Village Council Forum: Question 2

Sean Durkin
The areas that I think are critical in this election is the finances. I have the depth, knowledge and experience managing municipal budgets both from my tenure on the Village Council as well as my professional career in government and banking. Economic development, I think is going to be a major issue as we go forward.

This Village Council, this village as a whole, has been very successful at retaining and attracting businesses to our community. These businesses that come to our community help us in many ways not only with jobs, but also the sales tax. Sales tax dollars are dollars that we use for our general fund, eliminating the need to rely so heavily upon the property tax.

And the last item is exceptional core services. We must continue to be innovative in finding funding sources to continue balancing the budget without raising property taxes, while providing premier core services such as police, fire, public works for the benefit of all of our residents. 

John Page
I think when it comes down to it, when you look at what is going to face us over the next four years, it is really determining what is the soul of this community. It's more than just fiscal responsibility, although those that know me know that is core to my belief. But what draws businesses to this community, and what draws people to live here, is what Downers Grove is.

We've got to determine what it is that we want to fund. We’ve got to determine what it is we are willing to do with and without. And part of that is what’s going to determine the culture and the soul of this organization, of this culture of Downers Grove, of our village. And one of the things that will help us to draw new businesses is a strong soul of the village. Because people live and work in a place that they really, really, love. That will help us to draw more business to Downers Grove. That will help us to increase our fiscal responsibility. That will help us to balance budgets, and that will help us to increase our ability to serve the entire community.

Gregory Hose´
The critical issue in this campaign and facing us moving forward is balancing the needs of the community, as well as our budget. We need to make sure that when we are considering eliminating or reducing an expenditure, that we examine not simply the dollar cost, but we look at its impact on the community, the value that we get.

Core services and funding those are obviously an important thing, but core services are not an end of themselves, they are a means to an end, and that is serving the community and providing the residents with the services they are looking for at the best possible cost. It's a matter of ensuring that we listen to residents and provide them with the services they want. The key to that is value.

Becky Rheintgen
I think one of the most critical issues is continuing the hard work that the current council has done. They've made a lot of tough decisions to try to get our budget in balance. And you look back to 2010 and we had to borrow $300,000 from reserves just to be able to operate, and that's including all the cuts that were made.

We don't know what the next year's financial situation is going to be, it's uncertain. So, to start going backwards, I think it won't be prudent for the village. We've need to continue down the path they've done a lot of hard work on, and we need to continue to focus on providing exceptional basic municipal services to our residents.

Dominic Scalzetti
I think some of our critical issues as were said, it is our finances and balancing the budget. We need to continue to aggressively pursue economic development and because economic development brings jobs to Downers Grove and brings some money into Downers Grove.

Over the past few years I think residents have seen their taxes go up and were concerned about paying for core services and how they're going to pay for the core services— are their taxes going to have to go up again and again to pay for core services. I think the residents don't want to pay more for less and I think they are concerned about what the council is going to do to make sure that they continue to provide the services that they are used to receiving, without the taxes going up. 

Mark Thoman
The basic issue relates to budget and basic services and how are we going to pay for more of those basic services. The current council, and those who say stay the course, support spending more, borrowing more, taxing more—all the while giving us less. Well, that's not sustainable. First, we have to have a community-wide discussion about how much were willing to pay for basic services and how much were willing to pay for the extras. Like I said in my opening comments, you have to keep an overall idea of a balanced approach to both the fiscal and business and the community issues.

Craig Skala
One of the critical issues is balancing the budget. Everybody wants services but they don't want their taxes raised. And I believe that we will have to further look at the budget, possibly make some more decreases because, like I said, nobody wants their taxes increased.

The one area where we can take care of that is increasing economic development. By increasing economic development we will be able to bring new businesses into town, which will also increase our taxes—our sales tax that we get back—and will also bring new residents to the village that get good jobs through these new businesses that come into town, which also will help our tax base. 

Geoff Neustadt
The most critical issue to me, and I think to our residents, is managing our revenues and expenses. The budget drives our services and our programs, and the extras that are out there have been looked at and prioritized by the current council, and we have gone through and made those tough choices. We informed our residents why we were making the choices, and many of those choices have come back in different ways. We have a new counseling and social services department, a return to Grove Fest from the Rotary Club.

One of the other critical issues is investing in our community. Every day as I drive to and from the school buildings I drive over some roads that are in great shape, like Prairie Avenue, and I drive on some roads that are in not so great shape, Seeley and Montgomery. We need to fix these roads and we need to fix our sidewalks, our infrastructure, our village buildings. The way to do that is to find some economic development opportunities and continue upon that attraction and retention path that our Economic Development Corp. has done so well.

One last issue that I'd like to focus on in my next term is environmental responsibility. We have a great Environmental Concerns-Best Practices report, and if we follow it, we can continue to be stewards of our environment.