F07, Forest Park election results

Cook County Clerk has the results.

With five of twelve precincts reporting:

Theresa A. Steinbach 319 30.04%
Patrick J. Doolin 207 19.49%
Anthony T. Calderone 536 50.47%

[UPDATE: Final results:

Theresa A. Steinbach 738 29.66%
Patrick J. Doolin 456 18.33%
Anthony T. Calderone 1,294 52.01%

Vote total: 2,488. Forest Park Review (Josh Adams) says the 7,987 voters are registered in Forest Park. This would make voter turnout 31.1%, which I consider high for a local election primary.]

[UPDATE2: Rockford Register Star wrote about voter turnout. In the coverage area turnout ranged from 4.8% to 23%. So Forest Park voter turnout was exceptionally high considering the type of election.]

F07, predict outcome of Forest Park mayor's race [FP]

Vote for one:
Theresa A. Steinbach 1
Patrick J. Doolin 2
Anthony T. Calderone 3

It's like American Idol. Bottom vote getter doesn't appear in the next round (April 17 election).

I want to use one of my lifelines and poll the audience. Who will get insufficient support to make it to the next round? And for the bold, predict the percentages.

Please make predictions by 8:00 AM on election day.

[UPDATE: If you see anyone working your polling place you suspect of being a government employee shanghaied into service take a picture and send me a copy RadioNyberg circled "a" Yahoo spot c0m. We'll put the Proviso Probe team on identifying who these people are.]

F07, Calderone dominating the sign war [FP]

Yesterday I was out counting signs in Forest Park. At one point I had 85 houses (not businesses) with Anthony Calderone signs, twelve for Theresa Steinbach and four for Patrick Doolin.

Please remind your Forest Park family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to vote on Tuesday.

F07, Six days until mayor primary [FP]

The yard signs have been placed in Forest Park.

The mayor primary is next Tuesday, six days away. It's the usual polling places. Please remind your families, friends and neighbors to vote.

Forest Park Review has letters from Steven Backman, Peter Nicholas Marafatsos, Patrick Tierney, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #24, Carl Nyberg, Terry Steinbach, Melissa Johnson and Barbara Plona.

[UPDATE: The Forest Park Review did profiles of all three candidates: Anthony Calderone (campaign website), Patrick Doolin (campaign website) and Theresa Steinbach (campaign website).]

F07, Patrick Doolin money questions

On February 9, 2007, Commissioner Patrick Doolin received $1,000 for his campaign committee from Grand Interior Group Inc., 2121 N 15th Ave., Melrose Park. Grand Interior Group has also given to Eugene Moore (most recent $500 on March 20, 2006) and to the Eighth Ward Democrats (Stroger's ward organization, most recent $200 on October 24, 2006).

Grand Interior Group, Inc. is owned by Eugene Palermo. Eugene Palermo's son, Jason Palermo, owns Doolin's real estate business. Neither Eugene or Jason Palermo have a recent history of contributing to political campaigns as individuals.

Doolin also received $2,500 from Delaney Contractors in Oak Park. Doolin signed a modified version of the CUFP campaign pledge and is not limiting himself to contributions no more than $100 from outside Forest Park.

Today the Forest Park Review endorsed Patrick Doolin for mayor. On the web site formerly known as ForestPark.com justaparker wrote, "Talk about pay to play dosen't Doolin pay the review every week for his adds?" And Dr. Barbie added:

Interesting Justaparker, I was thinking the same thing. Anytime you read the Review online Doolin is sitting at the top of the page watching you.

I would imagine Mr. Haley would lose quite a bit of advertising revenue if he alienated Mr. Doolin.

According to Doolin his real estate business hasn't advertised in the newspaper in ten months and his online advertisements cost about $60 per month. He estimates that he's spent less than $1,000 in advertising with the Forest Park Review in the last year. Forest Park Review's total advertising revenue is unknown.

[UPDATE: In an email Patrick Doolin wrote, "I just checked my records and the last time I placed a real estate print ad in the FPR was 08/06."]

