By Jeff Vorva
Palos Park residents are being encouraged to move with their mayor.
No, first-year Mayor Nicole Milovich-Walters is not leaving the village. She is taking part in a fitness program in 2024 called Move with the Mayor.
Each month, she is scheduled to do an activity with members of the community. The first takes place from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Jan. 11 with a low-impact fitness class at the gym in the Palos Park Recreation and Parks Department, 8901 W. 123rd St.
“I’m so excited about this,” Milovich-Walters said at the Jan. 8 village council meeting at the Kaptur Center. “We’ve paired up with the national movement, (the National Forum for Heart Disease). It’s a national initiative designed to promote active, healthy living in our community.
“Each month, I’ll be hosting an event to encourage our residents to be more physically active and to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
The mayor and instructor Charles Wells will lead a senior exercise class and she said everyone is welcome to attend the free event.
“Any movement is good movement so come out and join us,” Milovich-Walters said.
“Mayors encourage their communities to be physically active and lower their chances of heart disease and its risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes,” the initiative’s website said.
Last year, Evergreen Park Mayor Kelly Burke participated in a Move with the Mayor initiative and in September offered up a Fit City Challenge to her residents.
Nearby Frankfort also participated in 2023 as Mayor Keith Ogle participated in various activities across his village from Sept. 1 through Oct. 15.
Other business
- The council approved a contribution of $117,473 to the Intergovernmental Risk Management Agency for 2024. In recent years, the contribution has been in the $90,000 range but the village needed funding to make repairs from flood damage done to the Kaptur Center that occurred on Christmas 2022.
- It also approved a $7,754 proposal from Continental Auto Transmission to repair a transmission on a public works truck.
