MPC has appointed Linda Kellough, vice-chair of the Highland Park Plan Commission, North Suburban Coordinator.
Linda Kellough, vice-chair of the Highland Park Plan Commission, has joined the Metropolitan Planning Council as the civic organization’s north suburban coordinator.
Kellough (pronounced like “mellow”) helped manage the successful 1999 open space referendum in which voters authorized purchase of endangered woodlands and wetlands by the Lake County Forest Preserve District.
At MPC, she will engage in planning and development issues in Lake, McHenry and northern Cook County. She also will act as liaison between MPC and north suburban governments, civic groups and business leaders.
“Linda has the experience and energy it will take to keep MPC aware of, and involved in, the issues effecting quality-of-life in our region’s dynamic north quadrant,” said MarySue Barrett, president of the nonprofit, non-partisan planning council.
In her previous work as a government and community affairs consultant, the 48-year-old Kellough helped organize the School-Age Child Care program at the Highland Park Park District. She also helped rewrite the suburb’s Master Plan and its redevelopment strategy for the Skokie Highway Corridor. She has been active in the League of Women Voters, the Jewish United Fund and the Chicago Council on Urban Affairs.
“MPC is giving me an opportunity to build on my past interests and to see where those interests come together,” Kellough said. “These are issues I care deeply about — affordable housing, sensible growth — and they are issues that effect people directly, not in some abstract, policy-wonk way.”
MPC’s Barrett said the Chicago-based Council, though always metropolitan in scope, is raising its profile in the suburbs, where so many of the region’s challenges and opportunities are unfolding. A decision was made to recruit outreach staff in both the north and south suburban sub-regions. Meanwhile, downtown-based staff track issues and establish contacts in assigned suburban areas.
This year MPC has mounted research and advocacy efforts on several issues, including: state legislation to foster sensible growth instead of unplanned sprawl; an increased school funding foundation level; adequate public investment in transportation infrastructure; and improved housing choices for a growing workforce.