The Orland Park of today is not the Orland Park of the past. We’re improving our roads and parks, we’re bringing new businesses and jobs to residents, and we’re ensuring our community remains one of the safest in the country.

We are driving economic development so we can create good-paying jobs, grow revenue for the village in place of increased taxes and fees, and provide opportunities for our families looking for activities right here in our vibrant community. We’ve added over 5,000 jobs since taking office and welcomed over 600 new businesses that have strengthened our retail, restaurant, and auto sectors. To further our economic growth, we are reimagining the types of business we can bring to our community and how we can make Orland Park a destination for small businesses.

We are also keeping our families safe and our neighborhoods secure. Thanks to the finest police department in all of Illinois, Orland Park is once again rated one of the safest towns in America. Over the last 6 years, we have achieved the lowest level of crime in the last 31 years. Of the 360 largest suburbs in the country, we are top 5 for lowest property crime (#2) and lowest for violent crime (#5). And during the riots and looting in 2020, we proactively kept our residents and businesses safe. We’ve also ensured our law enforcement has the latest equipment and introduced body cameras before the state mandated them. We’re doing more to help keep Orland Park safe as a new training facility and firing range will open to better train our law enforcement professionals.

We’ve also invested in improving our roads, infrastructure, and parks that have improved our quality of life. Before Mayor Pekau took office, over 40% of our roads were in poor or very poor condition after years of underinvestment. The McLaughlin and Dodge administration was only investing in improving a single park every two years. When we took office, we laid the foundation for a sustainable infrastructure plan that responsibly maintains our roads and parks, increasing average road condition by over 25%. We’ve also redeveloped Centennial Park West, Schussler Park, The John Humphrey Complex, and renovated 32 neighborhood parks complete with pavilions, pickleball, basketball, tennis and bocce ball courts. Next year we will update Doogan Park, finish Phase 2 of Schussler Park, and replace all the paths at Centennial Park West. We will also be bringing back the summer concert series for families and residents to enjoy.

The old school mentality of government spending was to deplete reserves and waste our hard-earned tax dollars. Keith Pekau has prioritized reducing our village’s tax levy, maintaining a surplus in our operating budget that is used to address our infrastructure needs. We will continue to invest our tax dollars wisely and only spend what we have to ensure we don’t have to ask our residents for money because we are still digging ourselves out of a financial hole the past leadership left.

Jim Dodge supported the village spending over $100 million of taxpayer money for developments that have continued to lose us money. Before Keith Pekau took office, the village gambled our tax dollars on the downtown Triangle and lost $47 million that our residents will be paying for years to come, and the village gave a developer $64 million for the 9750 apartment buildings when they only invested $1 million. Short-sighted decisions that only benefited politicians’ allies have demonstrably hurt Orland Park taxpayers.

We cut operating expenses by 14%, have paid down over $20 million in debt, rebuilt reserves, and lowered property taxes. We have also started on a new project for our public works facility that will move all of the trucks and equipment indoors to last longer and operations will be more efficient to save on operating costs. We will continue to find ways to lower costs and be creative with our budget to help our working families.

When Keith Pekau was first elected mayor as an outsider, it made the political insiders like Jim Dodge nervous, for good reason—they knew the gravy train was about to end and would be held accountable for digging our taxpayers into a hole. Since then, we’ve put an end to the political games and obstruction in Orland Park. Doing the right thing made Mayor Pekau public enemy number one to the career politicians, and they’ve attacked him constantly since day one.

Since taking office, we’ve restored good government in Orland Park. We eliminated the lavish pension benefits that career politician Dan McLaughlin and his allies had provided themselves with our hard-earned tax dollars. Mayor Pekau kept his promise and led the charge to lower the mayor’s salary back down to $40,000 a year, making it a part-time position. We reduced the pay for trustees, because serving in local government shouldn’t be about getting rich off taxpayers. We instituted term limits for our local elected officials to put an end to career politicians. We eliminated patronage, established a new ethics ordinance, and put in place a public, transparent hiring process. And we increased transparency by making our board meetings public and digitally accessible, shining a spotlight on decisions that had previously been made behind closed doors.

Now there’s a new mindset and culture in our local government, one that’s focused on doing the right thing for our residents and small businesses. We no longer have career politicians lining their pockets at our expense and we can’t afford to go back to that style of leadership. Instead, our community leaders are working cooperatively to move Orland Park forward. People are stepping up to serve for the right reasons without personal agendas, like our People Over Politics team. And we are bringing our village together to further make Orland Park the community that our citizens expect.