By James Pluta

Candidates and the most ardent leaders of the newly constituted People’s
Voice Party of Justice believe the Village Board majority of which they’re
aligned has already established a firn foundation laying the groundwork
for a new community that is both economically prosperous and a destination
place for friends and visitors for generations to come.

Their opponents — some onetime allies — vehemently disagree with their
brand of leadership, but the four candidates running for just as many
trustee seats are confident the most recent board action to hire The
Lakota Group out of $130,000 in tax increment financing funds to perform a
comprehensive future land use plan for the village is the best move the
village has made in decades.

The research into four firms that could do the work opponents argue can
largely be done in-house is the newest trustee, 21-year resident John
Koslowski, who was appointed in August to replace short-term trustee
George Pastorino.

Often vocal and energized, the energy conservation educator is the
sculptor behind the board’s move to commission a consultant to help the
community develop master and marketing plans for the various commercial
districts in town along Roberts and Archer roads, 79th Street and 88th
Avenue.

He is running for a trustee seat along with newcomers David Cormany and
Ray Heabel and incumbent Mary McGee — a mother of triplets credited in
campaign fodder with starting up a Police Department Neighborhood Watch
program, working with Public Works to maintain safety and helping realize
cost savings in the overuse of cell phones and vehicles by certain village
officials.

If the People’s Voice slate wins at least two seats to the new Coalition
Party of Justice, it will retain its current majority on the board, as PVP
trustees Kinga Bartoszek and Phil DePaola still have two years to serve —
or it could take over all seats and have to work with an opposition mayor
in Coalition campaign manager and four-year incumbent Kris Wasowicz.

Koslowski, a former Ethics Board appointee, was the trustee named by
Wasowicz in November to oversee economic development and who admittedly
spent most of his six months in office giving village tours, studying how
communities grow and generate revenue and how to seek out help to do so.
Cormany, a former 7-year member of the Justice-Bridgeview Indian Springs
District 109 School Board, said he believes his experience in logistics
and education prepared him well for similar financial issues
municipalities now face.

He said he joined the PVP because he knew Koslowski, who recruited him to
run, and because he “shared some of the same philosophies” with other
party loyal. Plus, he was happy to learn many of them either attended or
had children who attended local schools.

“I saw a change coming in (state and federal) deficits ... and how things
were going to be cut, which means things were going to start changing in
local towns as well,” Cormany said. “Our society was in a state of
transition as schools were a decade earlier, so I felt this was the time
(to get involved again) because local governments hadn’t had this problem
before. They were always bailed out in some way and that’s not gonna
happen again.”

And, he thought, the execution of a plan to deal with the unanticipated is
going to be critical, especially to a town where he raised his two kids.

“The way I see it, if any more mistakes are done again around here, we’re
in trouble,” he added. “What schools were facing a decade ago, we are
facing now.”

From a broad perspective, he said, things have to be planned right.

“In business or government, you never micromanage and this village
obviously has had a history of micromanaging,” he said. “What concerns me
is we can walk to a McDonald’s that is just one block into Bridgeview ...
and if you look at our perimeter one, two, three miles out, everything we
need is right outside the perimeter of our village.”

The only significant redevelopment idea that has formally come before the
board in the three years since Justice’s third TIF District was created
along the Tri-State Tollway where it meets 79th and 88th was a proposed
travel center last month — which hinges completely on a dual on/off ramp
system embraced by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority.

It’s one amenity both sides agree is needed to attract business and raise
much-needed sales tax to a village with a quarter million dollar deficit
and no more bonding capacity.

The PVP is casually interested at best about what some of their backers
dub a glorified truck stop and envision the site to attract a big box
retailer or big name restaurants instead — and they remain unsure whether
the mayor’s failed “talks” with CVS, Walgreens and Aldi were ever real, on
the table proposals.

As for supposed negotiations, McGee complains Wasowicz “kept it all
secret” and accused him of keeping opponents out of the loop. Moreover,
she said, the travel center presentation lacked any financial projections.

Koslowski claimed he first found out about the truck stop idea in October
from nearby residents against the concept.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea for the site,” he added. “But there were
absolutely no revenue projections at all.”

Koslowski said what it all really boils down to is Justice “has only so
much developable land” and needs to make it as profitable as possible, to
beautify the village’s image and match residents’ stated vision of the
village’s future.

“We have so much going for us,” he said, “and we’ve never been able to
harness or handle it properly.”

Cormany, who also advocates looking into reaping untapped tax money from
the more than 110 foreclosures in town in which homes are occupied, also
said too many businesses realize Justice is a buying community but too
frequently develop along its rim.

McGee said “destination” type stores and restaurants are needed to bring
people to town and spend.

Koslowski said he wants the village to be “the path of least resistance”
and to get out of the “reactive mode and mindset” by some in power by
being selective with established goals.

“We just have a lack of development like some towns (enjoy),” added
Heabel, an advocate of building good relationships with the business
community and expanding chamber activism. “You see stuff want to come and
just slip away and it’s frustrating.”

In other issues, first-termer McGee insists communication must improve by
sending more newsletters to residents keeping them apprised of finance and
development updates. The pact for fire services must be reviewed, they
said, and some jobs must be eliminated, said McGee.

There will be many challenges ahead, but that’s not the least of it,
admitted Cormany.

“Local politics is tough; nothing is tougher,” he speculated. “Unlike the
state or federal (government), when you make a decision (here) you know
who it is affecting directly and it’s very emotional.”

Many folks in Justice know that is true, especially over the past four
years when some current officeholders and opposing candidates were allies.

For instance McGee lays claim to backing the $2.6 million Roberts Road and
Wesley Fields road project, but only because she is the only candidate on
the ballot when that occurred.

However, she said had she joined the mayor and then-trustees John Fairman
and Mike Murray on the Springfield lobbying trip, they would have violated
the Open Meetings Act.

“They’re taking it as a feather in their cap,” she said, “and that’s wrong.”

The current majority not only seized the party from the mayor and made
McGee its chairman last year, but before and after that convinced the
alleged “passive/aggressive” mayor, said McGee, to back an attorney,
towing firm and waste hauler his current “people” have criticized and he
later regretted censuring two trustees who are now gone.

Then there was the current majority’s controversial moving of the veterans
memorial they claim he initially backed, the removal and redoing of
village entrance signs and the changing of the village seal, the hiring of
a media consultant and forsaking stipends for the last six months which
the mayor and clerk refused to do as did, out of the public eye, one of
their trustees.

But all these actions, they contend — personalities aside — were made in
the name of progress.

Koslowski, who appears will take on greater roles if elected under the
same majority rule, says he likes Wasowicz a d Trustee Ed Rusch Jr. and
will try to work with them if Rusch remains. Regardless, the mayor still
has two years to go.

“We’re not what we’re being made out to be,” concluded the soft-spoken
McGee. “We all love our village and none of us want to ram anything down
people’s throats.”