Trustee candidate may not meet requirements

It looks like Buffalo Grove may have one less candidate on the ballot next year when voters go to the polls to fill four seats on the village board.

A day after Gary Midkiff announced his intention to run for trustee, the former Wauconda Community Unit School District 118 board member is facing questions about whether he meets the residency requirement to serve.

Some of those questions are coming from village clerk candidate Rob Sherman, who noted Tuesday that Illinois law states that candidates for municipal office must reside in that municipality for at least one year preceding the election.

Sherman pointed out on his website that Midkiff, who has lived most of the past 35 years in Buffalo Grove, only moved back to the village around the end of May this year.

Minutes of District 118's April 22 school board meeting show Midkiff present as a voting member. He resigned from the board a week later, saying he was moving out of the district.

Midkiff said Tuesday that Sherman's information about the move was accurate, but said that he had checked, and failed to find, references to residency requirements on Buffalo Grove's website.

“I assumed that they had to be a resident prior to filing. And I assumed that certainly they would expect six months,” he said.

Midkiff said he intended to inquire further into the matter, but his schedule as a college professor prevented him from doing so immediately Tuesday.

“I'm going to have an uncle of mine, who is a lawyer, help me with it, to be sure I'm not missing something in the village code,” he said.

Buffalo Grove Village Clerk Janet Sirabian confirmed, after consulting with Village Attorney William Raysa, that there is, indeed, a one-year residency requirement.

Besides Midkiff, those who have announced plans to run for a four-year board seat are incumbent Trustee Steven Trilling and former candidate Michael Terson.

Another one-time candidate, Andrew Stein, is running for the two-year vacancy created by the recall of Trustee Lisa Stone.

Sirabian and Sherman are running for clerk, and Jeffrey Braiman is running for village president. Current Village President Elliott Hartstein is not seeking re-election.