Setting the Record Straight - Part 2
The LONG STORY of Village Hall
It is unfortunate that the workplace of our village employees is being used to divide our community for political strategy. The ongoing back-and-forth with misleading information has escalated beyond what is acceptable. The current Village Board has NEVER been in favor of spending 150M dollars on the joint project of a police station and Village Hall. Direction from the Village Board to Staff has consistently been to bring in a number as close to 100M dollars as possible. Trustee Parakkat is aware of that and has continued to perpetuate his campaign messaging.
It is our responsibility as a board to provide a functional workspace for those who serve and protect our village every day and provide government that is accessible to all. Every step this Board has taken has been to reach the goal of making a fully informed decision for the best interest of our community long term and provide for the critical needs of our police department. 1
Police Facilities Discussion and Village Hall—A bit of history
To be fair to the current board, and in fairness to prior boards, we must consider the entire conversation. There is not one vote, not one sound bite that will tell the full story.
Our Village communications team has created a fairly comprehensive detail of the past year and a half concerning our municipal campus and the efforts of our staff and board to consider all that is needed to make the most responsible, lasting decision for investing in a new police station. I encourage you to take a closer look at the efforts of this board to understand all of our options and consider all of the information needed to know that dollars spent today will stand the test of time. The truth is, this is a complex issue. 2
And for a bit of history that the village website doesn’t outline.
8 years ago, in 2017, Oak Park considered $200k to study a new police station. Between 2017 and 2020 - during that three-year period - the board had a number of conversations related to updating the police station, including repairing the non-functioning firing range.
Fast forward to 2020 when conversations were at a point when the rebuilding of the police station was up for consideration to be included in the Capital Improvement Plan.
In 2020 on October 12th3 at 1:25 on the recorded clock, you can hear the sense of urgency our board members and then-Mayor Abu-Taleb feel about improving the working conditions for our police force. The board members almost unanimously express a sense of urgency about getting our police force, minus the new firing range, out of the basement. Mayor Abu-Taleb says he is worried about our officers getting sick. Trustee Andrews urges anyone to tour the facility and also reiterates that the facility is potentially unhealthy physically for our officers. In that same meeting, staff and board both repeat that the earliest they’d be able to move forward on any plan would be 2022.
Inevitably, though, by the end of the year the police station was not included in the Capital Improvement Plan. Again - this isn’t a situation to cherry-pick, it was a board decision. Not one single person or community member kept this from being included. And it fell out of the Capital Improvement Plan without much community discussion.
It was 2020—consider the implications of the decision being at the end of that year.
But here we are in 2025.
Current Facilities discussion
The vote on July 5, 2023 to investigate the path for a complete rebuild was paired with my decision, as Village President, to pull together a facilities committee. The facilities committee would evaluate the potential to rehabilitate village hall before moving forward with rebuild schematics so that we could better understand our options for attaining a fully functioning work space for all of our employees if we were to keep the historic integrity of Harry Weese designed Village Hall.
It makes strategic sense to know our full needs and options.
The facilities committee worked with historic preservation architect JLK and returned to the board with creative solutions to address functional workspace and disability access challenges at Village Hall.
The Board hired JLK architects and team to design the prioritized new police station and rehabilitation of village hall starting with required maintenance and the possibility of phasing in functional workspace and disability access needs at village hall overtime.
It is important to note that the cost of the unanimously prioritized police station is the lion share of the costs yet my opponent has chosen strategically to frame it as Village Hall again and again.
One of the meetings most cited by my opponent involves a presentation in June of 2023 of conceptual cost estimates. As a board, we voted to review concepts further.
This isn’t a conversation for sensationalism. We are talking about the workplace of people who work hard to serve our community. And no matter where the dollar lands, we are talking about a considerable cost to our community, a cost not one single person at the board table is taking lightly. The vote was NOT to accept the cost estimate as a budget.
Board direction has been consistent from the beginning: the police station is the priority and cost concerns will determine how much work could be done on village hall with the potential of phasing in work. Minimally, we wanted to have a solid plan to lessen any risk of spending money to only undo that investment in the future.
No board member has ever voted to spend $150M on Village Hall.
