In the last full week of the campaign for Oak Park village board president, candidate Anan Abu-Taleb comes on hard:

Abu-Taleb argued that at the heart of many village problems is an insular candidate slating process that excludes most citizens.  “Candidates for the (Village Manager’s Association) pledge their allegiance to a party and not to the community,” he said.

. . . .

“If I wasn’t running, there’d be no talk of our financial condition, of the structural deficit,” he said. “I’m saying we have to do something now. We need to change before we’re forced to change.”

. . . .

“The issues are the financial issues, the debt, the empty store fronts. Those issues are directly threatening the base this community is built on,” he said.“Our government is indifferent, we think we’re better than others,” he said, calling that a mistake.

“We’re good. We’re not better than…

This blog missed the March 14 forum at the Buzz Cafe, and so turns to the Oak Leaves account, which features sharp disagreement between presidential candidate Anan Abu-Taleb and two incumbent trustees seeking re-election on a slate headed by his opponent for president, John Hedges, a veteran in Oak Park politics and civic administration.

It was about experience as needed for a board president.

Abu-Taleb: “The experience on the board today, a lot of it is really theoretical, and almost like an academic experiment at times. I would bring practical experience and a new way of thinking that challenges assumptions on how to make policies and to ask questions.”

Colette Lueck, incumbent trustee running for reelection: “I bring real experience.” What’s more, Abu-Taleb, longtime entrepreneur and restaurant-owner with a U. of Chicago MBA, will have to learn from them; and it is his responsibility to learn, not theirs to teach. “That’s in…