Roselle candidates discuss biggest challenge for village

The race for the three Roselle village board seats at stake in the April 5 election pits six candidates divided among different alliances.

Incumbent Barbara Rendall-Hochstadt and first-time candidates Wayne Domke and Ron Baker are running as independents. But Rendall-Hochstadt and Domke are supporting each other via publicity materials, while Baker campaigns solo.

Incumbent Richard Rhode is running on the Roselle United Party slate with newcomers Todd Eichholz and Eleanor “Elly” Paletta.

The Daily Herald asked each candidate to share what he or she believes to be the biggest challenge facing Roselle. This is an edited version of their responses:

Baker: Lack of funds is the biggest challenge. Roselle is wasting money in some areas, spending foolishly and making cutbacks in others. How can you talk about laying off police, but then put out no-bid contracts for about $30,000 to map trees because of the emerald ash borer? Or they go forward with road construction that could have waited, such as a the Foster Avenue project. You want to make the town safer, but you’re laying off police officers.

I am also concerned that at a recent meeting, they seemed in favor of moving the annual Cruise Nights because of a few business owners’ complaints that it drives customers away. Although they voted to keep the event, it appeared this might be the last year based on members’ comments.

They originally agreed to host Cruise Nights to drum up business downtown, but now it’s not good enough to stay there? This is good, clean family fun. People can’t afford to go to movies in this economy, and this is cheap entertainment that comes for three hours every Friday for about 12 weeks. The board complains it costs about $3,000 in police overtime, but if that’s true the village should use more community service officers.

Domke: Finances must be the major thing to get under control because it affects everything the village does. Taxpayers want to see something for their money.

In business we’re not as successful as we’re led to believe, or the industrial side of Roselle would be developed as well as the Hanover Park side. This needs to change to boost sales tax revenues. And some of the prospective downtown Roselle tenants have stopped looking to open because of nonnegotiable terms or because the rent is too high. We need to look at these transactions and see where they’re failing. You can’t have can’t have empty stores. I propose forming subcommittees that would debate how to better attract business.

Eichholz: The biggest challenge is, hands down, the budget. In my own company we did an efficiency test to see what we can cut down in every aspect: How do we purchase things? How do we hire people? And we found that when times were good, we got a little lazy and spent a little too much. Nobody wants to lay anybody off. But what we have to find out is what can we do with efficiency.

I think we can give the same services without cutting staff, but we need qualified leaders.

As far as increasing sales tax revenues, Roselle is in a tricky spot because we don’t have the right economics that the bigger businesses want. We’re right in between Schaumburg and Bloomingdale. So we must be creative and work with businesses to make Roselle attractive to them.

Paletta: The budget is the biggest challenge. Roselle faces a $650,000 deficit, and there is no way to make that up in revenue. Property taxes are now stable and consistent. But shared income tax — which has gone down and is a reality for everyone everywhere — is projected to be only $1.8 million in 2011. Sales tax is also down.

I commend Mayor (Gayle) Smolinski for appointing two trustees to a task force to look at services we are providing and probably can’t afford. Everything requires some more in-depth analysis.

Roselle spends $3.1 million on (its) fire department. What exactly are we spending that money on? We must scrutinize police, fire, water, sewer, administration and finance. If the village runs out of money in three years, we are going to have to show where the money went.

Rendall-Hochstadt: While the budget is the obvious answer, Roselle’s other major challenge is electing qualified leaders.

Roselle needs good, thoughtful people who have a vision for our future. We’ve got to do a better job as a community of connecting the voices of residents and business owners to move the village forward.

We also need to not have such a tendency to start with a blank sheet. We can bring what’s going on in other communities into our thinking, and learn from their successes. Roselle needs to start making data-driven decisions.

Rhode: Revenues seem to be flat right now, while we are also being controlled on state statutes with how they direct us on spending like pensions. This is why our task force is taking one department at a time and brainstorming as a total what could be done differently.

We are really prudent in providing services. But Roselle only has two months in financial reserves, and we are supposed to have three.

So we need to keep downtown vibrant, as well as the Lake Street corridor. We’re constantly looking at different things what we can control and improve, but if we overextend ourselves, that’s where we can run into trouble.