Why am I worried about Rory Hoskins getting elected as Mayor? We have lived in Forest Park on-off for the last nine-plus years. We moved here and rented a place in 2010, then bought our condo in 2013 and then bought our home in 2015. Most of us love living in this area, Oak Park / Forest Park area, even though it costs lot more to own and live here than in city-proper. But we decided to own a place in Forest Park because we felt, we could enjoy the culture and food scene of Chicago without sacrificing the quaintness of village life. Since we became homeowner we have been paying more attention to the village events and unavoidably to village politics. For the last two years plus years we have seen the village deal with the issue of video gambling and utterly waste time, money and energy because elected officials choose not to listen to villagers at the first place, but ram through policies that they believed were good for our village. I felt the last two years village was more divided, and politics became more toxic than ever before because our leaders couldn’t able to work together as a team. I am worried by electing Rory as our mayor we will end up in the same place where we have been in the past that will jeopardize our village’s progress and create a more divided village than ever. I don’t know politics and I don’t care which political machine is driving what candidate. As a minority I was quite delighted to see Rory run for Mayor’s office, up until I saw two candidates debate, and disheartened by how disingenuous Rory sounded, and even worse how unapologetic he was about past decisions where he opted not to be a team player and repeatedly only choose positions that will give him political advantage over others. For instance, in one of the debated Chris Harris asked why Rory never chose to discuss his decisions with other commissioners when he had the chance to be a team player, Rory simply replied by saying something along the lines of “Chris is not his wife and he doesn’t have to.” This is not the kind of response I expect from a mayoral candidate. While I don’t mind a good joke and a jab, I was surprised to see he never answered why he choose not to be a team player and at the least not even attempted to have that conversation to convince other commissioners. This made me more curious and as I further read about his past endorsements, votes/decisions, and news articles, it became more obvious that he will not be a team player, and more importantly and would always be playing for “Team Rory” than “Team Forest Park”. Rory is not my candidate because I felt like he is more interested in Mayor’s office than brining people together, solving our problems as team and creating transparency all along the decision line. I think Forest Park Review made a very bad decision of endorsing Rory, where they could have stayed neutral.
Umasankar Kandaswamy
Resident
