Brian McAvoy Costin: Candidate Profile

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:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: SchaumburgWebsite: http://www.briancostin2011.comOffice sought: Schaumburg Village presidentAge: 31Family: Married to wife Dawn.Occupation: Director of Outreach at the Illinois Policy Institute, a 501(c)3 charity.Education: Bachelor of Science in Politics Governance and Economics Illinois State University, 2002.Master of Management of Nonprofit Administrations, North Park University 2007.Civic involvement: President Founder of the Schaumburg Freedom CoalitionVolunteer; Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association of Schaumburg.Board Member; Northwest Suburban Taxpayers United.2010 Sam Adams Alliance Government Watchdog Award Winner.Assistant Director of Government Relations, Heartland Institute 2007-2009.Elected offices held: Candidate did not respond.Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: No.Candidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 Lowering taxes. The Village of Schaumburg has raised taxes 15 times in the last 10 years alone, raising over $45 million per year. These tax hikes include sales, hotel, telephone, amusement, cable, creating and expanding tax increment financing districts, and enacting a new municipal property tax. That's an average of a tax hike every 8 months. A high tax burden makes it very difficult for people to live, work, and play in Schaumburg. Nothing distresses me more than when I hear Schaumburg residents telling me that they can no longer afford their homes or afford to support our local businesses because the taxes are too high. I have heard from businesses who can no longer afford to stay because of high taxes. We should strive to have a community where people can survive and thrive economically, and we can do that by lowering taxes.We, the Village of Schaumburg, must set an example for other government entities and reduce the tax burden on our community. We must restart economic growth and create jobs by reversing our course on high taxes.Going forward, my goal is to eliminate the property tax levy as quickly as possible. I support placing a binding referendum on the ballot in 2013 to repeal the property tax, and have created an ordinance called the #8220;Schaumburg Taxpayer Protection Act#8221; that would allow citizens to place such a question on the ballot. The #8220;Schaumburg Taxpayer Protection Act#8221; would also force future boards to place tax hike proposals on the ballot for voter approval or rejection before they are passed into law.Once the property tax is removed, we need to work to lower other taxes such as sales, hotel, and telecommunications tax. We can make Schaumburg a low-tax area once again.Key Issue 2 Eliminate wasteful spending and address our long-term structural spending problems. Since 1987, spending has radically increased in Schaumburg from under $25M to over $200M, a 260% increase after adjusting for inflation and population. A recently passed budget for 2010-11 shows an increase of spending of $30.7M, almost 20%, in just two years during a severe recession.In addition to potential cuts at the Convention Center, Hotel, Baseball Stadium, and Airport here are some items I would have cut from the budget over the last 2 fiscal years.? $6.5 million Pleasant Square private development subsidy.? $2.2 million for eminent domain purchase and relocation of businesses at 8-26 Roselle (Sara Lee).? $1.5 million purchase and renovation of Turret House.? $1.5 million construction of #8220;green#8221; parking lot behind Lou Malnati's Easy Street Pub.? $1.2 million Irving Park Road bike path.? $ 525,000 American Indian Center Improvements ? $ 510,000 Murzyn-Anderson Site Remediation ? $76,500 for improvements to Lou Malnati's building.? $40,000 to refurbish the bathroom of the private Schweiker House.We must have an honest and transparent conversation about public employee compensation, starting with the Village leadership compensation. Those working for the Village of Schaumburg are public servants, and their salary and benefits should be comparable to those with similar skills and experience in the private sector. In 2009, 80 Village employees made over $100,000 in salary, and the average salary for a full-time employee was $78,442, average health care health care benefit $16,426, and average employer pension contribution $14,531 per employee. This means that the average compensation per full-time employee in Schaumburg was $109,399 in 2009. Most employees have received significant pay raises of up to 7.1% since then, and Schaumburg's health care and pension employer contributions have increased over 10% and 20% respectively since 2009.The Village Manager's compensation is at over $219,000, there are also health and pension benefits#8212;which make it even higher. To put it into perspective, his salary is higher than the Governor of Illinois, either of the two U.S. Senators from Illinois and higher than the vast majority of local Schaumburg residents. Is the Village Manager's job more important than that of the Governor#8212;or a US Senator? Usually when you enter public service it is because someone chooses to serve their community, not make a small fortune. We need to ask ourselves can we afford this and are these compensation levels equitable to the private sector. Why are Schaumburg village salaries and benefits accelerating so rapidly in when salaries and benefits in the private sector are flat or dropping? Solutions to our over-spending problems must come from leadership at the top. That's why I will refuse the $600/month car stipend perk and will refuse all raises until the property tax is eliminated. These actions will cut mayoral compensation by an estimated 15%.Key Issue 3 Improving Ethics and Increasing Transparency. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to Ethics and Transparency in the Village of Schaumburg including:#8226; Enacting comprehensive whistle-blower protections.#8226; Giving public employees an anonymous outlet to make recommendations on how innovate, create efficiencies, and save money.#8226; Enforcing ignored state and local ethics laws and including the gift ban of entertainment assets (Schaumburg Flyers Luxury Suite).