Whoever is elected Orland Park's mayor next month will inherit a job with more responsibilities and a bigger salary, although one of the men running for the position prefers to keep the status quo intact.

Running for his seventh term, Dan McLaughlin heads up the First Orland slate along with current village Clerk John Mehalek and Trustees Dan Calandriello, Jim Dodge and Kathy Fenton.

Seeking to unseat McLaughlin is Keith Pekau, who has no previous experience in elected office and said it was the village board's vote last fall to make the mayor's position a full-time job and boost the position's salary that prompted him to run. He said he wants to see the job remain part-time and for elected village officials to be limited to two, four-year terms in office.

McLaughlin said the village has been fiscally responsible, keeping tax levies unchanged the past six years and rebating a total of $39 million in property taxes to homeowners over 12 of the last 15 years.

Pekau contends that the village's tax rate has risen sharply in the past decade, and that Orland Park's debt load is not sustainable.

The village's debt was $14 million in 1998 and has grown to more than $150 million, Pekau said. McLaughlin said the figure is $109 million.

The figure includes bond debt the village assumed in connection with developing the Main Street Triangle, north of 143rd Street and west of LaGrange Road, where the Ninety 7 Fifty on the Park apartments and the University of Chicago Medicine Center for Advanced Care are located. The debt number also reflects pension obligations for village employees.

McLaughlin said the village has a “reasonable” amount of debt, and has relied on borrowing only “for public improvement projects, not to balance the budget,” which Pekau has said during the campaign. The mayor noted Orland Park's prime ratings from credit rating firms.

“We have one of the highest credit ratings in the area,” he said. “Moody's and Standard & Poor's don't give you high credit ratings if you have outrageous debt. We're in great financial shape.”

Pekau also pointed to a jump in the village's property tax rate of 76 percent over the past decade, a steeper increase than other local taxing bodies, such as school districts.

McLaughlin said the village's property tax levy has remained unchanged the last six years, although property owners are seeing their tax rate increase because of a decrease in the overall value of property in the village due to the recession. While the amount of money sought by the village in taxes has stayed the same, the amount is spread over a property base that has less value than it did several years ago, prior to the recession.

Pekau also said that more needs to be done to diversify the village's tax base.

“We're primarily a restaurant, car dealership, retail town,” he said, adding that attracting corporate headquarters to the village would also provide more employment opportunities for residents.

“The mayor's sole focus has been the Main Street Triangle,” Pekau said.

The mayor said the village needs “to be aggressive in developing the I-80 Corridor” west of LaGrange and south of Orland Parkway/183rd Street, but also remain “focused on smart planning and development of our downtown area.” McLaughlin said the downtown development, which also includes properties northeast of 143rd and LaGrange, “has been moving forward in a very positive way” because of the village being “very selective” as far as the types of development it has sought.

Earlier this week, the village announced plans for an upscale movie theater that a developer wants to open in the Triangle. Pekau said he questioned whether that development could ultimately hurt Orland Park's Marcus cineplex farther south on LaGrange.

McLaughlin, 63, ran unopposed four years ago, and in the 2009 municipal race easily defeated Gerald Maher, garnering almost 64 percent of the vote. Maher also had run against McLaughlin in 2001.

Before being elected mayor in 1993, McLaughlin served as a village trustee from 1983 to 1991. He is executive director of the Builders Association, a trade group for the commercial construction industry in the Chicago area, and served as executive director of the Plumbing Contractors Association of Chicago from 1991 until 2013, and executive director of the Plumbing Council of Chicagoland from 2008 to 2013.

Pekau, 50, served in the Air Force for more than nine years after receiving his degree in aerospace engineering from Arizona State University, and while in the Air Force earned an MBA from Duke University. After leaving the military in 1998, Pekau worked as a management consultant for Marakon Consulting and L.E.K. Consulting, then, in 2003, switched gears and purchased a tree service company, which morphed into GroundsKeeper Landscape Care. The business was originally in Lemont and is now headquartered in Mokena. His father, Don, was an Orland Park trustee for six years.

Keith Pekau says it was a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving last year when he decided to challenge McLaughlin.

He said he expected someone to come forward to run against the mayor after the Village Board at an October meeting voted to make the mayor's job a full-time position and boost the salary, which would also bring a big increase in the mayor's pension after he leaves office.

“Like the residents who were at that meeting, I was upset about it,” Pekau said, referring to the dozens of people who attended and criticized the decision.

By mid-November, seeing nobody else was planning to run, Pekau said he decided “someone has to step up and challenge this issue.”

Now paid $40,000 as mayor, plus another $3,000 a year for serving as liquor commissioner, the mayor would be paid $150,000 and the position expanded to full time, with added responsibilities of being Orland Park's lead person on economic development matters.

At the recommendation of a consultant, the village had considered hiring a second assistant village manager as well as someone to supervise economic development, which trustees said would have been more costly in the long run compared with expanding the mayor's duties and pay.

“This is a different solution to that issue,” McLaughlin said of making the mayor's job full time. “There is so much more stuff I could do if I had more time to do it.”

Another recommendation by the consultant resulted in the village last year hiring a chief technology officer to oversee information technology functions, and he is developing a 311 system, similar to what Chicago has, to better handle residents' request for service, McLaughlin said. It should help the village more quickly respond “to things like if someone reports a streetlight out on their street,” he said.

If re-elected, McLaughlin said he would give up his job with the Builders Association.

Orland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy has served as interim village manager since last summer while the village searches for a replacement, and Pekau said that with a full-time manager, the village doesn't need to also have the mayor working full time. He likened the manager's job to chief executive officer of a corporation, overseeing day-to-day operations, with the mayor as chairman of the board.

Along with economic development duties and responding to residents' issues, McLaughlin said the change to a full-time position could offer him the opportunity to be in Springfield regularly to meet with legislators on the village's behalf. While the village currently has a paid lobbyist in the state capital, McLaughlin said it's possible that expense could be eliminated.

Pressed to quickly gather enough signatures to get on the ballot after deciding to run, Pekau said he “didn't have time to vet a slate” composed of candidates for clerk and trustee to run against McLaughlin's First Orland slate.

A Republican, Pekau said he hopes the tendency of Orland Township to support Republican candidates pays off for him. Much of the village is within the township boundaries, and in last year's presidential election, Donald Trump earned 51 percent of the township votes cast for president, while Hillary Clinton received just under 45 percent, according to the Cook County clerk. In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney was supported by 56 percent of township voters compared with just over 43 percent who voted for former President Barack Obama.

mnolan@tribpub.com

Twitter @mnolan_j