Arlington Heights Patch Follow-Up: Mark Hellner, Candidate for Mayor

Term Limits:

I signed the recent proposed referendum on term limits because I believe the voters here ought to have the right to express their opinions on the issue.  In all candor, I am equivocal about the wisdom of term limits.  I see one benefit as being the elimination of a hurdle that faces first time candidates like me: Incumbents have an undeniable advantage in terms of name recognition and probably in fund raising as well. That assumes, of course, that the incumbent is not manifestly incompetent or unpopular.  In this race for example, I am running against candidates who have 12 or 13 prior elections under their belts. My biggest hurdle still appears to be after 3 months of active campaigning the lack of name recognition. To overcome that, it seems that one needs a good deal of money. We have, instead, run a true grass roots campaign. That is a more democratic approach to elections than buying them, which seems all too common.  

At the same time, it is counter-intuitive to prohibit truly high performing elected officials from running merely because they have served a set number of terms or years.  I can think of a number of senior public officials for whom I am entirely comfortable voting.  It would be a shame to lose these people.  So, on balance, I am disinclined to favor term limits but truly understand why some people favor them.  For my part, I have already stated on a number of occasions that I would stand for election no more than two times.  I feel eight years is sufficient time for me to either accomplish our objectives or recognize that this may not be possible.  

The last point I would make here is simply that the voters were deprived of the opportunity to express their opinion on this issue.  The stated reason was that the language of the petition was deemed to be ambiguous. The voters could well have expressed their same opinion by denying the referendum after evaluating the arguments for and against the referendum. Instead, two public officials each of whom have been in office over 20 years denied the voters that opportunity. Both officials in my view should have recused themselves due to patent conflicts of interest: one because he is on the ballot and the second because that person openly had endorsed the first person.

Example of Background that Qualifies You for Mayor/Village President:

One long-term project which is instructive is my work on the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Evaluation.  I was the Chair of the Illinois State Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee when I was asked to help design and participate in the management of the much more collaborative Alliance project.  It was a consortium of about 12 Bar Associations all of whom were involved in judicial evaluation or wished to be involved. These bars included not only the Illinois State Bar –the State’s biggest at over 40,000 members—but also the Chicago Bar Association, the Cook County Bar Association (an historically African-American bar created because of racial discrimination by other established bars), the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, the Black Women’s Bar Association, the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association, the Decalogue Society, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Hispanic Bar Association, the Puerto Rican Bar Association and the Asian American Bar Association.  

Over the course of several years, we established joint rules and procedures about performing collaborative investigations and publishing our respective evaluations of judicial candidates.  The first Chair is now Appellate Judge Scott Neville.  I was the second Chair and the third Chair is now trial Judge Leonard Murray.

As Chair, I often was called upon to perform the most sensitive investigations concerning allegations of potential improprieties and then to chair the corresponding hearings.  I also made the suggestion that we invite the Arab Bar Association to join our Alliance.  The other bars accepted that suggestion and it was an invitation that was happily accepted.  The then-Chair of that Bar is now a trial Judge, William Haddad.  He has told me on many occasions that it was a wholly unexpected and much appreciated invitation.

For my work the Illinois State Bar Association awarded me the Board of Governor’s Award which I understand is one of the highest awards offered by that Association.

This work shows my ability to take on a project in unchartered territory involving people with an extremely diverse set of professional and cultural backgrounds and work in collaboration with such groups and people toward a jointly beneficial goal.  Were I to become Village President, I would use these experiences in working both with the Village Board and the various components of our community.  I am a bridge builder and a peace maker.   These skills certainly will benefit the community.

Vision for the Future of Arlington Heights.

I envision working with a broad group of community members to revitalize our town.  We need revitalization in many areas:  business, housing, cultural activities, a prominent local hospital, infrastructure quality, and our neighborhoods. The foundations we need to achieve broad success are, I believe, in place. For example, we have a strong history of volunteerism.  We have a very large numberof locally owned businesses. We have strong neighborhoods and local developers. We have Metropolis and the parks.

Using these foundations, I would lead the community in prioritizing our activities in each of these areas.  We would need to identify the two or three most important projects within each area and then the funding and staffing mechanisms required to achieve our objectives.  With wide-spread community engagement we can achieve magnificent results.  

Specific projects I see as important include:  

(1) Remediation of recurrent flooding problems; (2) Working to attract additional employers who likely would add significant sales and property tax revenue to town; (3) Identifying collaborative projects with the schools, Park District and Library which could lead to efficiencies through cross-utilization of buildings and personnel; (4) Creation of an Arts District using Metropolis as the magnet; (5) Creating a plan to build the type of affordable housing we need to accommodate fully the needs our diverse population groups so that our senior citizens are not forced to move, our younger population just entering the work force can afford to live here, and our young families have reasonable housing options.  We simply cannot remain a viable community without both this long-term planning and effectuation of the plan. (6) Identifying a plan to attract a satellite campus for an institution of higher learning.  

Open Statement: To the Voters of Arlington Heights

I entered this race to bring a stronger sense of practicality and realism to the Arlington Heights Village Board. My primary focus has been on financial matters because I believe that there has been too much spending on government buildings and too little attention paid to some greatly needed services, particularly in the area of flood mitigation. I also am greatly concerned that our unfunded pension liability has grown too rapidly. It is now over $105,000,000. We need to aggressively reduce this very substantial liability.

As the campaign has progressed, it has become apparent that many of the candidates are not realistic about the problems we face.  For example, at the recent League of Women Voter's Forum, several of the candidates talked as if Arlington Heights is a perfect place.  While it is a terrific town, it is far from perfect and it seems to me the residents will be ill-served by candidates who do not understand this indisputable fact. We not only have the debt mentioned above, but we have a Village Board which unanimously supported spending $40,000,000 on a new police station.  These same candidates all seek re-election.  My two opponents for Village President also support this expenditure. I believe it is wiser to reevaluate the logic of this proposal and instead renovate the current station. If additional space is needed, I believe we should acquire an existing building on the north side of town, taking advantage of the soft real estate market.  

In addition to my careful stewardship of your tax money, I will work to revitalize the Central Business District by, in part, creating an Arts District using Metropolis as the anchor.  I will work to see slot machines become a reality at Arlington Park because we cannot afford to lose such a large business to new competition.  And I will work to create efficiencies between the Village and our schools, the Park District and the Library so that we can achieve savings from the efficiencies.  

Thank you for the opportunity to articulate my thoughts on these important issues.