Endorsement: Smolinksi for Roselle village president

In a four-way race for Roselle village president, 20-year incumbent Gayle Smolinski gets the nod. In addition to managing Roselle’s money well during tough economic times, she’s worked hard to boost the village’s downtown, which strikes some as struggling. She also has been front and center on regional issues, such as lobbying hard for western access to O’Hare and expanding pension reform so it applies to cops and firefighters. Her service goes outside village boundaries, too, as she has served on executive boards and as past president of the DuPage Mayors and Managers Association and Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. Her opponents are first-term Trustee Ronald Baker and political newcomers James Banks, an attorney, and Jim Schelling, a territory manager with Rochester-Midland Corp. Baker, a former village firefighter, did not participate in our endorsement interview session. Banks and Schelling, who seem eager to serve, nonetheless fall short on breadth of knowledge and experience with village issues. Smolinski is endorsed.