Donald ‘Donny’ Schmit: 2025 candidate for Fox Lake village president

Bio

Office sought: Fox Lake village president

City: Fox Lake

Age: 71

Occupation: Fox Lake village president

Previous offices held: Current Fox Lake village president; former planning commissioner and trustee

Why are you running for this office? Is there a particular issue that motivates you? Also, what makes you the best candidate for the position?

Being mayor isn’t just about holding office — it’s another way to give back to the community.

Serving Fox Lake has always been my priority.

• 25-plus years with the Fox Lake Volunteer Fire Department

• Regular visits to our senior complexes and hosting an annual lasagna dinner since 2009

• Recipient of Christi Fidelis award from Cardinal George as volunteer of the year, festival chairman and founder of St. Bede’s Food Pantry

• Coached youth wrestling and football for 6 years each

• Installed water mains, sprinkler systems and 911 center equipment — at no cost to the village of Fox Lake.

Over the years, you have seen me volunteering at virtually every village, fire department and St. Bede event.

My goals are to continue revitalizing our downtown, attract new development and support existing businesses. We will continue to provide incentives through our business development districts, incentive programs and our TIF districts.

With the additional parking, park enhancements, landscaping and a water feature in our downtown, to creating a generational family venue at our lakefront to improving roads and infrastructure, I have a proven track record of delivering results for our community.

What is the most serious issue your community will face in coming years and how should leaders respond to it?

I want to keep Fox Lake as a great, affordable, safe place to raise a family. By attracting more business, supporting our existing businesses and attracting new development, we can provide more services to our residents without increases in taxes and fees.

How would you describe the state of your community's finances? What should be the top priorities for spending during the next few years? Are there areas of spending that need to be curtailed?

Our finances have continued to improve under my administration. Sales tax revenue and the net worth of the village have both increased over 35% since I took office.

We are conservative when it comes to spending our taxpayer’s money. Though we could issue more bonds, we choose a conservative plan when it comes to going into debt.

Under state statutes, the village’s aggregated general obligation indebtedness cannot exceed 8.625% of the value of taxable property within the village. The total debt applicable to this limit was $12,205,009, which is well below the $33,128,913 set by law (using the 2023 taxable equalized assessed value of $384,103,344).

Top priorities for spending are development of our downtown and vacant parcels. Unfortunately, we can only spend the funds we have on capital projects, so we cannot repair as many streets as we would like to.

What do you see as the most important infrastructure project you must address? Why and how should it be paid for? Conversely, during these uncertain economic times, what project(s) can be put on the back burner?

Repairing our 50-plus miles of streets has been and always will be our biggest infrastructure challenge. We have received several grants to repair the many streets that we have repaired the past several years.

We will continue to explore every option to fund our street repair. We recently received a grant from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to do a street assessment. We have also developed a Capital Improvement Program to meet the needs of our residents.

Describe your leadership style and explain how you think it will be effective in producing effective actions and decisions with your village board

Transparent and open are the two words that describe my leadership style. Every person at the village hall has full access to my calendar and are instructed to schedule a meeting with anyone who wants to meet with me. I attend virtually every village event and interact with our residents. I also visit our four senior complexes every two months, regularly visit our schools, and host the scout groups several times a year. I involve our board on all decisions.

What’s one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?

We are marketing our community through the “This is the Life Fox Lake” program and are already seeing benefits. We have a lot to offer and marketing our community is going to be a priority for attracting new development and filling empty businesses.