Glen Ellyn voters choose Civic Betterment Party nominees
Candidates who secured the Glen Ellyn Civic Betterment Party nomination Saturday are now heavy favorites for village posts up for election this spring.
At the top of the ticket is Diane McGinley, who became the party's nominee for village president after a town-hall meeting Saturday.
McGinley, who was appointed to a trustee spot on the village board last month, received 405 votes cast during the biennial meeting and earlier this week. Her eleventh hour challenger, Patrick Hoffman, who was nominated from the floor Saturday morning, had 15 write-in votes.
The party also will endorse William Enright, Craig Pryde and Gary Fasules for three open trustee spots on the village board in the April election.
Enright led the pack with 376 votes. Pryde, a principal at a Chicago architectural firm, had 328 votes. Fasules, a former trustee, had 327 votes.
A fourth candidate, attorney Philip Piscopo, did not capture a nomination with 217 votes.
The Civic Betterment nominees almost always go on to win election and rarely face opposition, though there have been some exceptions. McGinley is now completing the remaining months in the term of Tim Elliott, who stepped down as trustee to assume a DuPage County Board seat he won in November.
She also is a former trustee who did not seek re-election in 2015 after one term.
A nominating committee named McGinley, a PTA president at Hadley Junior High, to a slate of candidates the party presented to town hall voters after reviewing applications and doing interviews.
The volunteer-run organization historically gives voters their pick of two or three candidates for village president, but McGinley was the lone applicant.
McGinley said the downtown needs more foot traffic and that she wants to see more community feedback on redevelopment projects.
A real estate firm that previously proposed an apartment and retail complex on the northwest corner of Main Street and Hillside Avenue - the site of the vacant Giesche Shoes store - is no longer pursuing the project, village official say.
"It's an opportunity again, and this is going to be a great way if somebody else wants to come in and do something big to try some new ideas on how to get the community involved," McGinley said a few hours after the polls opened at the town hall.
Also up for election in April are three spots on the village's library board. The party nominees for those seats are Andre Wright, Didi Foth and Shannon Burgess.
Other candidates still can run against a Civic Betterment nominee by submitting nominating petitions with the village clerk's office during a filing period from Dec. 12 through Dec. 19.