Meet the Village Trustee Candidates: Cathy Cawiezel

Editor's note: this article was updated on March 7 at 6 p.m. We removed Cawiezel's employment history from the end of the story and moved it to the second paragraph. We clarified her position at her previous jobs and properly identified which Brondyke that Ms. Cawiezel succeeded.

What do you need to know about this spring's village board trustee candidates? We will be running one candidate profile each day this week (in alphabetical order for fairness's sake) at 11 a.m.

Have questions? Keep these profiles for reference prior to the Mar. 23 , sponsored by the Lisle Area Chamber of Commerce, where the dialogue will be driven by resident questions.

Looking for a specific candidate's profile? Here's when to find them.

Monday: Mark Boyle

Wednesday: Gary Ledvora

Thursday: Richard Wilkie

Friday: Ed Young

Cathy Cawiezel

Cathy Cawiezel said she is a fiscal conservative who hopes to continue serving the community she loves as a trustee. 

Cawiezel, a life-long Lisle resident, was appointed village trustee in December 2009 to finish Kim Brondyke's term. She is an accountant by profession, and served as accounting department manager for the Morton Arboretum and Morton International. Her most recent position was controller at the University of St. Francis, in Joliet, through 2010.

“As a lifelong Lisle resident and one who loves the village and plans to stay here, the decisions made by our local governing bodies affect me very personally,” Cawiezel said. “I have always appreciated serving. My family and I are community-service orientated and this is a wonderful opportunity to serve the community I love.”

Cawiezel said she is telling voters she cares about Lisle and has the residents’ best interests as she listens to their concerns.

For Lisle to do well, Cawiezel said there should be ongoing support of public safety and other public services to insure the public has dependable, excellent and integral service.  

“This needs to be done with fiscal conservatism,” Cawiezel said. “I’ve been very proud that Lisle has been operating with a balanced budget. So many communities during this very difficult recession have been struggling to fill very large gaps in their budget. Since I have been on the board and before that, the board has been very responsible in balancing the budget.”

Cawiezel said the Village Board made some fiscally sound defensive measures like not giving pay increases to non-bargaining employees for two consecutive years and increasing the amount employees pay for their health benefits.

Other solutions she said would help to balance the budget would be to cut back on aesthetic landscaping and assist the staff in applying for more state and federal grants like the $10,000 the village received for the , another paying for a new sidewalk on the north side of Ogden Avenue west of Main Street and applying for federal funding to subsidize more than $50,000 for snow removal from the blizzard.

Cawiezel said development should respect the quality of life that attracts people to live or stay in a suburb by not constructing high-density projects. She voted three times to reduce density that would have a negative impact to residential life, including reducing the future Banner apartment complex for senior citizens from 90 to 60 units. 

She supports the $20 million Navistar TIF district that was established and said appropriate and competitive incentives are required to stimulate business interest in Lisle’s downtown. 

Cawiezel, who is single, has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Marquette University. She is an active board member of the Lisle Heritage Society and the Friends of the Lisle Library and has taught elementary religious formation classes at St. Joan of Arc Grade School.