Endorsement: Pecak for Lisle village president

There is as much or more discord on the Lisle Village Board of Trustees as there ever was, and much of that rests squarely on the shoulders of Village President Chris Pecak, who is running on April 1 for a third term. Still, one cannot ignore what his administration has done over the last eight years to put the village on a sound financial footing and repair the reputation Lisle once had for being unfriendly to developers.

Pecak has kept his promises. The village’s property tax levy, not just the tax rate, has remained steady or gotten smaller over the years, almost unheard-of among our suburbs. Under his direction, Lisle’s professional staff has modernized building codes to make it easier for developers to work with the village; one aspect of his efforts to change Lisle’s image to a more business-friendly one. The village has healthy cash reserves – which may appear prescient if there is less federal or state money filtering to our cities and towns in the next few years.

Still, Pecak is often his own worst enemy. He recently called a special meeting for trustees to interview his top choice for Lisle police chief, a post sorely in need of filling, despite knowing ahead of time he didn’t have a quorum. He sat mostly silent for 70 minutes as the camera rolled and Trustee Dan Grecco met the candidate in another room. Pecak then suggested the absent trustees should resign if they “can’t do the work.” The mayor’s slate, Lisle First, posted on Facebook that his challenger, Trustee Mary Jo Mullen, had missed the meeting to “bake cookies”; to be precise, her bakery was filling a big order for Lisle High School’s musical. There are two sides to this story, but the least dramatic course would have been to reschedule the meeting.

Then, at the chamber of commerce candidate forum, he clumsily accused the opposition slate, Lisle Forward, of Marxism, arguing the word “forward” is an old Marxist calling card. Regrettably, it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment miscue; he had clearly done research. When asked by the Daily Herald if he was openly calling the slate “Marxist,” he didn’t directly answer.

These examples, frankly, call Pecak’s judgment into question. When this newspaper endorsed Pecak for re-election in 2021, we lauded his financial acumen but added that he had a “sometimes adversarial” relationship with some trustees. We cautioned him to improve that so the village board could better focus on serving Lisle without personal grievances getting in the way. If anything, those grievances have escalated.

Challenging Pecak for mayor is Lisle Trustee Mary Jo Mullen, who is nearing the end of her first term. She is a former Lisle Township supervisor and was a longtime employee of FEMA, who has serious knowledge of water management and how to mitigate flooding. She wasn’t afraid to step forward when the police union wrote to trustees listing cops’ grievances with how the leaderless department is being run – she and Trustee Beth Lesniak were the first two to meet with them. Moreover, as the owner of a Lisle bakery she’s been a strong community booster and has the ear of other local business owners.

However, her dislike of Pecak on a personal level is palpable. Her argumentative style gets personal, not a good look in a potential leader, especially one we expect to see more of on the political scene.

Policy disagreements are not a bad thing in and of themselves; they promote minority points of view getting at least a hearing and force members to hone their arguments in favor or against the issue at hand. In endorsing Pecak we counsel him to focus less on personal ideology and making his board look bad, and more on how to make Lisle stronger and better. Do that, and he’ll find he has a lot more common ground with the rest of his colleagues, and that can only be good news for Lisle's future.