Endorsement: Bill McLeod for Hoffman Estates village president

With 40 years of government service to Hoffman Estates — first as a trustee and the past 20 as village president — Bill McLeod is not yet ready to put behind him a job he enjoys and has had success doing.

He is challenged in the bid for a sixth term heading village government by Nicholas Waryas and by Mark Mueller, a retired Hoffman Estates police lieutenant who is critical of what he sees as wasteful spending and inadequate attention to the needs of business.

Mueller is an energetic candidate with a reasonable vision for managing village government, and his police experience certainly is an asset to his candidacy. But he still lacks the firsthand experience with local-government boards and operations to suggest that he would step naturally into the position of leading village government.

McLeod, on the other hand, has been a steady, reliable leader who has weathered difficulties as great as the loss of the AT&T corporate complex to victories as significant as Microsoft's recent announcement it would build a pair of huge data centers to replace it. McLeod is a proud cheerleader for the village and a persistent worker on its behalf.

The Microsoft announcement, for instance, showed not only McLeod and the village's determination — he said they had courted Microsoft for two years — but also its ability to react positively to negative news.

“You have to be able to pivot,” McLeod told our Eric Peterson when reflecting on Microsoft's plans. Hoffman Estates likely has more pivoting to do as the nation comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the village continues to nurture prosperous business development.

Mueller is a champion of Hoffman Estates with some intriguing ideas. McLeod is a village leader who has been promoting and encouraging intriguing ideas for the village for four decades. His is the hand the village most needs at the helm right now, and he gets our endorsement.