Steve Reiss: Candidate profile

Bio

Name: Steve Reiss

City: Hawthorn Woods

Office sought: Trustee

Age: 60+

Family: Married - 2 adult children

Occupation: Information security recruiting and staffing - small business owner

Education: High school

Civic involvement: CERT; LZHS Career Advisory Council

Previous elected offices held: Trustee - village of Hawthorn Woods.

Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected? 1999

Website: N/A

Facebook: Steve Reiss

Twitter: @STEVERIESS

Issue questions

What are the most important issues facing your community and how do you intend to address them?

Infrastructure maintenance and improvements - Like many other communities, our infrastructure (roads, stormwater systems, etc.) are at or beyond their useful life and need to be repaired or entirely replaced. Much of the work is required because acceptable engineering and technology that created these systems were inferior to what's available today. We've looked very carefully at what needs to be done from critical through routine maintenance and have assembled a priority list which will be addressed according to available funding. Numerous funding mechanisms have been analyzed, and none of them are easy. Nevertheless, these things must be done or the village will experience a decline in the quality of the infrastructure and experience a corresponding decline in housing values or sale ability.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

Experience counts. I have a detailed understanding of village finances, operations, available services, and staff we have to support those services. I also have a good pulse on the community and its residents. My Grandson attends Spencer Loomis and we're regular attendees at their events and programs, along with soccer and basketball. I meet and talk to people on a constant basis.

Describe your leadership style and explain how you think that will be effective in producing actions and decisions with your village board or city council.

Collaborative and supportive. I often have my own perspective on how we should proceed or what I think should be done. I work hard to have the other voting members and staff clearly understand that perspective in order to sway or influence their thinking. Regardless of my viewpoints, when the Village Board votes and a decision is made, I support that decision in all ways possible. We're too small of an organization to have reluctant participants or opposition. We need to work together in order to best serve the residents.

How would you describe the condition of your community's budget, and what are the most important specific actions the town should take to assure providing the level of services people want?

Our budgeting process and management of the finance is more like a small business than a municipality or government organization. We have a zero-basis budget. Each year the department heads are required to justify every dime they want to receive from the budget and how it directly applies to their service area and its associated residents or it's stricken from their request. We don't start with last year's budget and add on from there. We start from zero at the beginning of each fiscal year. We also have a crystal-clear picture of where the money is going each month and what monies are coming in. Some of the best corporations in the world could learn something from our process.

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

I would like to create a neighborhood association for each of the neighborhoods in the village and sponsor events for neighbors to meet each other. Growing up, I knew every family in every house on both sides of the street for a block. I'd like to see that happen in our community as well