Christopher Scholl: 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: CarpentersvilleWebsite: savecville.orgOffice sought: Carpentersville Village Board Age: 36Family: I am married to my wife Sarah, and have 3 Children aged 12, 9 and 6.Occupation: Firefighter/ParamedicEducation: High School Diploma, Some College, State Certified Firefighter II, IDPH EMT-ParamedicCivic involvement: Candidate did not respond.Elected offices held: Candidate did not respond.Questions Answers What makes you the best candidate for the job?As both a resident and an employee of the Village, I have unique insight into the operation of the Village from the "inside" but also a true understanding of the impact that the decisions of Village Trustees have on the community. Trustees can feel the impact of their fiscal decisions on tax increases, but few, if any of the current Trustees are able to experience firsthand the impact of their public safety decisions on the operations of the Village. This is because their choices to reduce public safety and public works services is a gamble - one that they simply don't have the training or experience to understand. As a firefighter/resident in Carpentersville, I not only feel the impact of the financial decisions of the board as a resident, but also understand the misguided gamble that our Village Board has taken with the reductions they have enacted. I believe that is one of the primary reasons our legislature enacted a law granting public safety servants the ability to run for political office in the jurisdiction they serve (50 ILCS 135/12.) It is critical to the residents that our Board reflect knowledge of multiple areas of Village Business, and this especially includes public safety. This is why I am running - the safety of my family and fellow residents is paramount, as is the need to bring back the high quality services the Village used to offer with a smaller budget.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.Our taxes are too high. Not including Chicago, Carpentersville is one of the highest taxed municipalities in Northern Illinois - both property and sales taxes. Our current Trustees, many of whom ran on a platform of "no new taxes" have consistently voted "yes" to the increases in our taxes. Our Board has consistently given us less and charged us more for it. Each time the Board decides to reduce a fee, it is offset by an increase to taxes, making gains on revenue to the Village. These aren't simply percentage increases to make up for decreased property values - these increases have led to a net gain of nearly 4 million dollars since 2008 - the height of the great recession. In addition to that gain, our Village has eliminated over 30 positions in the Village, which represents a decrease in expenses. For example, our board recently enacted a 4.95% property tax increase. The reason was stated to make up for a decrease in the EAV of the Village. However, there is an estimated $588,000.00 NET gain from this tax increase. Between expensive, no-bid contracts awarded for gas pumps, Salt Domes and a $500,000 remodel of Village Hall, money spent to "study" and make changes to Carpenter Park and to beautify the River Front, money spent to study the intersection of Washington and Main, our Board's spending is out of control and the residents are the ones paying for it with ever increasing taxes and decreased public safety.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?Poor. The fact is that all three of these department operate at a per-capita staffing level below every surrounding municipality. The Village's public safety services are now at levels not seen since 1999, and have serious deficiencies in planning for the future. The Village has reduced the staffing levels in the Fire Department, meaning less vehicles to respond to calls; longer response times to a majority of the town - especially to old town and the west side of the Village; less availability of a fire engine to the old town section of Carpentersville because the station has only 1 crew available for 3 vehicles; and has destroyed the department's ability to perform community outreach programs like public education and fire safety inspections. Furthermore, the Village also decreased its Police afternoon shift level (the busiest shift of the day) by 50%, which has overtaxed our resources and ensures that the "gamble" of not having officers available near our homes will eventually hit every homeowner. Our public works department makes sure we have clean water, proper sewers and safe streets. As a result of extreme cut backs in the public works department, they are less capable of those vital tasks and now require more expensive outsourcing contracts to perform essential services, or a dramatically increased time to perform tasks (like snowplowing.) It is time to look at reasonable spending cuts throughout the budget and sensible restructuring of Village departments to return our public safety staffing levesl to the bare minimum.Where, if anywhere, could the current budget be trimmed, and conversely, are there areas the budget does not give enough money to?The budget is currently management-heavy. Between Department and Assistant Department Heads, (as a side note - do the