No Political Retribution For Elmhurst Panel: Mayor

ELMHURST, IL – The Elmhurst City Council nearly always goes with the zoning recommendations of the Plan Commission, which is the city's fact-finding panel in such cases.

Exceptions include the council's 2021 approval of a sober home in a local neighborhood.

At this week's council meeting, aldermen were told that the council has agreed with more than 90 percent of the lower panel's recommendations over the last dozen years.

Mayor Scott Levin noted that a commission majority advised against allowing the sober home. After that recommendation, he said the council received more guidance.

"There was a very real concern that, based upon federal law, we would probably be sued if we denied it," the mayor said.

The commission's members are appointed by the mayor with the council's consent. But that doesn't stop those upset with their recommendations from threatening political retribution, Levin said.

The commissioners, he said, sometimes hear, "Wait till you're up next time."

"The system ... is set up so they are not subject to election," Levin said. "They are supposed to make their decisions without the threat of political payback or whatever you want to call it."

Levin and others spoke during a zoning tutorial at the council meeting. He said he wanted an overview because he expected one or two major projects to come before the council in the next year.

One of them may be a proposed downtown 185-unit apartment complex and theater, which is already drawing opposition. Under the city's zoning law, the project would be proposed as a "planned unit development."

In 2019, the city updated its procedures for such developments. Alderwoman Noel Talluto helped with the changes.

"It may sound extra difficult to go through the (planned unit development) process, but it's actually designed in a way that is beneficial to all the neighboring property owners," Talluto said. "It engages them in the process way earlier than our prior process required."

That has resulted in better outcomes for neighbors and developers, she said. If the developer's project is a bad fit, the company receives feedback before investing significant money, she said.

"They can remake their design to better fit in without wasting too much of their money and having those sunk costs," Talluto said.