County Board - District 4 Incumbent

Questions & Answers

What is the importance of the County Board to your constituents in Champaign County?

To provide cost effective mandated public services for Courts, Public Safety, Tax collection for taxing bodies, Highway and roads, and general operations for those county services and staff to name a few responsibilities. We also provide as elected officials the oversight of budgets for other organizations in our county as example RPC, U of I extension, County Health Department and we supply grant funding from the quarter cent sales tax for social programs and make appointments to boards and other organizations.

What is a key policy difference between you and your Opponent?

The key policy difference is that I helped lead a group to finally fulfill the will of the voters of Champaign County and sell the Champaign County Nursing Home by a bipartisan vote of the county board. We were able to return a million-dollar subsidy for the operations for the Champaign County Nursing Home to the operations funds of Champaign County. This will allow the new owner to provide better quality care for the residents at the Champaign county nursing home and retain a great staff.

The County Board is responsible for a yearly budget of nearly $130 million. How would prioritize this money, and are there any parts of the current budget you would change?

The larger budget is comprised of the budgets for the Sheriff’s office, Courts and Regional Planning (Some of the largest budgets) as examples. Each department determine their budgets and present them through the County Administrator to the county board. The County Board is responsible for the operation budget and the quarter cent safety sales tax to discuss or modify for spending. That amount is between $250.000 to $300.000 and is already tied up in Re-entry and the Youth Assessment Center.

We will have savings from the sale of the nursing home which will be used to pay debt to vendors over the next 3 years. A crucial priority is the computer and software updates that are long overdue which will cost more than $8 million dollars and take 7 or 8 years to implement. Next year’s budget we’ll be able to begin to replace our aging phone, answering, voicemail, computer security systems and schedule an evaluation for replacement of our Enterprise Planning System, the aging accounting system. While we have some responsibility for levies and can request changes to the budgets during times like the recession of 2008, we don’t have a lot of places to cut.

Is there anything else you would like to say to an undecided voter in Champaign County?

I want to say thank you for this opportunity to address voters who of course pay the bills and live with the decisions we make as elected officials. We try to make decisions locally and address issues that are important to our communities. There is far too much noise for lack of a better term out there, we really need to just talk to each other, show some respect to each other, listen and get things accomplished on the County Board. I have tried to do that and have had some success with others. Please vote for me and allow me to continue serve you on the County board. Vote and be involved, be part of this great community.

Thank you