Andy Byars, who is running for town council is giving off a different vibe now that he’s received money from Jonathan Callaway.
“It’s not necessarily the best look,” said Marc Tiritilli, a candidate for Normal Town council. “Campaigns are expensive, so everyone tends to welcome money, but Andy Byars has previously positioned himself as a Republican and that is not the look I am getting from his campaign. If you look at his donors and who has signed his petitions. Mayor Koos and Kevin McCarthy, the Democrat establishment here in town…”
Callaway is Byars boss and works for Recall Strategies, a Chicago/Washing DC lobbying firm. Callaway has contributed money to Democrat Cook County Chair who ran for Chicago mayor and Jay Inslee, the Democrat governor of Washington state.
On Mr. Callaway’s linked in page, where he lists “Recall Strategies”
Callaway has also contributed to Normal Town councilman Scott Preston’s campaign for a failed attempt at state representative in the 91st district.
Callaway is the Top Donor of Byars’ and Tiritilli is largely self- funded. Callaway contributed $6,000 to Byars’ campaign.
Tiritilli points out that Byars also serves on the Planning Commission that is chaired by RC McBride, the General Manager of WGLT and chair of the PAC for Unit 5’s tax referendum which will appear on the April ballot, and Byars did not voted against a controversial sign ordinance to head to council because he was not present at the November meeting.
“A recommendation from this body does not necessarily ensure like-action from the council,” said McBride at the hot planning commission meeting where the sign ordinance was discussed. “I want to be clear, we have guard rails as a Planning Commission and honestly public opinion is not necessarily one of those. We hear it and it’s on record.”
Tiritilli was also at the meeting.
“They recently had a vote about a sign ordinance that became much more restrictive than it was,” said Tiritilli. “And during the deliberations, Andy was dismissive of public input and wanted to move things along and he was in favor of the way things were, which limited political speech.”
Tiritilli had 4×4 signs in his race for mayor and had a lot of people reach out to him for those bigger signs so they could put them in their yards.
“Residents said they wanted to make a big statement. They asked me for those. The intention of those were to planted next to highways and high traffic areas. I never promoted them,” said Tiritilli. “Now they are illegal in Normal. I spoke before the planning commission and told them this was infringing political speech. People have been asking for these and you are restricting these without a clear reason as to why and Mr. Byars was all in favor of that.”
In the August meeting where the controversial sign ordinance was discussed, town staff had proposed requirements that signs may not be displayed for more than 84 days in any calendar year.
According to the August meeting minutes, Byars stated he thinks the time limit is tricky and that he is not completely closed off to temporary signs having no limit.
