The Park District of La Grange will host its annual Halloween Party on Friday, Oct. 29, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at its recreation center, 536 East Ave.
Children ages 12 & younger are welcome, accompanied by an adult. Admission is free and costumes are encouraged.
There will be games with prizes, pumpkin decorating, a magician, tattoo parlor, balloon artist, and chocolate dipping, sponsored by Fannie May Candies.
There also will be a bike raffle, sponsored by the La Grange Firefighters Union, and the White Sox Academy will be open too.
To prepare for the event, the center's track and gymnasium will close at 10:00 a.m.
The Citizens’ Council of La Grange has for a second time extended its deadline for accepting applications from candidates for local public office who seek the council's endorsement, Katie Justak, the council's chairperson, announced in an email press release issued late Wednesday night.
The new deadline is 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 31.
Candidates for the boards of the village, library or park district who wish to be interviewed by the Citizens' Council can download an application from the council’s website, lgcitizenscouncil.org, Justak said.
“Part of the Council’s mission is to recruit, evaluate, select and recommend candidates to the voters,” Justak said. “To fulfill this mission, we want to recruit enough qualified candidates for all open seats. This situation is not unprecedented and we look forward to receiving more applications by our final deadline.”
Both the village and library boards have three seats that will be filled in a public election to be held next April; two seats will be filled on the park district board.
So far, Justak said, the council has received applications from the following individuals:
Village Board: Mark Kuchler (incumbent) and Jeffrey Nowak
Library Board: Caroline Coryell (incumbent) and Bridgette O’Connor
Park District Board: Mary Ellen Penicook (incumbent), Brad Belcaster (incumbent) and Lynn Lacey
The council has scheduled public interviews for library board candidates on Wednesday, Nov. 10; park district board candidates on Wednesday, Dec. 1; and village board candidates on Wednesday, Dec. 8.
All interviews will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the La Grange Village Hall auditorium.
The annual La Grange Halloween Walk will commence this Saturday morning at 10:30, from the playground of Cossitt School, 115 W Cossitt Ave.
Sponsored by the La Grange Business Association, the walk will wind its way through downtown La Grange as merchants dispense treats to costumed youngsters from their storefronts.
Click on the video below to watch last year's Halloween Walk.
The eclectic cafe, deli and bakery closed its doors this past Sunday and plans to re-open in a few weeks with a new name and dining concept: Back Alley Burger, "a gourmet burger bar with a lot of hidden extras."
Proprietors Chris Spagnola and Mary Libsch opened Knead in 2007, originally serving only breakfast and lunch. A dinner menu was added about this time last year after the restaurant was issued the village's first BYO liquor license, which allows patrons to bring their own beer and wine to consume with their meals.
The couple, according to their window sign, promises that customers of the new Back Alley Burger "will experience the same quality, variety and inventiveness you have come to love at Knead, and even encounter some familiar flavors mixed together with some new ones."
La Grange Trustee Jim Palermo Monday night said he will run for a second term on the village board, but that he is prohibited by a condition of his employment from seeking the endorsement of the La Grange Citizens Council.
Palermo, a director and securities analyst with Chicago Equity Partners, said that new rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission resulted in an internal policy change at the company that "would limit my ability to participate in a party organization."
Consequently, Palermo said he will run as an independent candidate.
While the village board is non-partisan, and the council is not aligned with any major political organization, council members in the past often have formed an independent political party in order to support and fund the council's slate of candidates for the boards of the village, library and park district.
Palermo sought and won the endorsement of the council in his first successful bid for a village board seat in 2007.
While many La Grange candidates believe that obtaining the endorsement of the council is tantamount to winning the primary in a one-party race, council-backed candidates have not always emerged as victors on Election Day.
Jim Boo was one of three candidates endorsed by the council in 2009 who ran for three seats on the park district board of commissioners. But Boo came in fourth as Tim Kelpsas, an incumbent park commissioner who sought but failed to gain the council's backing, ran as an independent and got more votes than any of the council's candidates.
Kelpsas attributed his victory to a vigorous door-to-door campaign effort.