#8226; Elected officials should refuse donations from Village contractors and the Liquor commissioner (Mayor) should refuse donations from liquor license applicants.#8226; Employing an independent auditor to find waste, fraud, and abuse to identify taxpayer savings opportunities.#8226; Achieving 100% online financial transparency: It should be our goal to post #8220;Every Dime, Online, In Real Time#8221; that the Village spends. People need to know where their tax dollars are going#8230;it is their money! Schaumburg should also publish employee compensation and benefits as they do in Hoffman Estates.#8226; Televise board and committee meetings.#8226; Set personal term limits: 8-year max Mayoral term.Questions Answers What is your opinion of Schaumburg's municipal property tax? Do you support immediate repeal, an increase in the tax or something in between?Schaumburg's municipal property tax was only necessary because of out-of-control spending practices by the current and past administrations. I would support its repeal but realize we must take the appropriate steps to reduce wasteful spending practices so we can cut taxes responsibly.The overwhelming majority of Schaumburg citizens who spoke at public hearings were against the property tax. In the meetings I attended, the audience was at least 10 to 1 in opposition to the tax. At that time, I, and other citizens, asked the Village Board to put the measure on the ballot for the Schaumburg voters to decide. The current administration refused to voluntarily put the tax hike vote up for referendum. By doing that, the administration excluded the citizens in these important decisions.I have created the #8220;Schaumburg Taxpayer Protection Act#8221;, which would require the Village of Schaumburg to get voter approval for all future tax increase proposals. It also allows citizens to initiate binding referendums to reduce or repeal taxes, provided they can get a majority of Schaumburg voters to agree with them.A new Board's first opportunity to repeal the property tax would be for the 2011 tax levy year, which means that local taxpayers could see relief starting as soon as the Fall of 2012. If the Village Board did not successfully repeal the tax by the next municipal election, I would support placing a binding referendum on the ballot so that the citizens of Schaumburg can have a direct say on the issue. They should have had this opportunity from the very beginning.How is the village's decades-old model of reliance on commercial development and retail sales taxes for revenue weathering the current economic downturn? Do the vulnerabilities revealed by the recession justify a major overhaul of that model?Schaumburg's real vulnerability is out-of-control spending. We need to do a better job of restraining ourselves when the times are good. If we live high on the hog during the good times, it will come back to haunt us when times get tough#8212;as they are now. I believe that our current leaders have not learned this lesson.Too much money has been wasted on unnecessary projects such as the Convention Center, Hotel, Airport, and Baseball Stadium. These projects have become burdens and place unnecessary strains on the taxpayers, in both good times and bad.It is true that property taxes are more stable than retail sales taxes, because people can vote with their feet much easier when it comes to retail purchases. However, revenues from commercial development and retail sales taxes are more than sufficient to provide high quality core government services for the Village of Schaumburg#8212;we are unique in that regards as we have a major mall in our village. Schaumburg assessed no major municipal taxes of any kind prior to 1989; we should seek to restore that model as much as possible.Unfortunately, every past overhaul of municipal taxes has resulted in higher taxes on the residents, businesses, and visitors of Schaumburg. Over the last decade the Village has repeatedly used economic downturns to justify new and higher taxes. These taxes never go away when the economy gets better. The result is 15 tax hikes in the last 10 years collecting an additional $45 million per year.What is your attitude towards the village's ownership of the Schaumburg Renaissance Hotel Convention Center, Alexian Field and the Schaumburg Regional Airport? Should these properties be privatized? Why or why not?The Village of Schaumburg should not be involved in these areas of the economy. These functions are best left to the private sector so municipal government can focus on providing high quality core services like police, fire, and public works. All three projects are losing money, and are all performing well below the levels which our Village Administration and elected officials promised when the projects were first proposed. Privatization and sale of these buildings should be seriously explored. I propose forming a Privatization and Efficiency Council to research all possibilities to save the taxpayers money and make sure Schaumburg has a robust, vibrant economy. Sale of these three properties could potentially save Schaumburg taxpayers between $15-20 million dollars. This, however, is partially dependent on what the market is for these properties.Most citizens of Schaumburg don't realize what a big drain these three projects are on the economy and the taxpayers. Of the three projects, the Schaumburg Convention Center and Hotel is the most costly.In 2010, the Hotel and Convention Center received an estimated $5,769,072 in amusement, telecom, hotel, food beverage, and sales tax revenue from the Village. It also has a property tax exemption worth approximately $6.5 million based on the Village's estimated property value of $236 million. When one project gets a tax exemption, the other taxpayers have to pick up the costs. On top of these subsidies the project still lost an astounding $3,130,356 in 2010. All told, the Convention Center Hotel project lost taxpayers an estimated $15.3 million, not including depreciation. Shockingly, we haven't even begun to start paying the principle on the loan to pay for the Convention Center Hotel project. Payments will accelerate from the