Mount Prospect voters will have a choice for trustee
Mount Prospect voters will have a choice of at least four candidates for three trustee seats in the upcoming village board election.
With the candidate filing deadline Monday afternoon, Trustee Eleni Hatzis is the only incumbent seeking reelection so far.
Newcomers Terri Gens and Peggy Pissarreck are running together as a slate. Gens is a Mount Prospect library trustee and senior director of development for Lutheran Social Services, and Pissarreck is a senior governance and compliance manager with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Agostino "Augie" Filippone, an attorney who made an unsuccessful bid for trustee in 2019, also is running. He currently serves as a member of the village's planning and zoning commission.
Hatzis pointed to her experience and said development will continue to be an issue of importance to her.
"I still would like to see development on the south side, absolutely," she said, adding she would also like to see continued redevelopment of Block 56 downtown and a rebirth of Randhurst Village.
Filippone said flood control and keeping a watchful eye on Chicago Executive Airport are important issues on the village's north side, and he would look at incentives for business on the south side.
"In downtown Mount Prospect, they're doing fine. Everyone concentrates on downtown, but a lot of times people forget we have a north side, too," he added.
Although Pissarreck and Gens both are associated with We The People - Mount Prospect Area, a Facebook group that grew in the wake of the 2017 presidential inauguration, Pissarreck said they are not a We The People slate.
"On the board, I would be representing the full village," she said, adding that trustees should represent "the values of the whole community and not just business owners."
Gens praised most decisions of the village board and the actions of the village manager, but ws critical they didn't act sooner to help restaurants struggling through the pandemic.
"I am dismayed that there didn't seem to be any initiatives to help the restaurants most of this year," she said.