West Deerfield Township includes all of Deerfield and Bannockburn as well as small slices of Highland Park and Lake Forest, Illinois.

In pioneer times, Township government provided residents with a local link to County and State government. Township responsibilities included three items:

• maintain roads in unincorporated areas
• provide for property tax assessments
• provide for emergency assistance for those suffering from calamities such as their home burning down, etc.

But West Deerfield Township has less than two miles of roads to maintain, but those roads are in fact, maintained by the Vernon Township Highway department.

So that has left little for a Township Trustee to do. And let’s be practical, the Assessor could easily become part of County government while organizations like United Fund could assist emergency needs as they arose.

So how can a Township Supervisor and four Trustees justify their existence? The Republicans controlling West Deerfield Township had all kinds of tricks up their sleeve! Tricks like creating jobs... jobs not authorized by statute. Jobs like starting a food pantry, filling out passport applications (a duplicated task of the Postal System), and any other duplicitous activities just to keep their friends on the public payroll.

Then the Democrats announced they would slate candidates for the 2005 Consolidated election. Most thought the Democrats would reign in the expansionist government of the Township Supervisor, bu no... they decided to use your tax dollars as a power base and expand it even more.

Hopefully those days will soon come to a screeching halt as disenchantment mounts among the taxpaying electorate. To address this disenchanment, a grassroots groundswell prompted citizens from Deerfield, Bannockburn, Lake Forest, and Highland Park to form the “West Deerfield Township Independent Party.” Citizens from all major political groups - Democrats, Republicans, and Independents met in January 2009 to discuss the state of Illinois government in general and West Deerfield Township government in particular.

To read about that decisive meeting, please click HERE

To read what the League of Women Voters has to say about Township government, click HERE
To join us in our battle to restore good government, click HERE

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