Beverly Sussman: Candidate profile

Bio

Name: Beverly Sussman

City: Buffalo Grove

Office sought: President

Age:

Family: My husband and I have lived in Buffalo Grove for forty-seven years. We have 3 sons, 3 daughters-in-laws and eight grandchildren. Two of our sons live in Buffalo Grove with their families.

Occupation:

• President of the Village Of Buffalo Grove: 2015-2019

• Liquor Commissioner for the Village of Buffalo Grove: 2015-2019

• Trustee for the Village of Buffalo Grove: 2009-2015

• Retired President of AIM Business Printers: 1992-2010

• Retired 6th Grade Science Teacher-Kildeer School District #96-25 years: (1979-2004)

• Retired Adjunct Professor at National Louis University: 1988-2000

I am a full-time president. Being president is my only job. I don't share my time with any other job.

Education: Master Of Science in Education, City University of New York, 1969 Bachelor of Arts, City University of New York, 1962 69 credits above a Master's Degree

Civic involvement: President of the Village of Buffalo Grove 2015-2019, Liquor Commissioner for the Village of Buffalo Grove 2015-2019, Trustee for the Village of Buffalo Grove. 2009-2015, Member of the NWMC (North West Municipal Conference), Member of SWANCC (Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County), Liaison to the Plan Commission, Buffalo Grove Days Committee and Commission For Residents With Disabilities, Board Member of Kildeer School District #96 Foundation For Excellence, Commissioner with the Commission For Residents With Disabilities for 15 years, Member of the 50th Anniversary Committee for the Village of Buffalo Grove, Involved with Fun and Food For Residents With Disabilities, Involved with Buddy Baseball, Recipient of the United Way Participation Award, Recipient of the Best Friend Award from the Buffalo Grove Park District, Represented the State of Illinois in Washington D.C. as the recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence In Science and Math Teaching (PAEMST), Served on a committee for Senator Matt Murphy, Presenter at Career Night for School District#214, Presenter for the Girl Scout Badge-Science Around Town, Presented at School District #96 and School District #102, Presented for Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, Sponsor for the Shuttle Bus for Buffalo Grove Days and the Buffalo Grove Art Fair, Sponsored Baseball Teams for the Thoroughbred League, Palomino League and Buddy Baseball, Sponsor of the Illinois Special Olympics with the Buffalo Grove Police Dept., Event Sponsor for the Science Olympiad at Buffalo Grove High School, Judge for the Illinois Junior Academy of Science (Science Fair), Presented Science Workshops for Teachers on a local, regional, state, and national level. Presented students to the Village of Buffalo Grove to proclaim Earth Day in Buffalo Grove, helped write brochures for the CRD (Commission For Residents With Disabilities), wrote and published articles in journals to help teachers in the State of Illinois and USA to use hands-on science activities in their classrooms: SPECTRUM, Science and Children, The Science Teacher, Member of the Buffalo Grove Chamber of Commerce -Gold Member for 15 years,, sponsored events for Stevenson High School and Vernon Hills High School, donations and contributions to the Village of Buffalo Grove, Buffalo Grove Chamber of Commerce, Buffalo Grove Park District, and misc. school districts.

Previous elected offices held: President 2015-2019, Trustee 2009-2015

Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected?

I was first elected as President of the Village of Buffalo Grove in 2015.

Website: https://www.facebook.com/ReElectPresidentBeverlySussman/

Facebook: Re-Elect President Beverly Sussman

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Issue questions

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

1. Maintaining A Balanced Budget - The Village of Buffalo Grove works very hard to maintain a balanced budget and save money. The Village has a balanced budget for 2019 and reduced its property tax rate to $. 993 per $100 of taxable property value. We must continue doing the following things to accomplish this: sharing services with other municipalities, encouraging partnerships, joining consortiums, forming consortiums like the IT consortium, being part of the CMS (Central Management Services of Illinois) where we make purchases at lower costs, buying fire trucks and police cars from a joint purchasing group, joint purchasing of salt, municipal partnering for fire hydrant painting, changing our health insurance plan, formation of our own IRMA replacement called the SLIP (Suburban Liability Insurance Pool), selling water to other municipalities, Administrative Adjudication for other municipalities, etc. We are currently working on some new consortiums that the Village is looking into and encouraging other municipalities to join us. This is in the planning stage. We also need to attract new businesses and create new revenue streams; one new one could be Textile Recycling which I will discuss in the last question. We have become a new industrial hub in Buffalo Grove. We are constantly working on adding new businesses into the Village like Woodman's Food Market, Connexion, BITS (Business IT Source), ThermFlo/Zonathern, Knipex, FLEX, etc.

