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Newcomer challenging incumbents for Arlington Heights village board

5 up for 4 Arlington Hts. seats

Even with all four incumbent trustees running for re-election to the Arlington Heights village board, lifelong resident and design commission member Jim Tinaglia decided now was the right time to run.

“I've been thinking about it for a long time, my kids are growing up a little bit, so the timing works,” Tinaglia said. “I thought I could offer a perspective to the board that is different from any of the other board members.”

Tinaglia, 51, is an architect working in Arlington Heights. He will face incumbent Trustees Joseph Farwell, Thomas Glasgow, Norman Breyer and Bert Rosenberg in the April 9 municipal consolidated election. The four trustees with the most votes are elected at-large in Arlington Heights.

“They are all good people, and I have a big challenge ahead of me,” Tinaglia said of the difficulties of facing the incumbents.

Tinaglia grew up in town and graduated from Arlington High School in 1980. He studied architecture at Iowa State University and moved back to Arlington Heights with his wife to raise their four children.

He said that because of his work he understands what it is like to be a petitioner before the board asking for permission and sees ways to make the process easier for new businesses coming to town.

“Our biggest issue is moving forward out of this economic downturn,” Tinaglia said.

“We need to find ways to get better and more efficient about business as usual. There are things that we could do quicker, faster, easier, smarter and save everyone a lot of time.”

With Village President Arlene Mulder retiring after 20 years as mayor, there may be a loss of some long-term knowledge on the board, which is one reason Breyer, 70, said he is running for another term. Breyer was a trustee from 1993 to 1997 and was elected again in 2005 and 2009.

“I've been around the village a long time and there's a certain institutional memory that I bring,” Breyer said, adding that his experience as a CPA and running various businesses helps him bring a sense of fiscal responsibility to the board.

“I'm also willing to speak up and say the unpopular once in a while,” he said.

Breyer said he knows and likes Tinaglia, but that he's a little disappointed he decided to run against all the incumbents.

Glasgow, whose wife, Denise, is a school board member in Arlington Heights Elementary District 25, said he thought hard about running for a second term. Ultimately, he decided he enjoys being a trustee and there are things he would still like to accomplish on the board, such as overseeing the building of a new police station.

“It was one of my goals in the first campaign, and I want to stand by that,” said Glasgow, 45, a defense attorney. “For modern policing we need a new station and it will serve the long-term needs of this village.”

Plans are in place to restructure bonds in a few years when other debt expires to budget for a new police station and not require a referendum or major tax increase.

Farwell, 48, was first elected in 2001 and also is a member of the legislative committee for the Northwest Municipal Conference. He has said fixing pension funding is an important issue to him.

Rosenberg, 61, was instrumental in reducing the tax levy increase for this year from a 1.9 percent increase that was originally proposed by the village staff to a 1.2 percent change instead. Neither Farwell nor Rosenberg was available for this story.

Aside from the trustee race, three candidates — Mark Hellner, Ron Drake and Trustee Thomas Hayes — are running to replace Mulder as village president, which will also change the makeup of the nine-member board.

If Hayes is elected mayor in April, he will have to appoint someone to fill the two years remaining on his trustee term, but he has said it is much too early to speculate on that.

“Whoever (is elected mayor) has to govern by consensus,” Glasgow said. “We have a weak-mayor form of government where the mayor has as many votes as each trustee, so they won't be dictating what the council does.”

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