You Must Vote OR I Could Be Supreme Dictator

If you live in Illinois, Tuesday, February 2nd is Election Day. This is the Primary Election for the upcoming November General Election.

Now I know that 2010 is an "off" year and so it's not a sexy presidential election year. But it's my personal belief that that's exactly why this year is crucial. We are voting for both Houses of Congress - Senate and House; all of our State-wide offices; State Representatives and Senators; all of the Cook County Board positions (including President - that's Todd Stroger's current job) and many local referendum.

Again, it's not sexy, but all of these elected officials and referendum affect our lives with far greater daily impact than the President.

Are you upset about the Cook County 10% sales tax? Make sure you vote in Tuesday's election.

Do you want a say in whether or not police and fire pensions are fully funded? Vote on Tuesday.

Do you think the State of Illinois has been run into the ground? Get to the polls.

Do you want to make sure Rep. Mark Kirk is or is not the next Senator from Illinois? Go vote.

Are you ticked that the State of Illinois is allowing Cook County to collect 55% of our property tax bill instead of the usual 50% in the first installment? VOTE.

Do you or someone you love rely on the State of Illinois for any services (food stamps, disability services, etc.) or are you unhappy with all the increased fees for everything in Illinois? You've got to pull the lever on Tuesday.

Do you have strong issues on things like abortion, health care reform, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, job creation, taxes (of all kinds - income, property, sales, tolls, etc.), foreign aid, Social Security, Medicare, food safety, outsourcing, alternative energy sources, etc.? You've got nothing that's more important to do on Tuesday than vote.

State and local officials control or impact all of those things.

Voting isn't simply a right. In my opinion, it's an obligation. For the millions and millions of people (especially women) around the world without the right to vote, you owe it to them to exercise your right and vote for the candidates and issues you believe in.

But there's one more part to voting: you must be educated. Walking into a voting booth and knowing nothing about the candidates and issues is simply ignorant given how easy it is to become educated. If you live in Cook County, you can visit the Cook County Clerk's website for information on where to vote and for information on all the candidates and referenda. ABC7 also has an extensive website about candidates for all offices, area wide. Please don't just rely on commercials and all the fliers that have been piling up in your mailbox.

Ultimately, voting is up to you, but if you don't vote, please don't complain to me about the state of affairs in the country, state, county, or village.

If you don't want to vote because you're too busy, it's okay because I'm up on all the issues and know what's good for everyone. While you may not agree with me, I'd be happy to be Supreme Dictator of Illinois. Just let me know. It's one of the many services Little Merry Sunshine provides.

What Brings You to Little Merry Sunshine?

One of my favorite things about my blog is checking out my Site Meter site stats and learning what brings you, my loyal readers, to Little Merry Sunshine.

Quite a few of you find me by doing Google searches for "little merry sunshine," "wheeling township food pantry," "arlington heights," "Marshall Field's" and a variety of searches for information on the current local elections in Arlington Heights and I'm incredibly grateful my blog appears in the results for all of these search terms. I'm also grateful to my blog buddies Monkey Muck, Gourmet Goddess, Boxer Rebellion, She's An American Girl, Living Oprah, Ellen of the Tenth, and Fran I Am for their links and the readers who find me through their sites. I could never write this post without showing proper appreciation to Chicago's Best Blogs for the new readers they've sent me. Truly it's an honor being one of Chicago's Best Blogs.

But many of you visit LMS as the result of some more interesting Google searches . . .

An employee at one of the country's largest banks and recipient of tons of bailout money, spent some valuable work time searching "I get off on you getting off on me" and found my post iPhone, Therefore I Get Off.

Numerous state employees in states such as Nebraska, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana (on state time!) and folks at some very esteemed higher education institutions have visited LMS as the result of searches for "stripper poles" (finding I'm Gonna Install A Stripper Pole!)and "prostitute names" (finding The Name Game).

People from all over the world searching for "AK-47" find my post What Were They Hunting With That AK-47?

More than a few folks are curious about "pregnant women wearing braces," which I find interesting since there are no pregnant women on this site. Really. No woman on this blog is pregnant. I swear.

Many of you are searching for food pantries in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and it's my wish that you're doing these searches because you want to donate, but probably some of you need some extra help these days. So this gives me a good opportunity to say to everyone: Donate to your local food pantry. They desperately need your help. The demand is greater than ever and if you set aside just a couple items each week, in no time you'll have a full bag of groceries that will really help someone. That someone could be your neighbor or your best friend or someday it could be you.

Many of you seem to be interested in recycling and tax credits for greening your home and installing solar attic fans. Visit my brother's website, Crystal Skylights. He'll take great care of you.

However you ended up here, I truly thank you and I hope you come back often. Without you, I'd just be talking to myself.

