Dave Whitney: Candidate profile
Bio
Name: Dave Whitney
City: Rolling Meadows
Office sought: Mayor
Age: 66
Family: Wife Sally, 2 sons, 4 grandchildren
Occupation: Recently Retired from a 44 year career in technology management
Education: Northwestern University
Civic involvement: Planning and Zoning Commission 2 years Vice Chairman - Current; Comprehensive Plan Ad Hoc Committee - Current; Zoning Board 19 years Chairman; Community Events Foundation - Current; Crime Stoppers President - Current; Citizens Emergency Response Team - Current; Senior Center Board of Directors - Current; Emergency Services and Disaster Agency Lieutenant 10 years; Rolling Meadows Youth Baseball - President 4 years, VP 2 years, Coach 11 years; Rolling Meadows Basketball and Soccer Coach 8 Years; Police - Handicap Parking and Prisoner Watch; Bring back the post office campaign - Current; Fourth of July Parade staging manager 18 Years - Current
Previous elected offices held: None
Incumbent: If yes, when were first elected? No
Website: www.whitneyformayor.com
Facebook: dave.whitney. 9277
Twitter:
Issue questions
What are the most important issues facing your community and how do you intend to address them?
I believe the most important issue right now is economic development. It is critical to expand the tax base instead of continually having to raise taxes. Proactively we have done very little as a city to proactively encourage economic growth. Our permit and inspection process, though improving, hampers new and expanding businesses and delays revenue not only to the businesses, but to the city.
As Mayor, I would be available during normal business hours to work with commercial realtors to proactively bring new businesses to town. I have assembled an experienced team of people that can hit the ground running and bolster the Economic Development Committee. While some work has been done on business retention, this is just as important as bringing new businesses into town. The key to all of this is having a mayor that is available during normal business hours to work with existing and potential businesses. I have that availability and also the skill set to make it work.
As mayor, I would work with the Community Development team to insure that the resources are available to accomplish permits and inspections in a timely manner. Technology should be looked at as part of a solution.
What makes you the best candidate for the job?
I have lived in Rolling Meadows for 40 years and have been actively involved in the community for the entire time. My knowledge of the City, my background in business leadership and management, and my extensive experience leading boards and commissions position me well to assume the responsibilities of mayor. I am the only candidate that is available during normal business hours year around which would allow me to focus on economic development and business retention. I have always put in the extra effort to get the job done. Working with city staff in the planning and in the execution of every city event over the past several years has given me in-depth insight into the city staff and how they work. My sales finance, and technology background is a rare combination that has allowed me to have a very successful business career managing budgets up to $300 million annually. My extensive contract management experience produced over $50 million in contract savings over the last six years I worked. I look forward to the opportunity to use my experience to lead the city into the future.
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.
In my long career in business management, I have managed many teams. I lead by example and hold the team members accountable. A key to building good teams is to listen and respect everyone and their opinion. Open communication is important to achieving good results. Currently, there is little to no communication among many of the council members and very little respect shown. A good leader has to tackle these issues head on, get to the root cause, and determine a solution. My experience leading teams up to 100 people and my experience heading boards and commissions gives me a distinct advantage in being able to move the City forward.
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 Finance Team has won awards for its reporting which has allowed us to get lower rates on our recently acquired bonds. While we just retired quite a few bonds in 2017 and 2018, the Fire Station bonds will increase our debt back to the level we had before the older bonds retired. While the debt is not a big issue, the funding of pensions and the conditions or roads are two items that are of major concerns going forward. Pension payments have increased in 2017 and 2018 as those old bonds retired, but with the new bonds now in place, taxes will go up to pay the new bonds so that the pension payments can continue. In my many years of budgeting, some hard decisions had to be made in order to keep spending in line with income. I do not believe as a city we have had to do that. I believe we can look at things like reducing overtime and unnecessary training, use of part-time instead of full-time staff for certain jobs, and reviewing our vehicle policy as some ways of reducing cost. Pension reform will be the long-term key to cost reduction.
What's one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?
As part of the Comprehensive Plan discussions, there were many ideas that we brainstormed. One idea that I particularly liked was being more proactively involved in working with other government bodies (Park District, Library, School District, etc.) to help each other save money. These are all taxing bodies and while we may not be able to save all money at the same time, any expense avoided for one taxing body is a saving for the taxpayers. I believe this would be a big benefit to the taxpayers.