Machesney Park Election Lineup Set for April 4, 2017

By Bob Balgemann, REPORTER

 The unofficial lineup for the April 4, 2017, Village election has been set now that one of two challenges to nominating petitions has been acted on by a three-member review Board. The panel, consisting of Village Trustee Erick Beck, Village Clerk Lori Mitchell and resident Ike Trickie, sided with the protest lodged by District 1 candidate Joe Seipts. That means the incumbent, Robbin Pilcher-Snodgrass, will not be able to run for re-election unless she does so as a write-in.

Trustee Beck said he had been unsuccessful in contacting Snodgrass about a possible write-in candidacy. Should she decide to run, he said he would offer his services to help. He said he felt badly that she at this point would not be running for re-election. “She’s an excellent Trustee,” he said in a telephone interview. “She cares about her district.”

As of Dec. 22, Trustee Pilcher-Snodgrass had not decided whether to declare as a write-in. “Many, many people pushing for it,” she said in an email response to an inquiry from the Post Journal. A related story on the two petition challenges, one of which was withdrawn the day of the Board hearing, appears elsewhere in this issue.

Seipts currently is unopposed in his bid for a four-year term in District 1, which covers the northeast side of the Village. Pilcher-Snodgrass is the senior member of the Village Board, having served from 2005-09 and then being elected again in April 2013. In all, she has been a Trustee for 91 months. 

The competition in District 3 between incumbent James Kidd and Heather Kelley is still on, now that Kelley has withdrawn her challenge to Kidd’s nominating petition. Kidd is concluding his first four-year term on the Board, having won a contested election in 2013. 

The District 3 incumbent, Phil Johnson, didn’t seek re-election to a second term.

In District 4, incumbent Aaron Wilson is unopposed for a second, four-year term. He won in 2013, as a write-in candidate, when no one signed up to replace Tim Gentry, who chose not to run again.

Mayor Jerry D. Bolin is seeking a second four-year term as the Village’s Chief Executive Officer. He is being opposed by Steve Johnson, current occupant of the District 2 seat on the Village Board. Johnson is in the middle of his first term, having defeated incumbent Kate Tammen in 2015.

Should Johnson win the Mayoral position he would have to recommend appointment of a replacement for himself on the Board. That appointment would have to receive concurrence from the Village Board to serve the remainder of the term, which expires in 2019. Mayor Bolin served one full term as Trustee in District 1, before running a successful campaign for Mayor. He defeated Bob Mullins, who retired in 2011 as Machesney Park’s first Village Administrator. Prior to that, he served 10 years as the Administration and Finance Director. Incumbent Village Clerk Mitchell is unopposed for another four-year term. She has held that job since 2005. Machesney Park will have a new Treasurer, recent Harlem High School graduate Brad Robison, who is unopposed to replace incumbent Tom Yoe. Yoe is a former Trustee who was appointed Treasurer when Johnson ran for the District 2 Village Board seat. Yoe has decided not to seek election to a full, four-year term.

There won’t be a primary election in the Village, during February. For that to have happened five or more people would have had to run for one of the upcoming vacancies. As it turned out, two was the highest number of candidates for any of the upcoming vacancies.

Successful candidates will be sworn in at the May 1, 2017, Village Board meeting.