When I knock doors and public safety comes up, it's almost always one of two conversations. What's happening with immigration enforcement, and crime in general. They deserve different answers, so let me take them in order.

Immigration Enforcement

On immigration enforcement, what people describe to me is lawlessness, agencies coming into our neighborhoods and taking people without warrants and without identifying themselves. People with no criminal history at all. I think most of us agree on the baseline: if someone has a serious criminal history and an active warrant, that's a different situation. But that is not what's playing out in our communities.

The ability of anyone to walk up and take you without a warrant is a violation of due process, and due process is not a benefit that gets switched on by citizenship. It's the floor.

As a village trustee I moved an ordinance, and got it passed, barring civil enforcement agencies from using municipally funded property to stage their operations. Our taxpayer-funded facilities should not be the launch point for taking people illegally. It's immigrants today. It's someone else tomorrow. That's a slippery slope and I'd rather stand at the top of it.

Crime Concerns

On crime: I'm a mom, so of course I worry about it. But I let the data guide me. Give me the evidence. And the evidence in our district right now shows crime at historic lows, which I credit to community policing, to the genuine relationships our departments have built with residents, and to making sure officers are protected, well-equipped, and trained to handle a range of situations. De-escalation over an immediately punitive response. The data says it's working. So let's keep doing it.

Here's what actually keeps me up. When the economy turns, prevention programs are the first thing cut. The exact programs holding crime down get eliminated first, and then we act surprised two years later. Protecting that funding through a downturn is the least glamorous public safety position there is, and it's the one I'd fight hardest for.

I also want to say something about the SAFE-T Act, because it gets a bad rap from people who don't know why it exists. It was written by victim advocacy organizations, including sexual assault and domestic violence advocates, because of what they were watching happen. Whether someone stayed in jail or walked out was determined by whether they could pay, not by what they'd done. That meant people who could afford bail got out, sometimes to go right back to the people they'd hurt, while people charged with far less sat inside because they couldn't cover it. The law made it about the offense instead of the bank balance.

Does it need continued work? Absolutely. All legislation does. As we implement it and find the loopholes, let's make it stronger. But you don't throw out a law that's protecting crime victims because the politics got noisy.

And our first responders are who we call when the worst thing happens, a fire, a break-in, something bigger. Those are resources I don't want to cut. When I think about community partnerships, police and firefighters are the first two groups that come to mind.

The leadership I bring to this is servant leadership: hear from the people doing the hard work, listen to the people who need that work, and then go make sure their perspective is heard, funded, and resourced.

Thank you to everyone who continues to show up, speak up, and invest in the work of shaping our shared future. I’m deeply grateful to be on this journey with you.

Let’s keep going—because together, we’re stronger.