F07, Forest Park Review endorses Doolin [FP]

Someone--but not someone for the Forest Park Review--told me the Review was planning to endorse two candidates for mayor in the primary, and then endorsing one of the winners before April 17.

So I was surprised to read the Forest Park Review endorsed Commissioner Patrick Doolin for mayor.

Forest Park needs one more candidate who demonstrates an unselfish and wholly mature character and is willing to serve the greater good.

It's easy to complain about the options available. Forest Park and Proviso Township have been governed in a partisan way. There aren't going to be a whole bunch of "above the fray" individuals who have gotten involved in local issues. So almost any candidate will be vulnerable to the criticism of not having enough experience being involved or having been somewhat uncivil at some point.

Forest Park's commission form of government is antiquated and inefficient. As Doolin has rightfully pointed out, policy makers have no place meddling in the day-to-day affairs of municipal government. Giving our elected officials administrative control blurs the lines of authority and adds chaos to the flow of information. The ability of department heads, the village administrator and others working in an oversight capacity to effectively manage their staff is severely undermined by the constant threat of political interference. Nowhere in the state laws that prescribe the five departments that must exist in the commission form of government does it say that each commissioner must be knowledgeable.

Dan Haley, the publisher, and Bill Dwyer, a columnist, have criticized the commissioner form of government. And their take on the commissioner form of government is more on target than off target.

However, I would offer this caveat. Many Proviso communities have village manager forms of government on paper, but have "mayors" (really they are village presidents) that govern by fiat when they want to. I expect that if Forest Park had a village manager form of government for the last four years with the same five commissioners we would have gotten about the same as what we got. Calderone would have told Mike Sturino what to do at key junctures and Sturino would have gone along.

What parts of the endorsement resonated with you? What parts seemed wrong or off-the-mark?

F07, Calderone, Doolin & Steinback take Qs together [FP]

Last night all three candidates for mayor addressed about 170 people at Field Stevenson Middle School. As school board member Steve Johnsen observed, pretty much everyone there had already picked which candidate they were supporting.

My take, for what it's worth is that Mayor Anthony Calderone and Commissioner Patrick Doolin did quite well at presenting what they had to say. Steinbach's presentation was fine, but the other candidates excelled at the style portion of the presentation.

On the issues:

All three candidates are against home rule.

All three candidates want to develop Roosevelt Road.

All three candidates committed not to use eminent domain to acquire homes for parking.

On the Roos property Calderone said Forest Park "should embrace progress" and seemed to indicate he was more inclined to let developers do what they think is profitable. Doolin said Calderone raising money from the developers was an example of pay-to-play politics.

Doolin favors removing administrative authority for commissioners to eliminate politicians meddling in day-to-day management of the village. Steinbach said the politicians getting involved was better than leaving decisions to unelected bureaucrats. Calderone claimed that the commissioner form of government gives commissioners the right to meddle and so Doolin's proposal didn't make sense.

Doolin seemed eager to put a car dealership or a big box store on the site of the reserve center.

Doolin accused Calderone of engaging in political meddling in the police department. Steinbach indicated that her solution to problems in the police department were to hire the "best and brightest" and have them practice good management. Calderone portrayed the conflicts in the department as getting rid of bad cops who were "cheating the system" and blamed the bad PR on the newspaper.

Calderone said, "Ninety-five percent of police officers think the police department is doing well. This is what I hear from the police chief."

Regarding District 209, both Doolin and Steinbach advocated for mayors to get out of school board politics. Calderone characterized involvement as not being about politics but "forging cooperation".

Steinbach used her vote against a water rate increase to contrast herself with Calderone and Doolin and put her on the side of senior citizens. Doolin responded by saying that the village was subsidizing the cost of water so the rate increase was the fiscally responsible thing to do.

F07, Dooling & Steinbach appear at CUFP forum [FP]

I thought they both did well. Generally their positions were close enough that the second candidate answering seemed to amplify and expand on the first candidate's response. There wasn't much contrast.

Any comments?

[UPDATE: The three candidates have filed their campaign disclosure reports with the State Board of Elections: Citizens for Anthony Calderone, Citizens for Doolin and Citizens for Steinbach.]