Palermo said he will adopt the same tactic.
"I knocked on a lot of doors four years ago, and I'll knock on a lot of doors this time," he said.
Although Palermo will run as an independent, he will still be able to accept financial contributions, and participate in non-council candidate forums, such as the one sponsored four years ago by an eastside residents group.
Another incumbent village trustee, Mark Kuchler, reportedly is once again seeking the council's endorsement.
But Tom Livingston, a third trustee whose term also expires next May, said Monday night that he will not run for a third term, fulfilling a campaign promise he made when he first sought the office eight years ago.
La Grange Trustee Tom Livingston Monday night said his decision not to seek a third term fulfills a campaign promise he made when he first sought election to the village board in 2003.
It's a promise Livingston says he never reconsidered.
"When I was sworn in for my second term [in 2007], I knew it would be my last," Livingston said following a village board "town meeting" held Monday night at the Ogden Avenue School.
He said it was time to step aside and provide some other resident with an opportunity to serve the village.
Livingston said he informed the La Grange Citizens Council of his decision in an Oct. 4 letter to its chairperson, Katie Justak. He received the endorsement of the council during each of his two successful village board bids.
But Livingston's decision was not publicly revealed until Monday.
Two other village trustees whose terms expire next year, Mark Kuchler and Jim Palermo, have said they will seek re-election. Kuchler reportedly also is seeking endorsement from the Citizens Council, but Palermo said he will not, running instead as an independent candidate.
While Livingston will officially step down next May, when the winning candidates of the April election are seated, he said he has not ruled out pursuing another elected office in the future—possibly on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. In the meantime, he says he will spend the extra time he will have with family and other interests.
A native of La Grange, Livingston left the village to attend the University of Illinois, where he had the distinction of serving as the school's mascot, Chief Illiniwek. The mascot was retired by university officials in 2007, ending a controversy over its portrayal of Native American Indians.
Livingston later entered the political world as a senior assistant to Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar.
He returned to La Grange with his wife, Catherine, in 1999. That same year, Livingston accepted the post of executive director at the Illinois Medical District Commission in Chicago.
In 2003, Livingston joined CSX Corporation as resident vice president, responsible for attracting and retaining business customers along its rail lines. He also serves as a government liaison for the company.
La Grange officials and representatives of the Metropolitan Water & Reclamation District (MWRD) held a special meeting Oct. 18 to explain the causes behind the record summer floods that filled the basements of many homeowners, and also to detail the solutions they are pursuing in an effort to prevent future flooding events.
There's little sense in repeating here the details found in last week's online coverage of the meeting by other La Grange news operations. One can read those by clicking here, here and here.
Also, video coverage of the entire meeting, which lasted more than two-and-one-half hours can be found on the village's official website. By the way, we applaud the village for its recent decision to post videos of some of its meetings online, in addition to showing them on cable television public access channels.
That said, some La Grange Today readers may find value in watching an excerpt of the meeting, taken from our own footage, in which Community Development Director Patrick Benjamin and Village Engineer Tom Heuer review some of the steps homeowners might take to mitigate flood damage.
These flood prevention tips may not stop a cascade of water rolling off the country club grounds from smashing through your basement window wells, but village and MWRD officials say they are working to prevent a recurrence of that unforeseen nightmare.
Should the Park District of La Grange designate some of its land for community supported agriculture, possibly on one of the parcels in Gordon Park it is trying to sell?
At least two park commissioners—Brad Belcaster and Chris Walsh—think it is an idea worth exploring after hearing a pitch on the concept Oct. 21 from resident Kheir Fakhreldin.
Watch a video Fakhreldin's pitch and the board's discussion below.
Community supported agriculture, CSA for short, "is a system where people pay in a certain amount of money at the beginning of a growing season, and then they [receive] shares of vegetables and fruits that are grown in the garden throughout the growing season," Fakhreldin said.
The concept differs from a traditional community garden where participants are assigned individual plots in which to grow crops for their own use. CSA shareowners may choose to get involved in tending the garden, but it is not a requirement.
