Questions & Answers
How do you feel about creating even more condo buildings when there are enough already?
Given the market, there may well be no new building projects of any kind, especially residential condos for quite sometime. I do believe however, that time and effort should be spent filling in the commercial spaces and growing the downtown businesses. Efforts at retaining good businesses and getting new complementary businesses should be a cooperative effort between the Downtown Management, the Economic Development Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce and the Village. As part of a small, family owned business I appreciate the challenges our local businesses face. If you talk with some of the downtown business owners and others, I believe they would give me high marks for my interest in, and understanding of the needs our central business district owners struggle with. I grew up two blocks from the tracks in Clarendon Hills and I moved to Downers Grove in 1998 after two years of searching for a house in the downtown area – the character of our Village and the success of our downtown merchants are important to me and if I’m elected, I’ll work hard to make sure the Village is a help, not a hindrance to our business community.
How do you feel about the plans for a new village hall and a new police dept. building?
These buildings really are in tough shape. I’ve seen parts of them over the past several years and I took the recent tour. The police station is full – over full, really. It is my understanding that it was built for a staff of 80 but today, there are over 120 folks working there from time to time. I’ve heard and seen concerns about preserving evidence and sufficiency of work space. Village Hall is a former ball-bearing factory which, when first used as Village Hall in 1969, was anticipated to be an effective home for approximately 20 years… we’re now approaching 40. The costs of maintenance have been and will continue to rise because the building is highly inefficient. All that said, there is no rush for new buildings. I think Commissioner Tully’s exuberance may have been misunderstood by many. In last year’s budget, the Village Council allocated approximately $400k for study and initial design of new Village Hall and/or Police facilities. Rightly, in the face of the current economic climate, they decided (and I agree) NOT to spend that money when we were so very far away from acting upon any such plan. Rather, they decided to spend approximately $50k to continue to make progress toward the development of a plan to replace these facilities – a reality that is headed our way. I face very similar conditions in our manufacturing plant in Joliet and over the last three years, we’ve managed to increase production capacity and reduce staff levels allowing us to avoid adding on to our facility or getting a new one. One of the experiences I hope to bring to the Village Council is experience in Lean Environments – manufacturing and accounting. While we can do more with less, to avoid planning for the inevitable would be short sighted. In that spirit, I applaud the Council's decision to embrace long term financial planning and I believe I can add much to those efforts. Consideration of what we’ll need and when (Village Hall, Police Station or any other capital need) is an example of good long term strategic financial planning. The worst thing we could do is ignore capital needs and have to undertake something of this magnitude in some sort of reactionary mode without sufficient planning.
Do you have a position on global warming for Downers Grove?
I believe that one should leave things better than when they found them. You need not believe or disbelieve the various theories on the source, effects of or permanency of global warming in order to recognize that the right course of action is to reduce ones “carbon footprint”.
During my time at Commonwealth Edison, I mentioned that I led or worked on several quality and energy conservation initiatives. I worked specifically at Fist Generating Station – a WWII era station designed to run on high sulfur Illinois coal and designed with a useful life of approximately 40 years. During my time there, we evaluated, and eventually switched to low sulfur coal. Later, I led a study and produced revised operating recommendations in two areas – both directed at energy conservation. The first was an auxiliary power procedure which reduced the power consumed by the plant as it generated electricity and the second was an operating procedure which reduced the fuel consumption rates for low load operation. To be sure, the initial purpose of these efforts was to increase profitability in the face of certain deregulation – however, these efforts demonstrate that good business (and good government) need not be at odds with environmental concern and conservation.
At BarnettBates Corporation, we have taken some similar steps. Since I assumed operation responsibilities, we have modified maintenance procedures to cut compressor operation by at least 1/3, increased recycling efforts (our company manufactures steel and aluminum products) and changed lighting to reduce power consumption.
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