The following article is a local candidate profile for the position of St. Charles Mayor in the 2025 election, which takes place April 1. Lora Vitek is seeking reelection, and Clint Hull is competing for this position. Stargazer does not endorse any candidate. 

Clint Hull

What about your background do you believe makes you fit for this position?

“A couple things. One is [I was] born and raised in St. Charles, so I’ve been here for 57 years.  I was a graduate of Thompson Middle School and then St. Charles High School in 1985, and got married and raised my four kids here, so I just have a love for the community that I think is very important for a mayor to have. Next up, experience wise, I have many years of experience leading different public agencies. I was the Park Board president for the St. Charles Park Board for two years, and I was on the park board for eight years. I rose up to the level of what they call the first assisted state’s attorney at the Kane County state’s attorney’s office, so that’s the highest not-elected position, so I was responsible for managing over 50 attorneys and 70 support staff. Then I became a judge in 2009 and served as the chief judge of Kane County for four years [from] 2019 to 2023, and I was responsible for leading our court system and providing judicial services to over 550,000 people in Kane County, so when you look at the experience that it takes to run a city, I’ve had [positions] that provide me with the experience to do that.”

What steps do you take to familiarize yourself and be aware of important issues in the St. Charles community?

“One is you attend. You have to be present. You have to understand what the issues are, … and so I’ve been going to city council meetings, I’ve been going to Youth Commission meetings, going to equity inclusion meetings, and so that’s one way to get educated. Another one is to make sure that you read all the documents, the strategic plan, the comprehensive plan, and I’ve done that, as well, so that I have the background and understanding of what the city’s done up to this point in time to prepare for those issues, and then the other thing that’s really important is to talk to people, not only staff, but also citizens, to find out what they think about St. Charles. … Those are really, probably the most important conversations to have because as either an alderperson or a mayor or as a judge, you represent the people in the city, and so it’s very, very important to understand what’s important to them.”

What are the biggest obstacles in St. Charles at the moment and what are your plans to combat them?

“There’s a lot of issues facing St. Charles: the redevelopment of the Charlestowne Mall, the redevelopment of the old police station site, we have an IMEA power contract that we have to decide whether we’re going to renew or not, you have a dam that decisions have to be made about, whether it’s going to stay or go, or if there’s any modifications. … There always will be a lot of issues facing the city, but it starts, to me, the very first issue is you have to build a cohesive team that all is working together. … I don’t believe that they are working as a unit or working as strong as they can be. I think that there are some alderpeople right now that feel that their voices aren’t heard, and if their voices aren’t heard, then the people they represent aren’t being heard, so the number one priority for me is to work with those 10 alderpeople to build that team first, and then once the team gets built and everybody feels like they’re being heard and respected, then tackling all the issues is much, much easier.”

What values do you believe a mayor should prioritize when problem solving tough decisions? 

“Starts with honesty, and I’m not suggesting that the current mayor is not honest. I just think as a leader, when you talk about values, honesty, transparency, making sure that everything that’s being discussed is being discussed publicly so that the citizens know, integrity, always wanting to make sure that you’re doing the right thing for the right reason, that’s really, really important, having an optimistic in a belief in the good, that that things are going to work out okay, that you know we’re all working on behalf of all of our citizens and all of our community, and the belief that good things can happen if you work hard, and then the other part is just a strong work ethic. [You] have to be willing to put the time in to get things done because it’s not easy.”

What are you going to do to improve the lives of students, teachers and parents in St. Charles?

“The school district is a separate taxing body, so sometimes people will say, ‘Well, the mayor doesn’t have anything to do with the school district, or the city council doesn’t have anything to do with the school district,’ and I don’t believe that’s the case at all. I think that it’s really, really important that the city, the school district, the park district, the library, everybody works together because when they’re all working together, that’s going to help elevate and bring the city up, and so for me, it’s ‘What are you going to do?’ I’m going to be present. I’m going to be a part of D303, I’m going to be involved with the school board and the school district, and I’m going to do whatever I can do to continue to try to help D303, and that can be anything from speaking at events, that can be from mentoring students, that can be from making sure that I’m present and bringing the energy that needs to be brought and I’ve done that my whole life as a grad. When I was coming out of law school I had D303 lawyers who helped me in my career, and I want to do the same, and so it’s helping the students, the parents, the staff one issue at a time.”

