Naperville parks president: 'You can get things changed'

It didn't take long for Mike Reilly to earn the respect of his Naperville park board colleagues.

Commissioners recently named him their new president just a month after he took his seat.

But it isn't his first presidency.

The 61-year-old also has been president of the White Eagle Club Property Owners Association - a title he still holds - and The Fields Homeowners Association.

The roles are a far cry from his childhood in New Haven, Conn., where he said his family didn't get very involved in the community, nor did there seem to be as many opportunities to do so.

But that all changed shortly after he moved to Naperville in 1991 when his job brought him to the area.

Reilly has spent 35 years in the financial services industry and holds a bachelor in business administration and Chartered Life Underwriter and Chartered Financial Consultant designations. He also has taken MBA courses at DePaul University, though he didn't complete the degree as the pace of his professional life picked up.

Recently Reilly started his own business, AmAudit, that provides forensic auditing services for both municipalities and businesses.

"It's fun," he said. "It's something brand new and I'm enjoying it already."

One perk of his work over the years, he says, is that it has afforded him the flexibility to spend time with his family and get involved in the community.

Just two years after becoming a Naperville resident he was chosen president of The Fields Homeowners Association. Since 2003, he has served as president of the White Eagle homeowners group and is also a director with the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation.

Speaking before the city council about neighborhood issues proved to be an encouraging experience.

"I learned through that process that in this community if you have a solid position and you can make a good case, you can get things changed," he said.

Reilly also has served as a Wheatland Township precinct committeeman and been a member of numerous community committees including The Regional Answer to Canadian National, South Homeowners of Wheatland and Naperville 175th Birthday.

Reilly's interest in the park district grew several years ago when he attended a forum about the indoor recreation center park commissioners were considering building.

"It seemed to me that the package that was put together for the rec center moved very far down the line without active broad-based - not only community involvement - but involvement of the private sector," he said. "It seemed like some decisions were made in isolation of those groups and that was a concern to me."

His concerns led him to get involved, becoming the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation liaison with the park district in 2007.

Last year when park district Commissioner Charlie Brown resigned, he applied to fill the vacancy and was one of three finalists, enough encouragement to run in April's election.

"Running for the board was kind of a natural next step in the process," he said.

The board has a reputation for infighting and controversy, but that didn't deter him.

"I'm Irish so we don't consider a war that goes on a hundred years a big deal," Reilly said with a smile.

On a more serious note, he said he felt he could help commissioners work together and use their differences of opinion in a more productive way.

In addition to feeling comfortable sharing his own views, he said he is "very comfortable with the idea a group of individuals not only will, but should, have a different perspectives on problems."

"They should bring those together and hopefully out of all that mix a better solution than would have been thought of individually comes out of it," he said.

Among his priorities while on the board is to help the district develop a long-term strategy. Commissioners took a step toward that goal earlier this month when they hired a consultant to help create a strategic plan.

Reilly said he also wants to make sure the park district has a solid intergovernmental agreement with Naperville Unit District 203 concerning garden plots and athletic fields. Other topics to tackle include the shortage of indoor recreation space, reviewing programs regularly to see if they still benefit the community and improving the golf program to attract more people to the district's courses.

Reilly himself is an occasionally golfer and also has taken up cooking as a hobby. But his face really lights up when talking about his family - wife Lynda, two adult daughters and sons-in-law, and four grandchildren. With one daughter's family in Naperville and the other in Oswego, his home in the middle is the natural meeting place to spend time together.

He says he tries to go through life with a sense of humor.

"I take things seriously but I don't take myself too seriously and I find a lot of time a little bit of humor takes the edge off some things," he said. "The vast majority of things are not life and death, so let's not treat them that way."