Two challengers want Mount Prospect mayor's job

For Mount Prospect's top spot, Mayor Irvana Wilks faces two challengers with limited political experience, who both say they could do the job better.

Patricia Bird, 45, a business owner, and Ernie Lasse, 66, a retired businessman, hope to be the village's next mayor, while Wilks, who is going for her second term, wants to keep the reins of power in her hands in order to oversee top projects.

Wilks, who was first elected to the board in 1991 as a trustee, said she wants to continue to work on major projects like the redevelopment of Randhurst Shopping Center, which is being turned into a lifestyle center, called Randhurst village.

Also, the village has been working on redeveloping the downtown area, though progress lately has been hard to come by. Northbrook developer John D. Heimbaugh has a plan to build condominiums and retail stores in an area bounded by Northwest Highway, Route 83 and Willie Street.

The construction of Levee 37 along the Des Plaines River is another project Wilks hopes to oversee, she said. The project is expected to protect 600 residents and businesses in Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights from flooding.

"It's the things we didn't quite get accomplished and there are so many great things and I want to see them to continue, so I decided to do it again," Wilks, 63, said of her decision to seek re-election.

Lasse, who ran for mayor four years ago, coming in third of three candidates, says he's back to challenge the mayor again. He said he hopes to capitalize on people who are unhappy with Wilks performance to do better than he did last time.

"I figured why not head for the No. 1 spot," Lasse said. "You can accomplish a lot more that way."

Lasse calls the village's downtown development a "disaster from day one." He said there should've been more than the one concept proposed by Heimbaugh, who owns some of the land that the downtown project will be built on.

He was also not in favor of the community resource center tentatively approved for the village's south side. The center is designed, in part, to assist recently-arrived legal immigrants, but Lasse believes that illegal immigrants will likely use the center as well.

Bird is no fan of the center either. In fact, she said she was spurred to run for office in part because of it.

She believes the village should have used the village hall to provide community services to save on the expense of an alternate site.

"I think if it had been handled appropriately, they would've used the village hall," Bird said.

She also said that if she becomes mayor she wants to focus her energies on local job creation to help people in a flagging economy. She said she's still working on exactly how she'd do that.