What importance does diversity, equity and inclusion play in St. Charles?

“I applaud St. Charles and the city council for starting the Equity and Inclusion commission. I think that’s fantastic, … and I have attended. When we go back to, ‘How do you prepare?,’ I’ve been to four or five other meetings over the last year to get a better understanding of what they’re doing. The next thing is, do I think equity inclusion is important? 100%, and I would just go back to the time that I was the chief judge, which is the judge that oversees the circuit. One point in time, we kind of looked at our judiciary and said, ‘Do we think that our 31 judges represent the community that we serve?,’ and we agreed that it didn’t, … and so we really made an effort to make sure that we represented the community that we served, and I would want to do the same thing as the mayor.”

Is there anything else you would like voters to know?

“Well, I mean, just one is love the city of St Charles, and loving the city of St Charles doesn’t mean that makes you a great mayor, but in the end, I’ve been here. I love the community. I’ve served on the park board, I’ve been involved in the school district, I’ve been meeting with people at the St. Charles library. I just believe in St. Charles and believe in the people in St. Charles. I love it, and I’m really, really looking forward to serving each person to see what we can do to continue to [do]. I always say ‘Good isn’t good enough.’ There’s a lot of good things going on in St. Charles, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be better, and as the mayor, that’s what I want to do.”

Lora Vitek

What about your background do you believe makes you fit for this position?

“I grew up in the south suburbs, and I was one of four children, and my dad was a veteran, and my mom was a stay at home mom, and so just our mentality, my family’s mentality, was to be good people and to give back. … When I had gone to college, I decided to go back to school after that and I got my MBA and my Masters of Management degree. The Masters of Management degree I got was at North Park University, and the focus of that program was not-for-profit leadership so after all of that, my working career has been in the business and not-for-profit sector and when I say I’ve worked in the business sector, I have a leadership position there for my company, which is Delta Dental of Illinois, but my role is to run the foundation. … Pretty much to me, [public office] is just another way to give back. I was an alderman before I was a mayor, so that was a good experience because you would get to know if something you want to do is be mayor. After I had done that role too, combined with my work experience, I just loved seeing things grow and being able to impact organizations or cities, and that’s kind of where it all started.”

What steps do you take to familiarize yourself and be aware of important issues in the St. Charles community?

“As mayor, you know about all of the important issues. So the steps I take, I meet with business owners and residents all the time and other organizations, so we do have meetings with organizations or other taxing bodies like the school district and the park district and the forest preserve, so you get to understand the issues impacting all of those groups, too, while also just in my current job, I’m very familiar with, being the mayor currently, I’m obviously very familiar with the issues. In my other job, being the director of corporate social responsibility, I get to be able to understand things that are impacting those who may be less fortunate too, so I would say, not only understanding maybe necessarily the issues that specifically pertain to St. Charles, but I also understand some of the hardships that some of our residents and businesses may have, and having that other piece of my job.”

What are the biggest obstacles in St. Charles at the moment and what are your plans to combat them?

“A big thing we hear about a lot is what people used to call affordable housing is referred to now as attainable housing so in general, I would say because we have such a high level of services we give to our residents, things that we have here not all municipalities have. The cost of living is very high here. The city of St. Charles has a housing commission, and those appointed individuals that are appointed by me, we’ve been talking with them about strategies and ways that we can address that so with the economy the way it is now, it’s a little tricky because it doesn’t just come down to the affordability and costs for people in St. Charles, but it’s how families afford everything else to live here, too. … People were concerned about safety of walkability and bikeability in our community, and so how we’re addressing that is we developed a plan, and we’re trying to implement pieces of that plan budget for the things that would make our community, and not just downtown, but like all over, be more bikeable and walkable. In regards to safety, I would say there are other concerns that people have. The dam and Charlestowne Mall [are examples], and those are really big topics to go down. But in terms of what people have been concerned about with Charlestowne mall, what we’ve been doing is developing a lot of the east side of St. Charles, and I’ve told people when I speak often, I would encourage somebody to drive from where Pheasant Run is all the way to the west side and see how much growth and development has happened. … By doing all those other things we’ve done, by adding some new residential developments, and Fox Haven Square coming, which is pickleball, Hampton social version, and Rosebud and a few other restaurants, right next to the mall that would event essentially trigger interest in development in the mall, so it is a strategy in itself to make some other opportunities around the mall, so that someone would want to buy that and develop it. People [might talk] about how the dam or the old police station are big projects, and those are big projects but I think the main concerns people have are a lot more often the mall, but I hear just safety in the community, biking, walking, all those things are I think probably more mentioned.”