current $11.4 million to over $20 million in the next 30 years#8212;making it an even bigger burden on the taxpayers. It's time to start to thinking of ways to cut our losses at the Convention Center while we still can.There are similar stories to tell at the airport and baseball stadium, but on a smaller scale.The Schaumburg Airport has never paid for itself, as was promised by the current administration. The airport creates about 1/16th of the jobs per acre that an average Schaumburg industrial park does, which was the proposed alternative when our current mayor led the charge to ""save"" the airport. Bad policies by the Village of Schaumburg destroy an estimated 1,600 jobs and over $150 million in downstream economic activity in the local economy every year.The Village of Schaumburg should explore getting out of the airport business, especially considering the airport is not a traditional commercial airport and we are 10 miles away from one of the biggest airports in the world. Alexian Field and the Schaumburg Flyers has been an undeniable economic failure. Every single year since 2001, the Flyers have been delinquent in their payments to the village in one form or another. The Flyers are seriously delinquent in their rental payments and they haven't been paying their amusement. The Schaumburg Flyers and their owner Rich Ehrenreich should have been evicted many times over. Instead the current administration continued to accept campaign donations from the Schaumburg Flyers while the team fell hundreds of thousands of dollars behind on payments to the village. The Village administration have put their own interests ahead of the citizens of Schaumburg.The Village did not do a good job of retaining adequate financial record keeping and they have lost annual audits and have had a hard time producing payment records from the Flyers. The village also failed to keep a single record, policy, or procedure to show how they used their Luxury Suite at the field over the last 12 years, giving out 15,000 tickets to elected officials in violation of state and local ethics law, yet another reason why the Village of Schaumburg shouldn't be involved in the entertainment industry. I would advocate for a sale of the stadium if a prospective owner could be found and the remaining mortgage payments could be recovered. The Park District would have to agree to this as well as also they own a 50% share in the property.Should Schaumburg continue to run Septemberfest and other special events? Do you support the work of the cultural services department and the village's continued operation of the Prairie Center for the Arts and the Trickster Gallery?The Septemberfest is very popular local event and it either breaks even or comes very close each year. The social benefits of the event are substantial. I would not consider eliminating Septemberfest.A substantial amount of the funding for the Prairie Center for the Arts comes from charitable contributions and ticket revenues. I will support philanthropic efforts to fund programming at the Prairie Center, but I will not increase the amount of tax dollars spent on the facility. I am also opposed to building the proposed $80 million performing arts center next to the Convention Center, and I think the Village should sell the land reserved for this purpose. The taxpayers don't have the money to fund a Broadway type theater, but if a private owner wanted to come to Schaumburg and build it without taxpayer subsidies, I would support it.I would support selling Trickster Gallery at the end of the current lease agreement and using the proceeds to cut taxes for the residents of Schaumburg. In talking to many Schaumburg residents, Trickster Gallery is not serving a vital function that justifies taxpayer expenditures to support it. The parking lot is almost always empty and attendance is very low. This low traffic has hurt the Olde Schaumburg Centre area as a whole. A non-subsidized private entrepreneur could make better use of this property. I look forward to the day when a vibrant tax paying business is in its place that serves a need of the public, and helps bring additional economic opportunity to the area.What significant infrastructure improvements, if any, should the village be pursuing? Why?Schaumburg's primary focus should be on doing a better job maintaining the existing street and sanitation projects, not expanding to new projects that cost the taxpayers additional money. We shouldn't overextend ourselves.I am opposed to a number of the proposed capital projects in the 2011-12 budget. I don't think we should be spending $6.5 million to subsidize the Pleasant Square development and we should not have used eminent domain to kick out viable taxpaying businesses, like Sara Lee, to make way for it. Instead of spending money we don't have, we should sell our land in the area and use it to reduce the tax burden on the people of Schaumburg. I don't support spending $1.2 million in federal and local dollars on an Irving Park Road Bike Path when a much more economical sidewalk would do the same job for much, much less.I am opposed to spending $40,000 in taxpayer money to repair a bathroom floor in a private luxury home (the Schweiker House). If the owners of the Schweiker House want to remodel or repair their house#8212;they should do it with their own dime#8212;not Schaumburg's.The Village of Schaumburg should not continue to pursue the STAR Rail Line. The project wasn't included in the GoTo 2040 regional plan, in part because of its high costs and uncertain ridership numbers. The most cost-efficient way of reducing congestion costs in this corridor would be to add additional expressway capacity. Two additional lanes of expressway are much lower in costs, are open 24 hours a day, and have a much higher capacity to alleviate congestion than a two-way train line. When economic times are better, Schaumburg could pursue an expressway interchange at I-90 and Meacham Road. This would help alleviate congestion in the Woodfield Area. However, I am concerned about the estimated $25M - $30M price tag for that project. We need to weigh the costs and benefits of the project. If we don't have the funds to pay for it, we shouldn't spend the money.