Prejna for Rolling Meadows mayor

After years of steady leadership, Rolling Meadows is now in something akin to upheaval. When former mayor Tom Rooney resigned in 2016 to take a state Senate seat, Alderman Tim Veenbaas was chosen acting mayor. He's not running now, so Rolling Meadows will have another new leader this spring whose term will end in 2019, and the process will start over.

Rolling Meadows is in reasonably good shape. Yes, the old Dominick's property and the former Sam's Club site remain undeveloped. But those delays are ceasing to define the city, what with renewed business activity elsewhere, like that along the Golf Road corridor. Still, the city council has some internal politics that threaten unproductive divisions. At this time, we believe the candidate with the best chance of getting the council to pull in one direction is Alderman Len Prejna.

Prejna has been an alderman for only four years, but he has a wealth of civic experience - as chairman of the community events foundation, president of Crime Stoppers, a youth sports coach and more. He believes Rolling Meadows needs to invest more in economic development - partly by adding a communications, marketing and events manager to the department.

More than any one broad issue, however, Prejna's leadership offers the promise the council will move forward on its most immediate needs, like building at least one new fire station and improving response times.

Also running for mayor are two gentlemen who have invested years of public service in Rolling Meadows: Alderman Mike Cannon, a six-year veteran of the city council and David Whitney, a member of the Zoning Board for 18 years and the current chairman.

We endorse Len Prejna.