Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen, who has served on Skokie’s Village Board since 1984 and was appointed mayor in 1999, will not run for re-election, per Cook County clerk records, ending a historical 40-year-run of leadership in the northern suburb.
In his 15 years as a trustee and 25 as mayor, Van Dusen, who was not available to speak before deadline, served throughout Skokie’s police department accreditation, park district accreditation, the creation of an Oakton Street Yellow Line CTA “L” train station stop, redevelopment of Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center, creation of the Illinois Science + Technology Park, launching of Backlot Bash, and countless other developments and accomplishments.
Mayor Daniel Biss of neighboring Evanston told Pioneer Press that Van Dusen is a “thoughtful, extremely pragmatic guy. Skokie is like his universe; he loves that town; he knows it like the back of his hand.”
Per the village’s website, Van Dusen has been a resident of Skokie since 1974, though he originally hails from Detroit, Michigan, he said in an interview with Pioneer Press. Van Dusen is also a former Niles Township assistant supervisor, per previous reporting.
Van Dusen was also the director of suburban operations for U.S. Representative Sidney Yates for 26 years, from 1973 to 1999. From 1999 to 2022, he taught U.S. History and Government as an adjunct faculty member of Oakton Community College. He is also the author of two books: “Clear it with Sid! Sidney R. Yates and Fifty Years of Presidents, Pragmatism, and Public Service” and “The Detroit Tigers Encyclopedia.”
As a trustee, Van Dusen served as the village’s delegate to the Northwest Municipal Conference and served as its president in 2007. He is also the chairman of the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County, per the village’s website.
In 1990, Van Dusen lost the Democratic primary for the Illinois House of Representatives for District 58 to Jeffrey Schoenberg. When appointed to lead the village as its mayor in January 1999, Van Dusen said he would prioritize two things: extending the CTA Yellow Line, then called the Skokie Swift, to Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center, then called Old Orchard Center, and defusing the “quiet ticking crisis” of solid waste impacting the region.
“My door will always be open,” Van Dusen said in 1999. “Let me know what needs to be done and if we’re doing well, say so, and if we’re not doing well, say so.”
In October, Biss and Van Dusen teamed up to write a letter to Evanston/Skokie School District 65 to try to convince the district to extend the deadline to close Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies for two middle school grades.
“It’s really nice for us to have the opportunity, as people who have a trusting relationship, and see eye to eye, to work together,” Biss said. “Having a mayor from the adjoining community who I could really comfortably and easily work well with to articulate our shared views, I think, has been beneficial to residents of both Evanston and Skokie.
“…It’s important to have a quality of life that’s excellent across the region, not just in one town or another. And that’s part of why these relationships are really critical.”
Pramod Joshi, a member of the village’s Fine Arts Commission, said, “The mayor is very cooperative, thoughtful, as well as taking care of diverse communities, respecting them and supporting them.”
Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam, a Democrat of the 8th district, which covers portions of Skokie, Niles, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove and Chicago’s Northwest side, said he worked with Van Dusen in securing funds for capital improvement projects in the village and also on a Pan Asian American Cultural Center in Skokie.
Villivalam, who was elected in 2018 and sworn in in 2019, said he looks up to Van Dusen for his pragmatic and progressive values. “At the end of the day people generally have the same principles — safe communities, taking care of elders,” he said, and gave credit to Van Dusen for Skokie’s affordable housing stock and for the village’s co-responder program in which a mental health counselor teams up with a police officer to respond to cases such as mental health crises, for example.
“We need more of that, now more than ever,” Villivalam said of Van Dusen’s manner of running the village.