'Community Conversations' Return For Second Year

On Saturday, March 7 at 3 p.m., the Elmwood Park Advocate will kick off a second year of monthly “Community Conversations” at the Elmwood Park Public Library.

The newsletter held six “Community Conversations” in the Ferrentino Room in 2025. Residents gathered to discuss traffic safety, making the village more resilient to extreme weather, immigration, ICE operations in surrounding communities, how the village has changed in recent decades, and where residents get their local news.

To begin this year’s series, we invite you to join the Elmwood Park Advocate for a discussion on government transparency in Elmwood Park.

The newsletter will also educate residents on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and present some of the work that we have been doing to obtain public records.

What are some of the obstacles to uncovering information? How responsive is the library, school district, and village when it comes to records requests?

Invite your family, friends, or neighbors, and we’ll see you at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 7, in the Ferrentino Meeting Room.

Though it is not taking place during “Sunshine Week,” the event will be tied to the annual national event, which is aimed at educating “the public, journalists, lawmakers, and others on the right to know in U.S. states and federal government.”

The Elmwood Park Advocate has submitted dozens of records requests since June. At the moment, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office of the Public Access Counselor (PAC) is reviewing two requests that we believe were improperly denied.

In January, the newsletter successfully used the PAC to convince the village to reconsider its decision to deny us records on the use of license plate reader cameras.

The school district destroyed an entire video archive of school board meeting videos that were once available on YouTube. That was learned after we submitted a FOIA request.

Last year’s “Community Conversations” were well attended. They offered us a way to connect with residents and hear perspectives from a diverse range of residents. They transcended partisan divisions that often make dialogue in online spaces and provided the newsletter a way to ground our reporting and writing in what’s important to the community.

We will have coffee and bakery treats. See you on Saturday, March 7, at 3 p.m.

*Note: The Elmwood Park Public Library has permitted resident-led groups to use meeting spaces as a community service. The Library neither sponsors nor endorses this event, the speaker(s), or the organization.