David Weidenfeld: 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: Buffalo GroveWebsite: Candidate did not respond.Office sought: Buffalo Grove Village Board Age: 63Family: Wife--Susan Daughters--Rachel, LisaOccupation: Retired Attorney, part-time technology acquisition consultantEducation: BA--Franklin Marshall College JD--John Marshall Law SchoolCivic involvement: OMNI Youth Services--Member, Board of Directors--1985 to 1993, Member Board of Ambassadors--1994 to present Remy Bumppo Theater Company--Member, Board of Directors--2011 to present, Secretary and member of the Executive Committee--2014 to presentElected offices held: Candidate did not respond.Questions Answers What makes you the best candidate for the job?I've been trained to analyze complex issues, identify goals, ask the hard questions and hold staff accountable for delivering the results that are needed to succeed. This allows me to provide a unique and fresh perspective to the Village Board in areas such as economic development, budget and community welfare. My family and I have lived in Buffalo Grove since 1985. Our children went to local schools and My community involvement includes volunteering with OMNI Youth Services since 1985, having served on their Board of Directors for eight years since then on their Board of Ambassadors. After serving as Assistant Lake County State's Attorney for five years I was employed for about 24 years at McDonald's Corporation, eventually as Chief Technology Counsel where I had both business and legal responsibility for major projects. I also spent 4+ years at Xerox Business Services, where I supervised approximately 150 people and was accountable for developing and managing the budget for my group. During my career I've worked on projects involving hundreds of millions of dollars and I've learned that each project has its own unique set of issues. The current Board is made up of individuals who have similar, rather restricted perspectives on solving village problems. That produces similar results, such as strip mall after strip mall, when commercial development is considered, instead of questioning the basic assumptions underlying those decisions. That approach is not what is going to drive Buffalo Grove to the future that it needs and deserves.Should the Buffalo Grove golf course and municipal campus ever be re-developed? Now that the downtown proposal is dead, tell us what is your vision for that property going forward.Focusing on the golf course as a candidate for redevelopment detracts from what should be the real priority of improving the already existing and underperforming commercial areas of the Village. Instead, the Board has allowed itself to be distracted by the proposed downtown for the last two years instead of developing a comprehensive economic development plan. We've already seen the staggering costs that developers will want to impose on residents to build on the golf course. What's needed is a roadmap that will drive the rebirth of business in Buffalo Grove. Regardless of the Village's perspective on whether or not it wants to be in the golf business the property's vital function as a flood control area is something that dictates the scope of anything that could or should be done to the property. Anyone who saw the golf course after the storms of a couple of springs ago has to acknowledge that every inch of permeable ground surface was needed to keep the floodwaters out of the surrounding neighborhoods. Finally, it appears that the golf course itself is turning the corner to profitability. The golf course staff has presented an approach to the Board to have maintenance services provided by a third party for both course providing potential savings which would improve the profitability of both courses. Beyond that, the land adds to the Village's green space, a factor that is always mentioned whenever Buffalo Grove is cited as a great place to live.Where, if anywhere, could the current budget be trimmed, and conversely, are there areas the budget does not give enough money to?The Village staff has done really good work in trimming the budget to deal with economic realties. Budget focus needs to be on the things that provide the greatest benefit to residents, which includes investing in the future. To that end I believe that that the Village needs to allocate greater resources to planning efforts that will lead to more successful economic development and redevelopment for both the short and long term. That should not be limited to simply pursue business but rather it should be a broader effort that creates a focus on revitalizing the entire business climate in the Village. This effort needs to be Board driven and must be aggressively pursued.According to the village engineer, Buffalo Grove faces enormous street reconstruction costs due to faulty road materials used in the 1970s and 1980s. How important is this for the village, where should Buffalo Grove find the money and how urgent is it to fix the roads?Road maintenance is extremely important, especially in light of the serious lack of transportation alternatives in the Village. This means that keeping roads in good repair is a serious priority for the Village. Even with that the Board has to be able to prioritize repairs and understand that the budget will only permit a certain amount of work to be done each. Prioritizing the allocation of budget resources will definitely be a challenge. Since roads are so significant in Buffalo Grove it is important to develop construction schedules that do not make getting around the town unduly burdensome to residents or so hard to deal with that people who live outside of the Village will go out of their way to avoid it, thus harming local businesses. In order to be able to get the most work done the Village needs to maximize its economic potential to drive motor fuel tax, sales tax and commercial revenues as much as possible in order to keep the economic burden off of the residents. A comprehensive economic development plan will be the key to accomplishing this. Additionally, the Village will need to work with its state and county elected representatives to identify State resources, such as capital bills, that are or may become available. While no specific source of state revenue or county is guaranteed, maintaining a close working relationships with those individuals give the Village the best chance at those funds should they become available.What's one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?The Village should engage in an effort to analyze all aspects of commercial activity in Buffalo Grove in order to determine what is really needed to improve on the overall commercial environment. This means engaging the appropriate professionals such as planners and economic development experts, in order to be able to bring the proper level of qualified review to the task. This needs to be done prior to the creation of any economic development plan so the plan is based on facts and not assumptions. The information derived from the experts should be shared with the business community to allow them to participate in the creation of the plan. Input from residents from residents is also critical in order to ensure the economic activity will be supported. All of this will create the best environment and opportunities for businesses to succeed. Zoning decisions and comprehensive plans that flow from this kind of effort are more likely to have factored in a greater amount of information and criteria for success would ordinarily be done. We have an opportunity for the Village to take charge of its future. The current approach of waiting for developers to provide all of the information as they please is based on an incorrect assumption that the Village already possesses all of the relevant facts to review any proposal. It results in a lack of ability to ask all of the questions that need to be asked at the outset of any discussion of proposed developments.What other issues, if any, are important to you as a candidate for this office?The Village needs to provide greater transparency. One way of accomplishing that is to avoid the recent situation where there was no real discussion regarding the public financing component of the proposed downtown project before the public before communicating information obtained from individual Board members to the developer. This undermined any public perception that the process of doing that was transparent. Avoiding that kind of process would provide residents with a greater sense of being involved in their community's future and being respected in regard their thoughts on critical decisions.Please name one current leader who most inspires you.Stephen Hawking, who has accomplished amazing things and overcame obstacles that would have crushed most of us.What's the biggest lesson you learned at home growing up?Opportunity doesn't schedule an appointmentâ#128;#148;if you do your best all the time you'll be ready for it when it arrives.If life gave you one do-over, what would you spend it on?Learn to hit a curveball.What was your favorite subject in school and how did it help you in later life?Historyâ#128;#148;it's amazing how many answers to current questions have already been provided.If you could give your children only one piece of advice, what would it be?Nothing can take the place of honesty in everything that you do.