Oswego Mayor Meets With Residents, Talks Local Development Plans

OSWEGO, IL — Village President Troy Parlier met with local residents on Friday, Jan. 3 to discuss their concerns in the village and inform them of upcoming planned changes and developments. The discussion was the first "Coffee with the Mayor;" a meeting that Parlier said he hoped to turn into a quarterly event. It developed out of the earlier "Coffee for Seniors" quarterly event that Parlier said began in summer of 2019.

"It started with 'coffee for seniors...' and then I'd been doing a couple interviews on what were the achievements since I took office and stuff like that," Parlier said. "and it was a pretty lengthy list. So I said, 'you know what? Why don't we just start now another quarterly event for the community?'"

Fittingly, most of the attendees at the morning meeting were senior citizens, though a few younger locals also attended. The local student robotics team, 'Pheonix Cubitects,' also stopped by to thank the mayor for his input on their ongoing project. The Cubitects are on their way to a state championship robotics competition on Jan. 18.

"One of the things the competition stresses is you must talk to experts, you must have people give you advice on [the robot project]," Laurel Coonradt, one of the robotics students' mothers, said. "We picked Mr. Parlier and asked him because [the project involved] a building in his community, the Little White Schoolhouse."

After the robotics team left, the discussion turned to numerous subjects of concern among village residents. These concerns included local taxes, the possibility of a legal cannabis dispensary coming to Oswego sometime in the future, improving traffic safety in the downtown area, and future potential development projects in the village. Parlier said that bringing in businesses and expanding into currently unused areas within Oswego's development boundaries was a priority.

"We need to keep the business development engine going," he said. "That's going to help not just the village but all of our other governmental bodies, it's going to help them too. We've done a lot in six months and I want to keep my foot on the accelerator with that."

One of the most ambitious developments Parlier brought up to the meeting-goers was that of building a band shell near the site of the Oswego Park-N-Ride on Orchard Road. The land there was recently donated to the village by Oswego Junction Mall property owner Kevin Fialko, Parlier said. He added that he thought the space could become an important communal site for Oswego residents.

"My [intention] for the band shell is first and foremost a community piece. It's to showcase our local talent, to give our community access to a place to put on shows... We need this in Oswego, we don't have things for families, we don't have things where we can go see our own community celebrate," he said.

He later added that he hoped to have the shell finished and ready for performances by Memorial Day, 2021.

Parlier also said he hoped the band shell project would benefit from a new Metra station nearby. The Metra-sponsored study on extending Chicago commuter rail service to Kendall County concludes this summer. Afterwards, should the village vote to secure Metra service, Parlier said he hoped there would be a symbiosis between the band shell location and the Metra station.

"[Metra] wants to draw more customers, right?" he said. "They want to have amenities around the train station that will encourage developers to build high-density housing so they can have more customers. So it's a natural draw for them and it works for us too."

Parlier noted that all these plans were embryonic; much more planning and discussion was required before any kind of band shell or outdoor community space became tangible reality. Still, he told those at the meeting, his hope was that these types of developments would help keep up Oswego's ongoing population growth. The more people come to live in the village, he said, the wider the local tax burden could hopefully be spread. High local taxes were among the most common complaints those at the meeting brought forward to the mayor.

Parlier validated these complaints and acknowledged the concerns of some of the seniors, that high taxes may eventually push them to relocate. He said that he hoped a few years of continued economic and population growth would be enough to bring taxes down to a more manageable level.

"Hopefully, one day, we can get through this," Parlier said. "We just have to work together, work smarter, keep pushing forward."