After that initial presentation of CONCEPTS, because of serious concerns about disrupting the historic nature of our Village Hall, because of serious concerns about the overall estimate of costs around the project, I thought it was best to have more community input, and more community review. As is my purview as Village President, I established a facilities committee to help us more thoroughly review our options - the FRC or Facilities Review Committee4. I truly believe, that plans to spend money on any multi-million dollar village investment should never happen without an additional layer of community input and review.
If you have made it this far, and I hope you have, you can see that as elected officials, historically, we are being careful in our review and decision making process and that is most important to me.
I sincerely hope you haven’t lost trust in our intent to gather community input when making these decisions.
in the end, you don’t just need to take my word for it or the Village communications team’s word, a few other community members, including Trustee Brian Straw, have outlined additional information to confirm that misinformation is being shared by my opponent.
In reference to a recent video my opponent cross-shared to a small Facebook group called Polite Politics Oak Park5, Thomas H. Ptáček, a member of Oak Park’s Civic Information Systems Commission commented:
“Contrary to Ravi's claim here, President Scaman did not propose a $140MM renovation project for Village Hall. In response to residents freaking out at the idea of our "historic" Village Hall being torn down, she created an advisory committee to explore adaptive reuse. I was on that committee.”6 (Read the full post below.)
My hope in this long detail is that you take away the understanding that every board member is doing their due diligence in representing our community with respect for our ongoing affordability. To repeat: The current Village Board has never been in favor of spending 150M dollars on the joint project of a police station and Village Hall. Direction from Village Board to Staff has consistently been to bring in a number as close to 100M dollars as possible. Trustee Parakkaat is aware of that.
Support for our Police
I value our police force and the important work they do in our community.
This Board has responded to local and national police recruitment challenges by supporting our Chief, providing competitive salaries, expanding benefits, policies to support lateral moves, opportunities for personal development and officer wellness.
We are leaders with a new initiative to provide compassionate, non-police responses to behavioral health crisis, homelessness and other non-emergency calls that expands on the strong historical partnership between the Village and Thrive counseling center.
Chief Johnson has informed the Board that she expects to be fully staffed by the end of 2025 for the first time in 10 years and is now in the grateful position to be selective with hiring practices.
This Board has prioritized the long overdue need to invest in a new police station without ignoring the glaring challenges that would remain at village hall so that whatever the investment is we are utilizing the space and resources we have for the greatest long term benefit and not just providing a band aid that would destine our community to pay more later.
This is a link to the Village website that outlines this latest governmental process regarding a new police station.
Link to the board meeting on October 12, 2020.
Link to the Facilities Review Committee notes and minutes.
These comments are shared with permission. As Polite Politics is a private Facebook Group - comments have been cut and pasted rather than linked so all can have access.
Thomas H. Ptáček,’s full statement regarding Ravi’s Village Hall video
“It's hard to know where to start with all this.
In 2019, the VOP board finally began the process of considering a move of OPPD out of the fetid basement of the Weese Village Hall. They hired FGM to draft a proposal, and added a ~$35MM placeholder to the advisory CIP. They allocated further real dollars to that plan in early 2020.
But by the end of 2020, despite the fact that planning and construction was moving forward at other Oak Park taxing bodies (the CRC broke ground during the pandemic), and despite the fact that our architects warned us that delays would increase the cost of OPPD, Anan Abu-Taleb's board voted to withdraw OPPD from the budget. That was a mistake.
President's Scaman's board moved forward on OPPD. Because OPPD is all tangled up in Weese's Village Hall and because previous boards have kicked the can down the road on 8-digit mechanical and ADA compliance renovations, OPVH came up at the same time.
“Contrary to Ravi's claim here, President Scaman did not propose a $140MM renovation project for Village Hall. In response to residents freaking out at the idea of our "historic" Village Hall being torn down, she created an advisory committee to explore adaptive reuse. I was on that committee.”
Ravi points to a vote that occurred at 3:14 on July 5th, 2023. I encourage you to watch it yourself. But don't skip to the vote: watch the minutes that lead up to the vote, where Rob Sproule explains that what's being discussed is instruction to staff to explore a plan to bring back to the board at a future date. Nobody voted to spend $140MM or $150MM or $60MM or $1 on Village Hall at that meeting.
It's exhausting watching people try to do Kremlinology to unearth hidden motives from candidates when we already know what the board consensus is on this issue. President Scaman has said it, and other board members have said it: the priority is OPPD, and work on OPVH will be incremental.”