Tom Rooney: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: Rolling MeadowsWebsite: http://www.rooneysbus.comOffice sought: Rolling Meadows MayorAge: 42Family: Widowed in 2005 (Colleen), two children (Chris - 20, Brian - 17)Occupation: High school social studies teacherEducation: B.A. History, Loyola UniversityM.P.A. (Masters in Public Administration), Northern Illinois UniversityCivic involvement: Candidate did not respond.Elected offices held: Alderman, 4th Ward, Rolling Meadows 2000-9Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: NoCandidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 It'll be very important during this contract year for the City Council to be able to hold the line in negotiations without doing damage to Council/staff relations. That's as tricky as it is vital.Key Issue 2 People have to be able to count on their city government for consistency. People already have a hard time believing the government when it says it's going to do something ... so every time government falls through on something it said it would do, the people's trust falls even further. Sure, sometimes a course needs to be changed or an exception made ... but that needs to be done clearly and decisively, too. And temporary expediency usually an unacceptable reason for changes or exceptions.Key Issue 3 It probably seems pretty ho-hum to most folks, but a large part of the mayor's job is being the chair of the Council. My training in parliamentary procedure and presiding skills can be a good asset in improving the flow and efficiency of Council meetings and Council business.Questions Answers What makes you the best candidate for the job?I'm ready to go on day one. My M.P.A is a significant qualification that has given me a much closer look at the council-manager form of government than most folks get. My two terms on the Council have given me a first-hand look at the types of things that work and those that don't, as well as the struggles that go into making tough decisions.Given the delicate balance between the need for revenue and over-taxing local businesses, what is your opinion of your community's present level of local sales taxes? Is the tax just right, too low or too high? Explain.The city's sales taxes are okay where they are, partly due to the work that I and a majority of the Council did to pass the only *de*crease in a tax that I can recall in my entire time in Rolling Meadows. (We decreased the food and beverage tax by a half a percent). Now, to not pull the usual politician trick of exaggerating their claims with half-truths, the Council had recently raised the food/beverage tax by 1%, and the minority of us who opposed the increase were only able to build a majority to scale it back a half a percent. But still ... the 1 percent increase was passed into law and stood for a while, until a few of us worked to cut it back.Talking with your friends and neighbors, what seems to be their biggest public safety concern? Explain the concern as you see it, and discuss how you think it should be addressed.The biggest concern I hear from neighbors is worry that we might be spreading our public safety personnel too thin. For example, I live near the fire station at Meadow and Kirchoff. When the third fire station was proposed, people were worried that the resources would be split between the station near us and the new station, decreasing our response time. Now that cutbacks have shrunk the city staff, people are glad that we're spending less ... but they wonder if we're spread a little thin for the kind of coverage we've come to expect. The way to address it is to maintain staff levels and make our coverage as visible as possible.In these tight economic times, municipal budgets have to be prioritized. Where, if anywhere, could the current budget be trimmed, and conversely, are there areas the budget does not give enough money to?Shaving individual line items has its place, but it's a fairly futile exercise that makes people feel like they did something when the actual impact is usually quite small. Employment costs are the key item that must be contained. On the expense side, the Council's stated goal of a million dollars a year spent on roads is rarely achieved ... the money often gets siphoned off to other projects or transferred out to cover other bills.What#146;s one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?I'd like to steal an idea from a community I lived in 15 years ago ... every once in a while the city officials set up a canopy in a park or parkway in town, set up a few card tables with some donuts and coffee, and were simply available to anyone who walked by or wanted to come out on a Saturday morning to talk to their elected officials. It's a good idea.