Endorsements for Mayor of Arlington Heights & Library Board of Trustees

One of my beliefs is that local government is more important than national government. Sure, the recent Presidential election was sexy and sucked up all the media attention for the better part of two years and I can't say I was immune to writing about it. I'm almost embarrassed for you to do a search for "Barack Obama" on Little Merry Sunshine. The number of posts with that tag is astounding. But no matter how exciting the national elections may be, the fact is that you get more bang for your vote with local elections. If you've got a problem with snow removal service, for example, President Obama can't help you, but picking up the phone and calling the mayor will get something done. If you've got kids (or plan to) then your local library and school boards will have a direct impact on shaping your child's life. Yes, it's sexy to vote for the president, but it's imperative that you vote in local elections. Your day-to-day life depends on it.

In that spirit, Little Merry Sunshine is pleased to endorse the following candidates for elected office in Arlington Heights.

For the 2-year term on the Arlington Heights Library Board of Trustees, Deborah A. Nelson, is strongly endorsed and easily the candidate of choice. Frankly, this was a no-brainer. Deborah was appointed by the Board of Library Trustees to fill the seat of retiring trustee, Jim Bertucci, in April 2008. At that time, not knowing any of the board members, she applied for the position and went through an interview process where she competed against other highly qualified applicants. Deborah's 20 years of experience in the non-profit sector including customer service, strategic planning, public relations, and fund raising, lay the perfect foundation for a dedicated library trustee. Community service and volunteerism are a part of Deborah's make up going back to her days in the Service Over Self club at John Hersey High School. Now she pays those lessons forward to a new generation by teaching the Character Counts! program at Patton Elementary School and founding the Random Acts of Kindness Club of Arlington Heights. As part of the Library Board of Trustees, Deborah is serving on the Board's Long Range Planning Committee, is the Board's liaison to the North Suburban Library System, and was part of the unanimous vote for a 0% tax levy. Deborah's commitment, character, experience, and integrity make her the ideal Library Board Trustee and I strongly encourage you to vote for her on April 7th.

For the office of Village President (aka Mayor), Little Merry Sunshine endorses Mayor Arlene Mulder. Although I have not always agreed with all of Mayor Mulder's decisions and would like to see more transparency in village government, continuing her leadership just makes good sense. After attending the Mayoral Forum sponsored by the Arlington Heights Chamber of Commerce and researching both candidates on my own, I came to the decision that Arlington Heights continues to need the leadership, vision, and commitment of Mayor Mulder. In addition to being the Village President, Mayor Mulder serves on a number of boards and committees, locally, statewide, and nationally. She also works across party lines to bring money into the Village. In spite of the lack of pay, Mayor Mulder treats her position as a full-time job. As the 7th largest town in the Chicago Area and the 12th largest town in Illinois, Arlington Heights needs a mayor with this kind of dedication. Mayor Mulder is also highly accessible to residents and this is part of what makes Arlington Heights a great place to live.

Although I am not making endorsements in the other races, I encourage you to educate yourself on the candidates and vote on April 7th. To do that, visit the Daily Herald's Election 2009 section. There, you can choose each of the races from a pull-down menu and read biographies of each candidate, and all stories, letters to the editor, and endorsements related to the races. To find your polling place, visit the Cook County Election Department at voterinfonet.com.

The "Homeless Problem" in Arlington Heights

Election season is in full swing here in Arlington Heights. The Daily Herald is covering all the action with daily stories, editorials full of endorsements, and legions of letters to the editor.

Reading the comments to the stories on the Daily Herald's website (and after speaking with one alarmist candidate), one could quickly come to the conclusion that Arlington Heights has become completely overrun with homeless people.

By way of background, Arlington Heights is a middle to upper-middle class village of about 75,000 in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Its motto is the "City of Good Neighbors." In the last decade or so, there has been a surge of development and revitalization in the downtown area and almost all new single family home building has come in the form of tearing down existing homes built in the 1950s and 1960s and replacing them with McMansions that in some cases fill nearly the entire footprint of the property. Like most of the other towns in the area, Arlington Heights has also experienced an increase in the number of homeless people. There are many reasons for the increase in the number of homeless citizens, but for the purposes of this post, those reasons are not important.

It's my belief, as someone who both lives and works in Arlington Heights, is a regular reader of the Daily Herald, and is also a frequenter of many businesses in downtown Arlington Heights, where homeless people are most visible, that Arlington Heights is not overrun with homeless people and that we do not have an extraordinary "homeless problem." Now to be clear, I also believe that one person without a home is too many and is problematic, but that's another topic entirely.

