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Incumbent Franklin Park clerk faces two challengers
Election 2013
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Updated: March 8, 2013 6:35AM
FRANKLIN PARK — The village clerk in Franklin Park handles records, from distributing agendas to preparing the minutes.
The office also processes passports, offers notary services, registers voters, take notes at meetings.
Three candidates are seeking the office in the April election, but one of those candidates did not respond to requests for an interview.
One challenger in the race is Kim Farkas of United Community party. Farkas has never held public office, although she volunteered with the Parent-Teacher Association in Franklin Park District 212 from 1996 to 2012, including stint as president.
Farkas works at East Leyden High School as a food services coordinator, handling food safety, food quality and catered events. She also has input on the menu.
Prior to that she ran a Popeye’s restaurant on Mannheim Road for 25 years. In that position she did bookkeeping, payroll, hiring, cost control and hiring.
“I think my experience with bookkeeping and organization would be helpful,” Farkas said. “I understand secretarial stuff and I’m an organized person.”
Incumbent Tommy Thomson of Your Village Your Voice party has been clerk for almost four years. He also served on the board of the Franklin Park library for six years and unsuccessfully ran for village trustee in 2007.
“We’re like the 411 here,” Thomson said. “If people don’t know where to go, they come to the clerk’s office.”
Outside of pubic office, he has been a firefighter-paramedic in the Franklin Park Fire department for 13 years.
Thomson said he’s working to improve the clerk’s office by having an electronic system installed to track and distribute freedom of information requests.
“We used to have to run papers all over the village,” Thomson said. “This will help us big time with paper costs and personnel time.”
He’s says he working with the Illinois Policy Institute to make village information more transparent, which means posting more information on the village’s website.
To keep up his skills, Thomson said he attends yearly and bi-monthly conferences and is working on becoming a certified municipal clerk through the University of Illinois.
Also running for village clerk is Michelle Migasi. She listed no telephone on her filing documents. A reporter stopped by her home twice to leave messages about an interview, but Migasi did not respond.
