
Deborah Vandergrift
Ranjini Shankar
Matt Kinnich
Park District Slate
Christina Codo
Cynthia Rapp
James Hemmings
Jeff Tyson
D36 School District Slate
Luke Figora
Katherine Myers-Crum
Emily Rose
Marena Rudy
Right enough? Want more? Up close and personals here.
But wait! There's more...
The candidates that make the cut end up on the Spring Ballot. Once they collect the necessary sigs. So if one of them asks you to sign their petition to get on the ballot, do it. They're volunteers and will donate a boatload of their time to get you a better-than-good Winnetka. Thanking them for their service might be a nice touch.
ICYMI Winnetka's a Policy Over Politics Place.
There are five ways to run a town like ours: Council-manager, mayor-council, commission, town meeting, and representative town meeting.
Since 1915, Winnetka's been Council-Manager.
Back then, partisan politics didn't work for Winnetkans. Garbage and potholes being what they were. The Council-Manager model gave them a paid professional manager, an all-volunteer set of governing boards vetted and slated by a volunteer Caucus Council, chosen from a resident-wide Caucus whose one-vote-one-voice gave everybody with skin in the game a place at the table. Garbage got picked up, potholes got filled, and nobody had to wait for downstate.
(Proof of concept: Most towns on the North Shore rely on this system in one form or another to find, vet, and tee up qualified volunteer talent.)
Wednesday night, what works, continues.
You have until noon, Wednesday, to register.
This is a Zoom-driven piece of cake. Register, watch for your Zoomlink, log on, get checked in. Listen, discuss, vote.
In the meantime,...
New to town? Things your real estate agent may not have told you.
Caucus Rules - How the Caucus is organized, what it does all year, and how it does it. Fast forward to Rules 125-129 for the Fall Town Hall.
Plus, what the boards will be considering for their 2023 agenda. Caucus Platforms here, Annual Survey results here, but way more of a tell, the Survey-takers free-lance here.
Follow Your Money...
It took a bit, but all the Boards are finally posting their meeting vids. So if you're on the train, at the gym, in the carpool line, and you want to catch up, here's your fix.