Tinley Park’s village clerk has moved into a new job assisting the village’s mayor while a resident who’s waged a one-woman campaign trying to get the state to address environmental concerns at a former mental health hospital has been tabbed to fill out the remainder of her term.
The Village Board voted Tuesday to approve Kristin Thirion, elected clerk in 2017 and reelected last spring, as executive administrative assistant to Mayor Michael Glotz, with Nancy O’Connor moving into the clerk’s position.
O’Connor is chairman of One Tinley Park, a political committee formed last July to support the campaigns of Glotz, the village trustees and village clerk.
Glotz also has a separate committee, Friends of Michael Glotz, that was established last July.
The position of administrative assistant had been open for more than a year, Glotz said, with the duties of the mayor’s assistant largely falling to Lisa Valley, executive assistant to the village manager and village trustees.
Glotz was elected mayor last year after serving one term as trustee, and said that O’Connor was one of three possible candidates to take over the clerk’s job.
O’Connor said she worked as a travel agent for more than 20 years and for the last 10 years has owned a small business, Sweet Pea Gluten-Free, specializing in gluten-free baked goods. She said she makes baked goods for family members and friends, and also rents commercial kitchen space to make products sold at some local stores.
She said she does not have a college degree but attended Daley College for a couple of years.
“I have more worldly experience,” O’Connor said.
A biography posted at the village’s website describes her as an “environmental activist,” and, in recent years, O’Connor has corresponded with state officials in an effort to force an environmental cleanup of the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center, filing a blizzard of requests with agencies such as the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for documents under the state Freedom of Information Act.
“I am incredibly passionate about the Tinley Park Mental Health Center and getting that property cleaned up,” O’Connor said Wednesday, her first day on the job as clerk.
The village has sought to buy the former 280-acre state-owned property, closed since 2012. The ultimate goal of redeveloping it carries a multimillion-dollar price tag to remedy environmental hazards on the site, and it is not clear how much it might cost the village to obtain the property, northwest of Harlem Avenue and 183rd Street.
The Illinois Department of Central Management Services controls the property, and the agency and Tinley Park late last year restarted talks aimed at the village acquiring the site.
“We are in active discussions” with the state, Pat Carr, Tinley Park’s village manager said Wednesday. “It’s very encouraging.”
Although as village clerk O’Connor is not a voting member of the Village Board, Glotz said that her dealings with the state regarding the property could be an asset as talks continue.
“It will be advantageous to us having her on our team,” he said.
O’Connor had also chaired Citizens for One Tinley Park, a predecessor committee to One Tinley Park, which was dissolved last summer.
In disbursing its funds before disbanding, Citizens transferred almost $60,000 to Friends of Michael Glotz and $59,700 to One Tinley Park, according to state election board records.
mnolan@tribpub.com