I also believe that those who persistently rant about the "homeless problem" are using the term "homeless" to mean "someone who doesn't look like me or fit into my image of an upper-middle class person" and as a scare tactic. I don't believe that we can simply look at someone and know with certainty that they are homeless. Given the economic times we live in, it's entirely possible that someone dressed in a nice suit and driving a car is homeless. Not all homeless people look like the stereotypical guy dressed in rags, carrying all of his possessions in a shopping cart and drinking out of a bottle in a brown paper bag. In fact, according to Journeys from PADS to HOPE, there are many homeless people living out of their cars. That could even include a Lexus.

Yes, there was a stabbing on the sidewalk that happened to be in front of the library (after the library was closed) in December 2008 and it did involve two homeless people, but from everything I've read, the stabbing was the result of an ongoing argument between these two people and not endemic of a larger safety problem in Arlington Heights.

Those who argue that we should ban homeless people from public places, such as the library, simply because they are homeless are forgetting that the library is a public place, funded entirely by taxpayer dollars, and that homelessness is not grounds for removal. I think it's a dangerous slope to suggest we start tossing people out of public places simply because we don't like what they look like. Who will decide what look is or is not acceptable? How do you know who's homeless and who's not?

Having grown up in Arlington Heights, I remember when this town wasn't "all that," when the only attraction in downtown Arlington Heights was the library, when Town & Country Mall had the only movie theater around, and residents were of far more modest means than they seem to now. The comments I keep seeing on the Daily Herald's site and the position of one alarmist candidate feel classist and completely contrary to the town's "City of Good Neighbors" philosophy.

The library and other public locations have rules of behavior that apply equally to everyone, are prominently posted, and are strictly enforced (the library's Rules of Behavior can be found here, for example). Anyone not following those rules of behavior or breaking the law should be removed from public places, but we simply cannot be tossing people out of public places because they don't look like us. That simply would not be very neighborly.

It's Campaign Season AGAIN!

I know, you thought campaign season ended in November and we didn't have to think about voting again until at least 2010. Well, you're wrong.

It's LOCAL ELECTION season! Historically, local elections have embarrassingly low turnouts and I find this sad. The fact is that while the national elections are sexy, the local elections have the most impact on your day to day life. We're electing the mayor who controls the purse strings that get streets plowed in the winter and garbage collected all year long. Do you have kids or want to someday? Then you owe it to them to know who's on the school board. These are the people who determine how and what the next generation learns. That certainly shouldn't be left to just anyone. The quality of schools are a major factor in determining home sales. No one wants to live too far from their local school and no one wants to live in a crappy school district. So we simply must vote in the local elections.

To that end, I encourage you to get yourself educated on the candidates. You can do this by attending the upcoming forums. You'll see me there.

Note: The links below will take you to the candidates websites. If you know if other candidate websites, please let me know and I'll link to all of them.

Campaign Forum Season Arrives
by Sheila Ahern, Daily Herald, Feb. 27, 2009

The spring election is just a few short weeks away, and the best way to cram for April 7 is to swing by an Arlington Heights candidates forum. Here's a few:

• The Arlington Heights Chamber of Commerce hosts two debates in March to discuss business issues. The two mayoral candidates - Philip Walter and incumbent Arlene Mulder - will debate on Tuesday, March 3, at the Metropolis theater. Trustee candidates will meet a week later, on Tuesday, March 10. They are incumbents Norm Breyer, Bert Rosenberg and Joe Farwell and political newcomers Tom Glasgow, Michael Sidor, Keith Moens, Tabitha Long and Barbara "Glennie" Browne.

On both nights, a reception will be held at 4 p.m. with the candidates taking the stage from 4:30 to 6 p.m. The Metropolis is located at 111 W. Campbell St. downtown. The public is invited to both free forums.

• For serious government junkies, the League of Women Voters hosts a daylong forum Saturday, March 14, at the Arlington Heights Village Hall. Candidates running for Arlington Heights trustee and mayor, Northwest Suburban High School District 214 school board (LMS Note: The candidates are Miriam ("Mimi") Cooper-Spickard (incumbent), Lenore Gonzales Bragaw (incumbent & board president), James Perkins (incumbent), Leslie Pinney (incumbent and strong Christian Conservative who has attempted to ban books according to her Christian beliefs), and Mark Hineman), Arlington Heights Park District, Arlington Heights Memorial Library board (LMS Note: The candidates are Frank J. Biga III, Charles Drost, Kerry Pearson (incumbent), Deborah A. Nelson (incumbent), and Dawn E. Walter and you can learn about them all by clicking on the AHML link) and Wheeling Township should all be there.

The event is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m. and end around 2 p.m. It will be broadcast on local cable later in the week.

• There will be a debate for Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 candidates at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 31, at Thomas Middle School, 1430 N. Belmont Ave (LMS Note: The candidates are Kenneth Nielsen (incumbent), David Page (incumbent), Denise Glasgow (incumbent), Michael King, Philip Crusius, and Steven Weseman).