Genoa alderman announces bid for mayor in 2021; Vicary won’t seek reelection

GENOA – After previously serving as the Genoa City Clerk and currently as a city alderman, Dennis Di Guido recently announced he is now running for the city mayor’s office.

Di Guido said he has a deep passion for local government and thinks it's important to be involved at this level. He said it makes for the most immediate impact for local issues and that type of involvement starts at home.

Di Guido said he acknowledges it might be an unusual time to pursue this kind of office, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“But it’s something where I look forward to the challenge and I’m eager to take it on,” Di Guido said.

The announcement came after current Genoa Mayor Mark Vicary recently confirmed he will not be running for reelection for the seat. Vicary’s confirmation came as current DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith and Sycamore Mayor Curt Lang announced they were both stepping down from their seats and not running for re-election.

Di Guido said one of the larger issues the city faces is economic development. He said the city recently implemented a façade improvement program that was meant to beautify the city's downtown area and, hopefully, attract more businesses to the city.

“It’s important that we not only have a diversity of our businesses, but we have the right type of businesses so people don’t have to travel far to find them," Di Guido said.

Di Guido said he also advocated to reduce fire and police dispatch fees for the city by about 30% – or from about $165,000 to about $115,000.

Di Guido said he also would like to see more streamlined communication between other facets of local government. He said he would like to see less of the communication burden being placed on constituents if they wanted to propose a solution to any city-related problem, citing a more recent example of someone wanting to request a bicycle rack being installed in front of the city's library.

“Let’s work collaboratively on those issues and work on them instead of passing the buck on them,” Di Guido said.

Di Guido previously was appointed as city clerk in 2015. He later ran uncontested for a Ward 2 alderman seat in 2017 and won, according to DeKalb County election records.

Vicary said he agreed that one of the city's biggest issues is economic development.

“We have to be really nimble," Vicary said. "We don’t have the luxury of big box stores.”

Vicary said not having that type of revenue coming in on top of what sales tax revenue is currently being brought in makes budget time a little harder for the city, along with other communities within northern DeKalb County.

“We’ve held our own and we have had a lot of businesses come here, but we’re trying to bring more in,” Vicary said.

Vicary said he was unaware of anyone else running for the seat and he was unsure about how he would approach election endorsements for the seat. He said his initial thinking is that he would prefer to see people from the current City Council or other involved community members who are familiar with city proceedings and attend council meetings often to step up.

Vicary said he has been involved in Genoa city government for about a dozen years – about four of those years as an alderman and eight as mayor. All in all, he said, it’s been a good run.

“I think it’s time for somebody else to give it a go,” Vicary said.