We’ve all just lived through an election year that felt like an election decade. And guess what has already begun? Another election year.
While for many, the campaign that just ended was disappointing, exhausting and discouraging, now is certainly not the time to pack it in and let someone else make our decisions for us. Some might argue that we just tried that approach, and it gave us the two most unpopular presidential candidates in history. And now it has given us a president-elect who surprises us pretty much every day.
If you’re unhappy with the direction the country seems to be headed, you have an opportunity in the next few months to start moving in a different direction. And if things look just fine to you, it’s your chance to get involved yourself and perhaps start working your way up in local government. That’s where most of the decisions are made about how much you will pay in property taxes and how that money will be spent.
These local governments decide everything from local property tax rates, to whether you pay a sales tax, what your local zoning laws will be and even how many cops will be on the streets of your neighborhood. The school board hires the local superintendent and sets policy about who teaches in your schools and, sometimes, what they will teach.
Election day is April 4 for cities and villages, school boards, townships and other local offices. But under Illinois’ complicated election rules, the deadline for filing nomination petitions is right around the corner. Filing takes place Monday through Dec. 19 for nonpartisan offices, which include most local positions. In most cases, filing petitions must have a few dozen to a few hundred signatures of fellow residents.
In some area municipalities, election law requires primary elections, which will take place Feb. 28. If you live in Cook County and your community has primary elections, you are already out of luck; the deadline was in November. But if you live in Will County or a Cook County area where elections are nonpartisan, the Dec. 12-19 period affects you.
If you have specific questions about how to go about becoming a candidate, or helping someone else become one, your county, village, township or city clerk should be able to answer them. If they can’t, someone ought to run against them.
What we all have to remember is that all the decisions about local government, local taxes and local laws are made by people just like us. All too often, they are elected to those jobs because too few other people were interested, either in running or voting. When someone asks you, “Who voted for that guy?” the most important answer is, “Someone who cared.”
That applies on the national level but even more so in our cities, villages and school districts.
