Financial concerns top agenda for new Glen Ellyn village president

This is part of an occasional series featuring newly elected leaders in DuPage County.

Finances will be foremost on Mark Pfefferman's mind when he's seated May 11 as Glen Ellyn's new village president.

The 49-year-old will take office in the midst of a major economic downturn that led trustees to approve a sales tax increase to balance the village's budget.

Pfefferman said all along he opposed the increase, at least in the short time frame that it was discussed.

With that in mind, the new president says one of his first priorities will be to create a finance commission that can look at Glen Ellyn's budget with a more long-term approach and, he hopes, offer a solution that will allow the village to repeal the sales tax increase within a year.

"Fiscal integrity is obviously our biggest challenge at the moment," he said.

Beyond that, Pfefferman says he wants to increase communication coming from the board, including televising village board workshops instead of showing only the regular meetings.

He said he'd also like the village to be more proactive about issues rather than reacting to them as they pop up and would like to see some cordial disagreement on the board.

"Disagreement is OK if it builds the best solutions for Glen Ellyn," he said. "I think you'll see more debate."

Pfefferman said he's continually surprised by how much residents in town care about Glen Ellyn and how much they are willing to help.

"They want to be heard," he said. "They want to see their village board and village staff using collective intelligence and reasoning to make a decision."

Pfefferman, who works as a director of business intelligence for TransUnion, was the Civic Betterment Party candidate for village president.

The party has a town-hall meeting to determine its candidates in each election. Those elected traditionally step down after one term, as current President Vicky Hase is doing.

In April, Pfefferman defeated challenger Gary Fasules, who ran as an independent.

The election was far from Pfefferman's first.

He started his political career at a young age, as a College of DuPage board member.

While working at the COD newspaper, the 23-year-old covered board meetings and saw a disconnect between what the trustees thought was best for the school and what students and staff members wanted.

He decided to run, reasoning that trustees could use a young perspective.

"I learned a lot," he said. "I did my homework. I think I had to win over the board members and the staff, so I worked very hard to make sure I read all my materials."

At 29, when he had completed six years on the COD board and finished his master's at DePaul as well as his concurrent associate degree at the College of DuPage, Pfefferman took a break from politics.

Not until he and his wife, Martha, decided to settle in Glen Ellyn and had their first child did Pfefferman think it was time to run for public office once again.

Pfefferman was a village trustee from 2003 to 2007. Even while he was on the board, he said residents would approach him about running for village president.

"They were sincere, and they reached out apropos of nothing," he said. "They said I was always 'thoughtful in your answers, you seem to get it, you seem to put the village above everyone else, you seem to build consensus with those around you.'"

Pfefferman said Glen Ellyn always has been a town of volunteers who do extraordinary things.

"I'm not that extraordinary; I can't do any of those things," he said. "I can do public service."

Though he's been successful in many campaigns, there was one in which Pfefferman didn't have the same luck - the race for Homecoming King in 1981 at the University of Illinois.

The campaign was all in fun, he said. And though Pfefferman doesn't recall how many people he ran against, he does remember not being chosen.

While he'll likely have little free time in the next four years, when he can, Pfefferman says he enjoys exercising. Because knee injuries keep him from running outdoors, his family recently gave him a bicycle - the first in his life that wasn't a hand-me-down.

"It's something I can do outside," he said, which he's missed since having to take his workout routine to the gym. "I loved how the outdoors smelled and looked and felt."

Most of his time outside the village president arena, though, will be dedicated to his two children, ages 8 and 6.

"My free time for the last nine years," Pfefferman said, "has been children and public service."