Trustee Candidate Sutker Wants to Bring New Ideas to Village

Caucus Party trustee Edie Sue Sutker is a product of the Skokie school system. She is seeking reelection this April.

She attended Devonshire, Old Orchard Junior High and Niles North High School. A village trustee since 2004, Sutker is following in her parents' footsteps by serving her community.

She is currently a licensed clinical social worker at Jewish Child and Family Services. Sutker said she’d like to continue to build on existing efforts and implement new ideas.

"I would love to see us use new technology,” Sutker said. “I think people should be able to get a [Skokie Police Department] app on their phone. It would make it easier for residents to give police tips or report crimes.”

Sutker also added that she’d like to see security cameras at troubled parks to help prevent crime.

“I’m a big picture, progressive kind of thinker,” she said. “I am open to using security cameras in the parks. I don’t think we have to man the cameras. We can use civilians, for example."

Sutker added that it would be best for police to determine where the cameras would be installed.

“I've heard of certain parks - we call those hot spots - and those are the ones I think cameras should go in,” she said.

What should Skokie’s long-term goals be?

“I would like to see more new single-family homes in Skokie. I think that would bring in younger couples and new families to Skokie,” Sutker said. “This is a long-term goal. We would have to be creative and investigate this and see how it could get done.

“The other long-term goal is economic development,” she added. “It is really important. It brings in revenue. It brings in people. It is crucial to a thriving community and I think we've done a good job with that.”

Sutker said the village needs to be creative with its incentive program for bringing new business in.

“We’ve added Oberweis, Kaufman’s, First Bank and Trust [on Dempster Street] and it’s starting to have energy,” she said. “There’s more to come. We have the momentum. We have to continue and become aggressive.”

Should Skokie hire more police?

While greater police presence is important to Sutker, she said hiring more officers may not be the answer.

“We have 109 now and we're committed to having 114,” she said. “The more important thing to me, is to figure out how to have more police presence on the streets - I think that's the most important thing. There might be other ways of doing that besides hiring more police officers.”

Read our other candidate profiles here

--

Skokie Patch on Facebook