Park Ridge Mayor Marty Maloney has announced he is running for re-election in the the municipal election scheduled for April 1, 2025.
The Park Ridge native, who joined the city council as the alderman of the 7th ward in 2011, was appointed as acting mayor by the city council in 2015 after the death of then-Mayor David Schmidt. Maloney was elected mayor in 2017 and re-elected in 2021.
“I have no desire to do anything other than serve as Mayor of the City of Park Ridge; if, for some reason, I was not successful, then I would pivot to retirement,” Maloney told Pioneer Press. “But on the flip side, I have no desire to run for something beyond in Springfield.”
Maloney, who announced his run for mayor to the public in early June through social media, said there was a time in his latest term that he was considering walking away from the City Council at the end of his four-year term in 2025.
“Some of the developments that have happened (in the last year) have really made me rethink that, and that’s why I’m going to be running again,” he said.
The mayor of Park Ridge is considered a part-time position and comes with an annual salary of $12,000. A full-time city manager oversees the city’s day-to-day functions.
“I think that’s the right way to do this,” Maloney said of the city manager type of government for Park Ridge. “From my perspective, that’s the right way to run a city; it’s the way we, you know, best deliver services to the residents.” Maloney said the current system allows him to get feedback from residents, and for him and the city council to deliver on policy.
In July, the Park Ridge Planning and Zoning Commission preemptively approved lifting the city’s ban on cannabis dispensaries from operating in Uptown. In order for the ban to officially be lifted, the City Council would also have vote to reverse it. Maloney said he would not support the lifting of the ban because of the centralized location of the Park Ridge Library in Uptown.
“The library is a magnet for kids in town… there are rules and distance regulations when it comes to dispensaries not being allowed near parks and schools within certain distances. I don’t think it’s insane to treat the library in the same manner, because it does function in a way where it does attract a lot of kids.”
Maloney said Sociale, Park Ridge’s only cannabis dispensary, “has been a great neighbor for the city of Park Ridge and the people that live around the dispensary have zero problems to speak of.”
Maloney also pointed to incoming development as the thing that he’s excited to see in Park Ridge, like the expanded outdoor dining service for restaurants in Uptown.
“I think we can have the smart development that is in character with Uptown take place,” he commented. He said that South Park’s business district has also been growing, which will lead him and the City Council to think of creative parking solutions to remedy the demand from drivers.
The city, like the Park Ridge Park District, Maine Township High School District 207 and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, is also using funds to reinvest in itself, Maloney said. The city is renovating its Fire Station 35 at Devon and Cumberland Avenues and also plans to renovate Fire Station 36 at Oakton Street and Greenwood Avenue. The city also recently acquired a home in the Mayfield Estates area of Park Ridge and plans to demolish it and use the land for flood mitigation, Maloney said.
The city also recently lost out on a $1.2 million to $1.3 million revenue source, the grocery tax, when Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker approved the state’s 2024-2025 budget, Maloney said. The 1% grocery tax will remain active until Dec. 31, 2025.
“We have to figure how to fund that, and honestly, how to do that without impacting people from a property tax perspective,” Maloney said. “We’ve been very fortunate, we’ve been flat on our property taxes and certainly that would be the way I’d like to see it go, if not start reducing. But it’s a challenge when we have some of the infrastructure needs that we do.”
No other competitors have announced their candidacy for mayor.
