A serious choice in the Highland Park City Council election

Highland Park residents have a genuine choice to make in the current election for City Council. Kim Stone should not be reelected in the competitive race for a two-year seat on City Council. I am voting for Jon Center for that seat.

It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of our little suburb don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But if you’re asking, “what can I do,” one step is to support new vision, transparency and integrity for Highland Park. Here are several things to consider:

- Stone's behavior in the Hoobler/liquor license situation should be disqualifying from her continuing on City Council. She was part of the group that first blocked a liquor law amendment forcing Jeff Hoobler – highest vote getter in the last election – to resign from Council. And then she continued a delaying action to postpone finally making the change, so that he was unable to run this year. If it was OK to amend the liquor law on February 10, why was it not OK on January 27, in time to allow him to run again for City Council? "We needed more time to analyze" - really? The issue had been in front of Stone and the other obstructionists for a year, and the public gave its input, over 80% in favor, months earlier. Eighty percent is unheard of for a local referendum opposed by at least three incumbent City Council members, and it calls into question Stone (and others’) claims that they had privately heard many objections to changing the liquor law.

- Why is Kim Stone running for a two-year seat, to fill the remainder of Jeff Hoobler’s term, rather than running for re-election to the four-year seat she now holds? Regardless of the reason for such an unusual switch, when combined with the also unusual withdrawal of James Lynch, executive director of The Art Center Highland Park, from the same four-year term race, Stone’s move results in a non-competitive race and certainty that all three listed candidates in that category will be elected. These moves finesse the election so that the Mayor’s 2024 appointee to City Council, Barisa Bruckman, “runs” unopposed for Stone’s vacated four-year seat on City Council. Bruckman will be assured of sitting on our City Council for five years, without ever having faced HP voters. This just doesn’t feel right.

- There has been public comment giving Stone credit for spearheading a zoning ordinance that would block, or make much more difficult, a truck terminal on the old Solo Cup property. But crediting her with leadership on that issue is simply not accurate. She did vote in favor of the zoning change and I understand met with concerned neighbors in advance, but she was just one vote on a unanimous Council. The change was made as a result of the efforts of city staff, the PDC and community members. Honestly, the “Interested Citizens for Solo Cup Redevelopment” (and all the neighbors participating in the 2023 public reaction) deserve a lot of the credit – it was the loud community outcry about the truck terminal proposal and the outreach that filled the Rec Center for a public hearing that made this zoning issue a priority for the City.

Beyond that, the zoning change was a half measure, merely addressing the most recent zoning abomination. Is Highland Park an “industrial” city? While profitable and tax-generating commercial development is something we need more of (alongside compatible residential development), the recent zoning change left dozens of industrial, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing uses allowable under the Code, regardless of proximity to quiet residential neighborhoods. A bus terminal; a manufacturing/processing facility for plastics, chemicals, and drugs; or a motor vehicle engine repair facility, for example, next to the Ridge Road west side neighborhood (or anywhere else in Highland Park)? New leadership should prioritize a comprehensive update to our multi-decade old zoning plan.

These are some of the reasons I'm voting for Jon Center. I believe he’ll represent the best interests of all of Highland Park (including the long underrepresented west side, encompassing both my neighborhood and the neighborhood around Solo Cup), with an independent perspective and demonstrated willingness to listen to constituents. He’ll be able to represent an important City demographic, as a younger City Council member with a young family. He has solid business and financial experience. Overall, he'll bring a new generation of leadership to move our City forward!