Candidate downplays ‘mistake’
By BRETT ROWLAND - browland@nwherald.com
FOX RIVER GROVE – A candidate doesn’t want a mistake he made last year to turn voters against him in the three-way race for village president.
Robert Nunamaker, 74, said a mistake on a renewal application cost him his real estate broker license. He downplayed the significance of the rejection.
“I’m surprised this has become an issue,” he said.
Last April, his license request was refused by the Illinois Division of Professional Regulation for “falsifying their renewal applications regarding completion of required continuing education hours,” according to state documents. He had been a licensed real estate broker since 1973 but worked full time as an electrical engineer for Motorola.
Nunamaker, a member of the village’s Planning and Economic Development Committee, said that when his license renewal came up last year, he filled out the forms and sent them in as usual. Nunamaker assumed that he had been “grandfathered” in and was exempt from the continuing education requirements. Later Nunamaker received a phone call and was told he would have to complete 30 hours of education classes to renew the license.
Since he hadn’t sold a home since 1996 and no longer needed it, Nunamaker said he told the state he would rather not renew the license. He said he never was fined by the Illinois Division of Professional Regulation.
Most of the real estate work Nunamaker did was in buying and selling his own homes over the years, he said.
Nunamaker took responsibility for the mistake and said it could have been prevented if he had read the renewal forms “more carefully.”
“I hope voters will focus on my many years of service to the community and not the fact that I messed up in renewing my real estate license,” he said.
Village Trustee Paulette Pelletier and former village Trustee Suzanne Blohm also are seeking Fox River Grove’s highest elected office.
