Naperville not required to draw districts for 2011

Naperville won’t be required to create five compact and contiguous city council districts before the April 5 election, a DuPage County judge ruled Wednesday.

Voters on Nov. 2 approved a referendum proposal to create the five aldermanic districts, each with its own representative to the city council. Three other council members and the mayor would continue to be elected at-large.

The ballot proposition called for the districts to take effect with the coming spring election. But city officials argued they didn’t have enough time to draw such boundaries between the approval of the referendum measure and the start of election filing this week.

Judge Bonnie Wheaton agreed, saying the deadline for the 2011 election is “impossible because the statutorily mandated time to file petitions expires before the 2010 referendum election results are certified” on Tuesday, Nov. 23.

Candidates for mayor and city council vacancies can file their nominating petitions through 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 22.

City attorney Margo Ely brought the motion to court last week arguing that the election code requires 90 days to get signatures for those nominating petitions.

“There’s not 90 days from Nov. 23 to have an opposition period, get the ballot printed and have the April election,” she said.

DuPage Election Commission attorney Pat Bond agreed with the ruling, citing the need to have time to print the ballots and get them to early, military and overseas voters.

“These are different times, and the election process is a little more involved than it used to be,” Bond said. “Truly, the statute requiring the move to go into effect at the next mayoral election needs to be changed to avoid this very situation.”

Naperville Voter Education League members responsible for getting the measure on the ballot were in court and displeased with the ruling.

“The people’s will has not been carried out today,” said former league founding member and council candidate Charlie Schneider. “I’m very disappointed about that because the city has known for two years that we were doing this and could have been planning districts all along.”

Wheaton’s ruling, however, left open the opportunity for setting a 2013 deadline instead of the election code-mandated date of 2015 during the city’s next mayoral election.

League Chairman Bill Eagan said 2015 is not an acceptable target and encouraged residents to demand a 2013 installation.

“You don’t decide in 2010 to buy a car but wait five years to drive it off the lot, do you?” Eagan said.

“There’s a better way. The city has their mandate, and it’s time for them to get going on it.”

Interested parties have until Jan. 17 to file responsive pleadings on moving the date up to 2013 before it goes back to the court in February.

Otherwise, Wheaton suggested, it may be an item the city council would want to take up after any new members are seated in April.

Whether boundaries are needed by 2013 or 2015, Ely said the city will likely begin creating and drawing the new district proposals soon after receiving the certified 2010 census figures in April.

“Based on what we heard here today, that would appear to be our next step,” she said. “But the city will need to discuss that further.”