Fakhreldin, who was raised in La Grange, recently returned home after pursuing studies in Michigan, where he became familiar with the CSA concept.
He said he hoped his pitch to the park commissioners would "plant a seed, literally as well as metaphorically, for a land use that [the park district] might not have considered."
Fakhreldin cited a one local CSA already operating at the Field Park School in Western Springs, which was featured in an Oct. 18 story in The Doings newspaper.
La Grange park commissioners offered no immediate response as Fakhreldin offered his suggestion during a period allotted for public comment shortly after the start of the board's regular meeting.
But at the end of the two-hour meeting, during a period reserved for commissioner comments and after Fakhreldin had left the meeting, Belcaster said he thought the idea of a CSA might have merit.
Belcaster said Fakhreldin was the second La Grange resident from whom he had recently been approached with the idea of the park district hosting a CSA project. The first was a man who told Belcaster about being involved in a community garden along with both his son and his father.
The idea of three generations working together on a common project was "just a neat thing for them to spend time together," Belcaster said. "I think it might be something that we should take a look at."
Walsh said he also supported exploring a CSA project for the park district, while admitting he had not been immediately keen to the idea when Fakhreldin proposed it.
"There are plenty of community supported agriculture outlets that [already] are available to people who live in La Grange," Walsh said, adding that he was a shareowner in a CSA group that received weekly deliveries of fresh produce from a farm outside of the village.
But, Walsh acknowledged, "it's also nice actually doing the growing, not just doing the purchasing and consuming. I'm starting to come around to that."
He said there were several parcels of vacant land in the village that might be appropriate for a garden, some owned by the park district and others by third parties who also might be willing to participate.
Walsh noted that the earlier in the meeting the commissioners had postponed renovations planned for Gordon Park, due to a lack of funds pending the sale of two parcels from the park.
"We have the opportunity to potentially use some space there for a bounded time period," Walsh said. "Maybe it's something we ought to consider."
Discussion concluded with the board directing its executive director, Dean Bissias, to conduct further research on the idea.
The second of four "town meetings" hosted by the La Grange village board of trustees will take place tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the gymnasium of the Ogden Avenue School, located at the corner of Ogden and Waiola Aves.
The meeting provides an opportunity for residents to ask questions and voice concerns on any village matters.
The first town meeting occurred Sept. 27 at the Seventh Avenue School, where the focus of residents' concerns centered primarily on the flooding that occurred this past summer, a quarry blast that literally shook homes and businesses, and efforts by village officials to improve pedestrian safety along 47th St and other village thoroughfares.
La Grange Library Trustee Rose Taylor last night resigned from the library board, explaining that she was no longer eligible to serve as trustee because she and her husband, Robert, had recently moved to Indian Head Park.
Taylor, who was elected to the library board in 2007, would have faced re-election next April.
Her resignation ensures that next year there will be at least two new faces on the library board. Another trustee, Steve Wolf, last month announced that he would not seek re-election.
Library Board President Becky Spratford said the board would appoint an interim replacement to fill Taylor's seat, but would avoid choosing anyone who is seeking election to the board next April out of concern that the appointment would be viewed as an endorsement.
Instead, trustees last night supported a proposal from Spratford to attempt to fill the vacancy with one of a number of past library trustees who still reside in the community.
Spratford said her idea was to appoint someone "who can come up to speed quickly and knows what is expected of them."
Jeannie Dilger-Hill, the library's director, said she would prepare a list of eligible former trustees in reverse chronological order, beginning with Rick Adamczyk, whom Taylor replaced in 2007.
Taylor said she submitted her resignation with sadness, but that moving to a condominium in Indian Head Park would offer a living arrangement more suitable for her husband, who is battling cancer.
The couple also will keep their home in La Grange, which will continue to be occupied by other family members. This will allow Taylor to retain her La Grange library card and continue to be active with the library in other capacities, she said.
Taylor was an employee of the La Grange library for 12 years, serving as director of youth services until 2006, when she accepted the job as director of the public library in Bridgeview.