What values do you believe a mayor should prioritize when problem solving tough decisions? 

“I think definitely the most important thing when you’re problem solving is, when I’m making this decision and you’re working with your alderman, you really do want to lead the process and also educate them and encourage them, so I think the most important thing to consider when you’re making any decision, or what we do for the people in St. Charles is like, ‘What is in the best interest and what is the best interest for the majority?’ Understanding that not everyone’s going to be happy with the decision, but what’s in the best interest as a whole? … I think it also has to be considered sometimes with how the economy is and with how many things we want to do in St. Charles, we just do have to be cognizant of prioritizing things. And so you have to value that too, like being able to prioritize and understanding that, maybe there’s something I really want to get done, but as a whole for the community, there may be something that’s way more important and might be way more costly and we might have to tackle that first. [The values should be] definitely in the best interest of St. Charles, for the majority of St. Charles, and being able to be considerate of costs.”

What are you going to do to improve the lives of students, teachers and parents in St. Charles?

“One thing [I’ve tried to do] is spend time with different community groups and spend time at all the high schools. … I often meet with community groups and just [educate] all of [St. Charles’ youth] and the importance of getting involved in the community too, because it is [their] community. If I look at my daughter, I want her to be part of the decision making process, too, because the community is what we all make of it, and so that starts with voting when you’re 18, … so being better communicators to [that] age group is something I think is important. I think we need to be able to understand how [they] all get information and news so that we can educate [them] on issues, too, in St. Charles because if you’re aware of what’s going on, that gives you more of a voice, and you would be able to participate better because your voice is important, too, so I think that’s very important, just to understand everything.”

What importance does diversity, equity and inclusion play in St. Charles?

“When we developed the Equity and Inclusion Commission, we hired a consultant to help us with this process, and they were very adamant for us at the time to leave out the word ‘diversity.’ What her rationale was is that everyone in this community is diverse, whether it’s gender, race, religion, age, whatever, none of us are the same, and I do agree with that because I think that with how many people live in this community, everyone has something different to offer … Now, why I think it’s important, and I think we’re doing [it the right way], is because some of the things we’re tackling now are things like talking about seniors, older adults. Most people just jump to that equity and inclusion just really has to do with race and gender and sexuality, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with that so by talking about those topics, they talk about mental health. They’ve developed subgroups. For example, one thing that the group has just done was looking at our ADA compliance in all of the buildings, which means, are people able to access a city council meeting? Are people able to hear? Are there hearing impairments that, when they’re in our meeting, maybe the chamber that they’re in has an echo where people who have hearing aids [can’t hear]. These are all public buildings, like our police department or fire department, our city building, and if people can’t access them because of their different needs or their diverse health considerations, [that’s the focus] so that group did do a tour with our HR director and some of our city staff, and they went through every building and identified all the things that could be improved. Now this will take a while to adjust them all because it does cost a lot of money, but they’ve begun to prioritize what should happen first. … The people that are members of it, and we have all members from the community that are involved, so it’s people from every age. We have a member that has a physical disability, so we’ve got a lot of people involved, and they’re just trying to assess all these things for the community so the federal level is different than the state level and the city level, but I think that the way we’ve handled our commission has been something that I think everybody in the city, regardless of political beliefs, should be supportive of.”

Is there anything else you would like voters to know?

“I think that I have experience on the city council, so being an alderman before and being a mayor, I believe that makes me the best candidate. Plus, under my administration, with the staff we have in our city council, we’ve done a really good job at making things better in the community, including our financial system situation, and bringing businesses to our community and just being community focused with things like First Street Plaza and our bikeability and walkability study. The question I always ask is, ‘If things are good and people are happy, and when I’m going door to door, they are saying they’re happy, then why do we need to change? Why should we change when things are going in a great direction?’”