Maine, Meister face off in District 3 Lake County Board campaign

Republican Ann Maine, one of many longest-tenured members on the Lake County Board, shares some key priorities with Wendy Meister, her Democratic challenger within the District 3 race for the Lake County Board.

Each candidates are hanging average tones and speaking about fiscal duty whereas campaigning within the district, which spans from Riverwoods at Lake County’s southern border up via Lincolnshire, Mettawa, Inexperienced Oaks and to elements of unincorporated Libertyville and Wildwood in Warren Township.

Maine stated “individuals take a look at” the County Board on the subject of taxes, noting that inflation will come into play because the board navigates its funds after three years of balanced spending plans.

“We’re actually going to have to take a look at taxes,” Maine stated. “Though the county and forest protect collectively are sometimes 10% of a house owner’s tax invoice, the tax invoice comes out type of beneath our identify, so individuals look to us.”

Meister’s enterprise into politics has been impressed largely by her frustration with county spending and what she says is “a whole lot of redundancy” in authorities spending and features.

“The county has by no means been on funds,” Meister stated. “They’ve all the time been tens of millions of {dollars} over their funds. The way in which we’ve been doing issues hasn’t labored, and I don’t assume a part-time place (greater than $600) million price of funds is the best way we have to go ahead. We want somebody that’s working full-time looking for methods to economize. It’s not simply on the county degree.”

She stated she desires to begin a brand new committee on the board to look at methods to get rid of redundancy.

District 3 largely resembles Maine’s outdated District 21, redrawn with out Deerfield after the Lake County Board authorized a brand new map with 19 districts as an alternative of 21 final winter.

Maine, together with District 9 Democrat Mary Ross Cunningham, has held on to her board seat since 2002.

Meister, who serves as a trustee on the Lincolnshire-Riverwoods Hearth District board, believes the county can proceed to trim the funds by inspecting attainable mixtures of governmental entities, together with fireplace safety districts.

“That’s actually my objective,” Meister stated, “To come back in and begin questioning what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and is there a greater option to do it?”

Maine touted her expertise serving in quite a lot of management roles, together with eight years she spent as president of the Lake County Forest Protect Board from 2010 to 2018 and her long-standing involvement with the Lake County Stormwater Administration Fee.

“Loads of instances, individuals assume surroundings simply means inexperienced house,” Maine stated. “In fact it does, however I see it as a lot broader than that. One in every of my long-term points has all the time been water high quality and water amount.

“We’ve been seeing it play out in Mississippi and different locations,” she continued. “Individuals take their clear water as a right till they don’t have it. We do have it, and there’s various issues I’ve labored on through the years of getting a few of my communities on Lake Michigan water off of nicely water, that we had been going too deep within the aquifer (for) and had radium contamination.”

Maine stated she has a “lengthy document of working for pedestrian connections, bike paths” throughout her time on the board, which regularly contains coordinating on building or environmental initiatives that contain municipalities or different governmental entities.

The candidates differ most over what the basic function of a County Board consultant must be.

Meister desires to see the place develop into a full-time job, whereas Maine says the part-time method retains board members targeted on native points somewhat than sustaining energy.

“Persons are in search of problem-solvers,” she stated. “They’re in search of a brand new means of approaching authorities. Ann’s been within the workplace for 20 years, it’s a part-time job for her, and I simply really feel like persons are prepared to take a look at new methods to chop property taxes.”

Maine stated she could be “completely opposed” to that. She voted towards elevating the salaries of board members earlier this yr.

“I feel we’re imagined to be citizen legislators,” Maine stated. “I feel being out within the office, in different workplaces, offers you an necessary perspective of what else is going on.”

Meister believes the district to be Republican-leaning, however stated she thinks “political social gathering (desire) proper now could be fairly fluid.” She stated she considers herself a progressive, but additionally stated she wish to see a actuality the place County Board candidates can run nonpartisan campaigns.

“When somebody involves me with an issue, I don’t say, ‘What does my social gathering assume?’ I take a look at it as an issue and I clear up that drawback,” Meister stated.

That overlaps considerably with Maine’s acquainted “individuals over social gathering” messaging.

“I feel that’s the reason I’ve historically gotten a whole lot of crossover assist,” Maine stated. “ roads, we’re sewer initiatives, we’re trying on the well being division, constructing codes, the forest protect. To me, none of those are or must be partisan points. They’ve by no means been that means for me.”

Meister previously labored as a analysis analyst and administrative specialist for the Lake County clerk’s workplace, however is perhaps finest identified regionally for her half in a $575,000 whistleblower settlement she and Tracey Repa reached with Lake County over attainable improprieties in contracting in 2021.

Meister and Repa had been fired by Lake County Clerk Robin O’Connor within the days following a gathering with the Lake County sheriff’s workplace over their considerations. Meister stated she and Repa, “tried to do what we thought was proper.”

“I don’t know if individuals take a look at it as a constructive or a damaging, however that’s the best way I do issues,” Meister stated. “I analysis it and, if one thing doesn’t look proper, I say one thing. That’s who I’m.”