One of Lake County’s most low-key units of government, the Southlake Mosquito Abatement District, has three new members and a looming possibility of dissolution.
The Lake County Board appointed Camilla Dadey, Erin Kasdin and Stuart Hochwert on Tuesday to the county’s only remaining mosquito abatement board, which serves the communities of Highland Park, Deerfield, Highwood, Riverwoods, and Bannockburn in southeastern Lake County.
The nominations, made by District 11 member Paul Frank, D-Highland Park, and seconded by District 12 member Paras Parekh, D-Highland Park, were approved by an 18-1 margin over the opposition of District 3 member Ann Maine, R-Lincolnshire.
Maine called the appointments a “sea change” which she felt does not serve residents.
Longtime abatement board president Barbara Struthers, Susan Levy and Tony Bilotti reacted to the moves with disappointment, warning that new board members may be in favor of dissolving the district and leaving mosquito control up to municipalities, homeowners associations or individuals.
“We just think it’s going to be dissolved after awhile,” Bilotti said after the appointments became official.
The mosquito abatement district board oversees the outsourcing of pest treatment, surveillance and trap and testing maintenance to mosquito control company Clarke. Board members receive no compensation.
Frank thanked three outgoing board members and said appointments represent an important chance to, “give members of the community an opportunity to serve.”
Struthers, a former Deerfield trustee, had warned in August when Highland Park resident Brent Ross was appointed that Lake County Board members were quietly planning to dissolve the abatement district. The Southlake Mosquito Abatement District is the only entity left of its kind in Lake County after the 2021 dissolution of the Lake Bluff Mosquito Abatement District.
“People get taxed by the mosquito abatement district at the lowest tax rate in the county,” Struthers said. “My property taxes for mosquito abatement last year were $17 and Susan’s were about $30. So it’s a very low tax rate for a very good service.”
Any potential dissolution would have to be decided first by the Southlake Mosquito Abatement District Board trustees themselves. The opinions of the new appointees, who were not at Tuesday’s Lake County Board meeting, are not yet public.
But Frank did raise the topic of dissolution with candidates, he said.
“I asked folks if they had an ideological perspective of, are they firmly for preserving the status quo with the district?” Frank said. “Or, are they open to other options and open to evaluating what’s the best way to do this?”
He added, “I think it’s incumbent upon us as local government representatives to evaluate, is this the best way to deliver this service?”
Parekh seconded Frank’s motion to approve the nominations, said the previous board members were “great” and spoke in favor of Dadey, calling her a “committed environmentalist.”
Dadey has been a West Skokie Drainage District commissioner and is an active member of sustainability and conservation group Go Green Deerfield. Hochwert is the president and founder of two publishing companies in Northbrook. Kasdin is a senior editor at Lions Clubs International’s LION Magazine, according to resumes uploaded to the county’s website.
Maine said before the board’s vote that the abatement district was losing three members with a successful track record and Ph.D.s in public health and scientific fields.
“What we have is a board that gets no compensation — so there’s no money involved here — that has for more than a decade, maybe two decades, been filled with people in highly technical areas who understand public health, who understand mosquito-borne illnesses,” Maine said.
After Maine’s comment, Parekh said,” I think it’s time to start looking and what we can do with it, and bringing in new perspectives to understand both the current processes and what we can do with this board in the future.”
The Lake County health department also allocates resources to monitor for West Nile virus in mosquito populations and mitigate threats to human life.
Levy said county leaders may view the abatement district as “low-hanging fruit” for governmental consolidation, but she argued the Southlake Mosquito Abatement District has been, “very successful at a very low cost.”
“In public health we had a saying, ‘If nothing happens, public health is doing our job,’ which is true,” Levy said.
