Mary Jo Mullen: 2025 candidate for Lisle mayor

Bio

Office Sought: Lisle mayor

City: Lisle

Age: 50

Occupation: Owner/baker of The Sweet Spot Bakery; CEO of Advantage Strategy Consulting

Previous offices held: Village of Lisle Trustee (2021-25); Lisle Township Supervisor (2017-21)

Why are you running for this office? Is there a particular issue that motivates you? Also, what makes you the best candidate for the position?

I have been a public servant for 10 years as a federal employee, and eight years as an elected official. I strongly believe in giving back to my community and want to continue to make a positive impact on my town. Lisle has been on the verge of transformation for years.

We have a downtown that with a train station, but it struggles to redevelop and grow. We have high traffic areas that similar struggle to redevelop and grow. We need strong leadership and vision to modernize and grow our community, and create the thriving downtown that our residents deserve. I will bring that leadership and vision, along with my experience in transformation of government programs and being a small-business owner, to support Lisle in becoming successful, safe, and strong.

What is the most serious issue your community will face in coming years and how should leaders respond to it?

In the coming years, if we cannot redevelop key areas, including our downtown, we will continue to fall behind our neighboring communities and be overlooked by potential new businesses and residents. As our commercial areas have struggled or been left vacant, our assessed value of the commercial areas is not keeping up with surrounding towns.

This means that residential property owners are left to make up the tax base that our commercial areas do not generate. We calculate that means approximately $300 per year on residents’ tax bills on an average home in Lisle. The lack of development and resistance to change is not only hurting the potential and future of Lisle, it is hurting our resident’s pocketbook today.

How would you describe the state of your community's finances? What should be the top priorities for spending during the next few years? Are there areas of spending that need to be curtailed?

Lisle has significant reserves in place, and has held a flat tax levy for years. This gives us a healthy bottom line, but there is another cost to the village. Departments have been given smaller budgets while costs have increased. We have outsourced many roles, and depend on consultants for reviews that used to be conducted expertly and efficiently in-house.

The most serious of these cuts and staffing reductions are in our police department, putting the safety of our residents and our police at risk. We have been without a permanent police chief for over a year. In the last eight years, we have had four different police chiefs.

The police chief role can only be appointed by the mayor. In that same eight-year period, we have gone from 55 to 46 staff in the police department, and our recent interim chief recommends additional sworn officers be added to be minimally staff.

We have an overall young force that is eager to serve and love their jobs, but the village is not adequately staffing or supporting them right now. Our facilities are not at the standard that our police deserve, and they are overburdened at all levels.

Our top spending priorities must be 1.) supporting the police and public safety and 2.) promoting economic development.

What do you see as the most important infrastructure project you must address? Why and how should it be paid for? Conversely, during these uncertain economic times, what project(s) can be put on the back burner?

There are two types of infrastructure projects that we should prioritize: 1.) flood mitigation and reduction and 2.) those that improve the safety of our cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers.

As a former program specialist for FEMA in the National Flood Insurance Program, I understand the impact floods have on the whole community. I am a passionate advocate for projects that reduce the flood height and those that reduce the impacts to residents, such as buyouts, relocations, and elevation of buildings. There are extensive grants that can support flood mitigation, and we can partner with other agencies to accomplish these goals. We also started a buyout program using village funds, that I would continue.

There are intersections with repeated accidents or near-misses in our community. We also have a bike and pedestrian plan that identifies needs for infrastructure improvements. This plan should be updated for what has been accomplished and to study the areas that have been more recently identified, and then this plan should guide our budgeting for the next several years to address and mitigate these problem areas.

Describe your leadership style and explain how you think it will be effective in producing effective actions and decisions with your village board.

I am a collaborative and empathic leader. I believe in relationship building with the board, with staff, and with other government bodies. I also know that it is important to listen to the concerns and ideas of everyone in the community — residents, business owners, and our staff.

The result of this is building trust, because without trust there is dysfunction in the board boom and widely within the village. As the chair of the board, it is first and foremost my job to hear the public, and then facilitate the board discussion without bias or inserting my own opinions until everyone has been heard. I will drive effective decision making by having healthy discussions without being abrasive, interrupting, cutting members off, or swaying opinions. Then I will incorporate what we have heard into a final proposed solution for the board to discuss and vote on. I did exactly this in a bipartisan board at Lisle Township with great success.

What’s one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?

I want to bring unity to our community, and one way this will happen is through community-based events. We all miss Eyes to the Skies where the village came together and brought in people from across the Chicago area. I want to work with the other governing bodies and the public in Lisle to develop a festival or event that will have this same effect.