2. Finding a new place for Public Works. Public Works has outgrown its current building a long time ago. It is so overcrowded that it has become a safety issue. We are currently looking for a new home for Public Works. It would cost more to redo the current building. We are trying to be fiscally responsible by sharing our new home for Public Works with other groups. This will lessen the cost of building the building and running it. Even when it comes to funding a new building, we are trying to save money.

3. Infrastructure- fixing roads. All municipalities are faced with deterioration of roads and potholes. Buffalo Grove fixes roads, repaving and resurfacing, according to a determined schedule. A system is used to classify roads in Buffalo Grove according to need. We use the money that was set aside in the budget and we also apply for grants. Very recently, the Lake County Council of Mayors moved to secure federal funding at 80 percent of the total project. From $12,257,040 dollars for Thompson Blvd. and Brandywyn Lane we received $9,805,632 for this project. We always apply for grants when applicable.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

I've been a resident of Buffalo Grove for 47 years. For 25 years, I have a history of service to the Village of Buffalo Grove; I have mentioned many of these above in civic involvement. I am qualified for the job. I am honest, competent, intelligent, independent, experienced, knowledgeable, organized and passionate in what I do. I have excellent communication skills and decision-making skills. I listen to all sides of the issue before making a decision. I want Buffalo Grove to remain a safe community where we respond to people's needs. I want to maintain a good level of services. Our employees and volunteers are a big part of the Village; I value them. I want everything to be transparent. Residents should always know what's going on in their Village. I am here for the residents of Buffalo Grove. I am their voice.

Thanks to the Village Board and staff, I am very proud of our achievements in the past four years. And I hope to continue adding to this list in the next four years.

Just to name a few:

1. The Village of Buffalo Grove issued more than 10,527 residential and commercial building permits. These permits represent a total project valuation of approximately 230 million dollars invested back into the Village of Buffalo Grove.

2. Four businesses alone are bringing in 7 million dollars in 7 years: Woodman's Food Market, BITS (Business IT Source), ThermFlo/Zonatherm.

3. One of my campaign issues and one which I will continue in this election, was to involve our residents in the decision-making process. Our citizens participated in the largest study ever done in the Village of Buffalo Grove, the Lake-Cook Road Market Study and Plan (Citizen Engagement). Citizen Engagement is very important in any municipality.

4. For the first time ever, the Village Board went on a field trip to a possible new business in Buffalo Grove. We traveled to Woodman's in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We held a public meeting at Woodman's. We hired a bus to accommodate any residents who wanted to join us. This meeting was advertised according to the regulations of the OMA. We were very aggressive in our pursuit of convincing Woodman's to come to Buffalo Grove. Phil Woodman was thrilled that we did this. On Labor Day Weekend, 2018, Woodman's opened up in Buffalo Grove!

5. We have received many awards in the past 4 years, to name a few: one of the best places ti live in America, one of the best places to live in Illinois, one of the best places to buy a house, one of the best places to raise a family and one of the safest cities in the country. Even our residents received an award; Out of 2500 cities rated on 10 indicators they ranked in the top 2 percent for their money management skills.

6. The Village has a balanced budget for 2019 and reduced its property tax rate to $. 993 per $100 of taxable property value.

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.

My background includes experiences being a leader. I was President and CEO of my printing company for 20 years and a unit leader for a sixth-grade unit for 14 years. I was a leader of the Space Shuttle Club and leader of science workshops that I presented on a local, state, regional and national level.

I have also been President of the Village of Buffalo Grove for 4 years. As important as it is to be a leader, a good leader knows that being a leader does not mean that you "lead" all of the time. As a leader, I want staff to do their jobs and I don't micromanage them. I don't watch over them; I know when to stand in the background. I attend staff meetings twice a month. I meet with all of the heads of the departments plus the Village Manager and Deputy Village Manager. I am the only President who has ever joined department heads at their staff meetings. I like attending these meetings and getting to know the department heads. I can see how they do their jobs and what might need improvement.

