With a new mayor and three trustees set to take office in Orland Park, the trustees they’ll be joining on the Village Board are expressing hope of a good working relationship.
“I think it will be an interesting two years,” Trustee Michael Milani, in the middle of his term, said at Monday’s Village Board meeting. “I don’t think we’ll agree on everything, but we’re going to continue to do what’s best.”
Milani and Trustees William Healy and Cynthia Katsenes were first elected in 2019 and won second terms in 2023, running unopposed on outgoing Mayor Keith Pekau’s People Over Politics ticket.
Unofficial vote totals from April 1 show mayoral candidate Jim Dodge with 57% of the vote to 43% for Pekau, who was seeking a third term.
Dodge’s Orland Park For All slate, apparently winners, includes Mary Ryan Norwell for village clerk and trustee candidates John Lawler, Dina M. Lawrence and Joanna M. Liotine Leafblad. They would replace Sean Kampas, Joni Radaszewski and Brian Riordan, who were elected in 2021.Radaszewski did not seek reelection this year.
Katsenes said she, Healy and Milani are “going to do what we were put here to do — look out for the best interests of the people we represent.”
“We’ll certainly try to work together,” Katsenes said of the incoming board members. “We all have a common goal, we all want what’s right for Orland Park, what’s good for Orland Park.”
“Sometimes you might see a little different way of getting there but that’s OK, you can agree to disagree,” she said.
Healy said he was confident Orland Park will be fine.
“I will applaud any good, sound things that come forward, and I will try to raise an objection when things don’t make sense to me,” Healy said.
Riordan said his one term on the board has been a learning experience.
“I came into this without a whole lot of knowledge,” he said. “I tried to do the right things for the right reasons.”
Riordan said he would not be at the next board meeting April 21 due to a prior family commitment.
Kampas thanked residents who had “taken the time to engage over the past four years of my term,” either attending board meetings or watching them online.
He urged residents to continue to be involved with village government.
“It’s important for you to keep coming out, keep holding people accountable, whether you agree with them or not,” Kampas said. “Understand what’s going on in your village.”
Pekau said that he would go into detail at the April 21 board meeting about his administration’s accomplishments over his eight years in office.
He said Monday it has “truly been an honor and privilege to serve as mayor of my hometown.”
“For eight years I stood up for you,” he said.
The mayor called the trustees on the board “some of the most dedicated and professional people I’ve ever worked with.”
Pekau said during his time in office he’s faced “very dark forces,” including “defamatory robocalls” that have attacked him and his family. He said trustees’ families had also been subjected to attacks.
He said as he prepares to leave office, he is “thankful to be relieved of that burden.”
A canvass of votes by the Cook County clerk has not yet taken place, although Pekau conceded defeat and texted congratulations to Dodge after results showed Dodge’s apparent win.
In the clerk’s race, Norwell, a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney and a municipal attorney for the last nine years, had 58% of the vote compared with 42% for Clerk Brian Gaspardo on the People Over Politics ticket, according to unofficial results. Gaspardo was recently appointed clerk.
A date for the swearing-in of the new officials had not yet been set as of Wednesday, according to a village spokesman.
