Soto is ready for Bensenville's numerous challenges

Frank Soto is the first to admit he has lots of work ahead of him after being elected Bensenville's village president in April.

After Soto's party ousted longtime Village President John Geils along with four aldermen and the village clerk in April's election, Village Manager Jim Johnson abruptly quit as well leaving Soto to steer the village through the power transition.

Soto says he's prioritizing the village's challenges and planning to open the lines of communication with Chicago and O'Hare Airport to compromise on the impact airport expansion will have on Bensenville instead of continuing to fight it.

The 43-year-old married father of three grew up in neighboring Wood Dale and moved to Bensenville 19 years ago.

During a recent interview, the new village president also discussed mending fractured relationships with other Bensenville taxing bodies and why he thinks he won this time after losing to Geils in 2001.

Q. What's the biggest challenge you face?

A. There are a multitude of challenges that are all fairly significant, but each one of them needs to be addressed in a certain order. Initially, the top issue is village finances and completing the forensic audit and finding out exactly where the difficulties lie with village funding. The village itself organizationally has seemingly been put together in a random, nonprofessional manner. It seems like it was haphazardly put together, so fixing that element and streamlining that aspect is another priority.

Q. What are you going to do about a village manager?

A. I've already been interviewing village managers. As soon as I found out the village manager had resigned I started looking. Before I even took office I had seven appointments lined up.

Q. How has the acrimony between you and Geils affected city business?

A. There hasn't been any acrimony. After the election I don't believe he attended any of the five special board meetings they called. The only issue for me has been getting my administration ready and running because this had been a very difficult environment for employees to work in.

Q. You lost to Geils when he was forced to run as a write-in eight years ago; why do you think you won this time?

A. The past administration ran on a campaign of fear. It was always that there was one issue and you either agreed with him or you were the enemy. If you were the enemy, they took great effort to damage that person's reputation and livelihood. I think they saw with me an opportunity for hope and change, and there was a chance the village could be resurrected and moved in the right direction. That's why you saw such a significant victory. People used to be afraid just to put a sign out because that was seen as an act of defiance. It was little steps every resident took that built on the process for our success.

Q. Why not just move someplace else when you saw residents disregard your candidacy the last time you ran?

A. That was a very close election. There was a little bit of voter apathy in that election because people saw that as a write-in and maybe didn't come out to vote for me because they didn't think I'd lose.

Q. Do you think you'll ever get a proper accounting of the money spent on lawyers by Bensenville during Geils' era?

A. I don't know if we'll ever get a complete picture if you want to go back in history. I want to go forward, though. But you have to conceptualize what they were spending per month. We've seen they were spending well over $100,000 a month on legal fees and that doesn't even include short-term consulting fees they were paying through the election on a media blitz. From now on people are going to see line item budgets and they're going to be online instead of these lump sum budgets.

Q. Will you crystallize your thoughts of the O'Hare expansion plans?

A. It's an unfortunate reality of our town and it hasn't been dealt with at all by the village. It's been ignored and the impact of that is felt every day. We can't continue to spend taxpayer money in unprecedented amounts on nothing. The kind of money that's been spent on legal fees on the fight could have been spent to build all new schools.

We have a different strategy. There are certain things we should be compensated for. We should have some say in the direction of the ring road and made whole with the loss of tax dollars that we'll never recoup. There is no going back from these things and they have to be dealt with in a way the village is made whole. We are bearing the burden, so we should be compensated so that Bensenville is better for it than what it was before.

Q. What are you most excited about?

A. Most people, when I talk to them about this, they look at me and tell me I just walked into a problem and they don't know how I'm going to get the village turned around. Every day that I'm here and we accomplish something, we're moving in the right direction. What some people look at as walking into a mess, I look at as an opportunity to create change. Each day we're making things better and it's been really enjoyable.