As a leader, I don't call up the Trustees to see how they are going to vote before a meeting. Every member of the Board should come prepared to meetings by reading the entire agenda packet; at meetings, they must listen to staff presentations and presentations from guests and residents in the audience. Only after ALL of the information has been presented, should a Trustee be ready to vote on any given subject. If they made their decisions before the meetings, then there is no purpose to hold meetings.

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?

We have a balanced budget. We were able to lower property taxes in this budget. I am looking forward to more opportunities to continue to strengthen our business community in the coming years. We need to further strengthen our position as an economic hub in the northwest suburbs. I will continue to concentrate on Economic Development; the Village of Buffalo Grove is committed to retaining existing businesses, attracting new businesses to the community and encouraging businesses to expand in the Village. We have been very successful from 2015-2019 and I am planning for it to be even more successful from 2019-2023. We have been streamlining our entire business process; we intend to do even more to streamline the process and continue making it easier for businesses to do business with the Village of Buffalo Grove. We are modernizing our permitting and inspection program of codes by streamlining them. Businesses going through the process have commented on how easy it is to work with the Village and how friendly we are during the entire process.

It's very important to keep providing the level of services people want. This has been a horrible winter so far. Horrible because it costs money when it snows or ices up. We have already ordered more salt and there is lots of overtime for staff in the Public Works Dept. All of this costs money.

Even though we don't own the following properties, we are constantly trying to get the owners to sell them so we can move forward from there and increase our revenue streams: Town Center, Rohrman Property and the Dominicks in the Chase Plaza. Rohrman wants 1 million dollars per acre for his property. He is in no hurry to sell that property. There are 16-17 acres which means that the property will cost 17 million dollars to buy it. We have shown this property to some businesses. So far, no one is willing to spend that much money on the property. There is a rumor going on that Mr. Rohrman is in the process of selling this property to Warren Buffett. If that is the case, something might finally work out!

We had someone interested in buying the Town Center, However, the owner wants 20 million dollars for the property. It is not worth the amount of money he is asking for the property. At some point, the owner might lower the sale price or be unable to pay the taxes on the property. At that point, a deal could potentially be worked out.

I attended several meetings with the owners of Dominicks. I also attended a meeting with other municipalities to discuss the problem of empty Dominicks Stores in our Villages. I took part in the panel discussion that was televised. The Village has been very active in communicating with the owners, Albertsons, to find productive uses for the property and the Village further passed an ordinance preventing restrictions that prohibit grocery stores and pharmacies on this and other sites. Albertsons will not rent, lease or sell the property to any business that will be in competition with Jewel. Since the Village does not control the property, the only thing we can do is try to find potential tenants for the owner.

"In order for business to take place, three things are needed:

1. a willing property owner who wants to sell his property

2. a viable business who wants to buy the property

3. a proactive municipality like Buffalo Grove"

In all of those businesses above, we are missing the following: A WILLING PROPERTY OWNER who is willing to sell his property. It is not for lack of trying on the part of the Village of Buffalo Grove. WE NEED OUR RESIDENTS TO GET THE FULL PICTURE OF WHY THESE PROPERTIES ARE STILL VACANT.

Buffalo Grove is very proactive: we offer tax incentives when applicable and reduce the cost of permits for businesses to open, relocate to Buffalo Grove or to expand their businesses and remain in Buffalo Grove. Several businesses have expanded and remained in Buffalo Grove. NCH (Northwest Community Healthcare), the immediate health care center will be demolishing their buildings and rebuilding with two new state-of-the-art buildings. Burdeens, Connexion, ThermFlo/Zonatherm and FLEX have already expanded in Buffalo Grove.

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

At our last COW (Committee of the Whole Meeting), we discussed Textile Recycling. There are companies whose business it is to collect clothes, shoes and accessories from municipalities. They leave bags for you to fill and you leave them by the curb and they will pick them us and recycle everything. This is a business. Their claim to fame is that they will not charge us anything for the service.

If we decide to adopt Textile Recycling, it would be a very good idea to charge these companies for allowing them to recycle our textiles. With the new tax laws, many people will no longer we able to claim their donations on their income tax. For many, this means that they will stop donating to charities. It might be easier for residents to fill those textile bags and leave them by the curb. These companies that pick up the textiles sell them to other organizations and groups all over the world. This is a source of income for their businesses. Since this is a moneymaking proposition, the Village should use this as another revenue stream. These companies should pay the Village for collecting our textiles