Tom Price: Candidate Profile

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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:BioQA Bio City: West DundeeWebsite: Candidate did not respond.Office sought: West Dundee Village Board Age: 54Family: Son: Nick Price, 24 Son: Matt Price, 20 Son: Danny Price, 15Occupation: Civil EngineerEducation: BS Engineering, UW Madison MS Engineering, UW MadisonCivic involvement: Volunteer for various Village activities, including Heritagefest, Dickens in Dundee, Earth day. Usher at First Congregational Church of Dundee. Occasional docent for Historical Society.Elected offices held: Village Trustee since 2007. Prior to that on Planning Zoning Commission since approximately 1990.Questions Answers What makes you the best candidate for the job?I have a long history with the community as both an appointed and an elected official and therefore I have a lot of institutional knowledge. By day, I am a civil engineer involved with site planning and development. This provides me with a good understanding of community infrastructure as well as the factors affecting development decisions and development processes from the private side.What is your opinion of your community's present level of local sales and property taxes? Is the tax just right, too low or too high? Explain.I believe our taxing level is appropriate. We have been very conscientious about staffing levels and being efficient about how we invest tax payer money. As a result the total burden of taxes and fees of our residents is about the lowest in the area. Our sales tax is fairly competitive with surrounding areas.Rate the efficiency of your town's police and fire coverage. Are the departments well prepared for the next decade? What, if anything, should be changed? Do you have specific public safety concerns?We have been very efficient with staffing levels utilizing both full time and part time police and fire. This allows us to have good coverage while not being over-staffed. We are currently exploring consolidation strategies for fire protection to provide improve coverage while maintaining or reducing costs. Even without formal consolidation, West Dundee and our neighboring communities have been working hard to share services to improve responsiveness to emergencies. We also have invested in technology to maximize performance and efficiency.Where, if anywhere, could the current budget be trimmed, and conversely, are there areas the budget does not give enough money to?Our budget is very tight and wherever there are opportunities to trim we pursue those. Staffing is the number one cost for any community and, as referenced above, we are exploring consolidation of fire protection services that will help us to improve coverage and response time without increasing staffing levels.What's one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?You heard this question on NPR, didn't you. If I were keeping the good ideas to myself, I wouldn't be doing my job as a trustee.What other issues, if any, are important to you as a candidate for this office?Economic development is very important to our community. Our retail sector has been somewhat slow to recover. For a long time we had the major regional mall in the area but with development along Randall Road and on Route 59, a lot of our market area has been cut off. Thus, it is important for us to identify new ways to attract people to our community. Some good ways to do that are increasing the diversity of our housing stock, attracting employment, increasing the vitality of our downtown and taking more advantage of the River as a recreational asset.Please name one current leader who most inspires you.Elon Musk. He is truly brilliant and follows his own path. He is interested in ground breaking technology and happens to make money at it.What's the biggest lesson you learned at home growing up?Be honest and work hard.If life gave you one do-over, what would you spend it on?Candidate did not respond.What was your favorite subject in school and how did it help you in later life?Physics Political Science. Physics helped me realize engineering was for me. Both helped me hone my critical thinking skills in diverse ways.If you could give your children only one piece of advice, what would it be?Be honest and good to all people and always say what you mean and mean what you say.