residents know that there have been 12 department heads and assistant department heads that have left the village in the last 4 years?) our Village has a lot of expensive managers. Further, Community Development has long had issues with attracting and keeping businesses in our town. It is time for a new approach. By eliminating this department and restructuring the positions into the Police (code enforcement), Fire departments (permitting, building inspections) and Public Works (engineering , our village can ensure proper permitting and enforcement while eliminating administrative duplication and unneeded management positions, saving about $390,000 per year. Elimination of the Assistant department heads would also save a large portion of money, but should be used to increase the "boots on the ground" personnel of the village. Further, the Fire and Police Department have in depth, multi-layered management structures, and it would be my recommendation to have the Assistant Chiefs simply be the heads of those departments, eliminating the Director of Public Safety position and increasing further savings. Level-headed restructuring along with some needed cuts can produce a savings of approximately 1.2 million dollars per year. More information on this is available on my site here: http://savecville.org/?p=608. It is my belief that at least a portion of this savings should be used to increase our staffing levels to ensure our residents are receiving the services their taxes pay for.What's one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?Marketing. The reality is that we have over 38,000 great people living in this community, and yet our "reputation" has suffered dramatically over a long period of time. Our Village has utterly failed to ensure that potential businesses and residents know the quality and loyalty of the people here. We need a robust marketing program for the Village. I believe this is a 3 prong approach. First, we need to ensure that our struggling residents have the resources and education necessary to save their homes before they go into foreclosure, and the Village should partner with those organizations and provide access to the programs that are already out there. Second, we need to re-evaluate our ordinances to ensure that our goal of safety outweighs that of revenue. This should include a reduction or elimination of redundant fees - such as occupancy fees, as well as an overall reduction of permit fees to entice more businesses to move into our community. Third we need to market our Village. This means we need to work with building owners to promote their spaces, matching tenants with spaces. It means we need to aggressively showcase our current businesses to entice customers to come to our Village. It means we need to make a concerted effort to ensure that anything the Village needs in goods or services are sourced from businesses in our own community. It means we need to actively work to improve our Village instead of providing "lipstick" fixes.What other issues, if any, are important to you as a candidate for this office?I believe that happy employees are productive employees. Our Village has never seen employee morale as low as it is now. As residents, we need to realize this impacts us directly. It leads to increased spending, increased attorney fees, lower productivity and increased mistakes. Our Village Manager has managed to survive 3 formal internal complaints and investigations, 1 EEOC complaint and investigation, another EEOC complaint (not yet completed that I'm aware of) and an FMLA Violation Complaint (all of which are also available on savecville.org). While our Board has consistently deflected criticism of the excessive cost to the Village to defend the Manager and his behavior towards both employees and community members, the incumbent Trustee's continued support of the level of dysfunction in the Village is staggering, and their acceptance or complicity in the concerted effort to cover-up wrongdoing by the Manager is violation of every resident's trust. It is time to terminate the Manager, promote our Assistant Manager, who is both well respected and has a proven track record, and restore our Village's employee morale in order to ensure that the highest level of productivity in our staff exists.Please name one current leader who most inspires you.The Officers of the Carpentersville Fire Department, for their tireless attempt to make things better despite the odds.What's the biggest lesson you learned at home growing up?Honesty and Integrity aren't just buzzwords - they are terms that define us, follow us, and can open doors that we didn't know existed.If life gave you one do-over, what would you spend it on?I'd save it for the future. I have a wonderful wife and kids, great co-workers, and intriguing job - why would I change the past?What was your favorite subject in school and how did it help you in later life?History. It's nearly impossible to have any guidance of the future without looking at the triumphs and mistakes of the past.If you could give your children only one piece of advice, what would it be?Mistakes are a natural part of life, you aren't meant to dwell on them, but instead learn from them and make yourself better.