Dustin Good: Candidate profile

Bio

Name: Dustin Good

City: Elgin

Office sought: City Council

Age: 33

Family: Stephanie (Wife)

Occupation: Food Service (Bartender, Manager)

Education: K-12 U-46 Graduate - Associates from Elgin Community College

Civic involvement: Elgin Community College Student Trustee, Strategic plan adviser to the City of Elgin, Downtown Neighborhood Association board member, Elgin Farmer Market committee

Previous elected offices held: None unless you count being elected student trustee, however the student trustee vote doesn't officially count.

Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected? N/A

Facebook: www.facebook.com/good4elgin

Twitter: twitter.com/DustinRGood

Issue questions

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

Community trust in Law Enforcement - We need a civilian review panel for police complaints which has subpoena powers and records all meetings. At the same time we need to support our police departments proactive culture and point toward their efforts to be a positive part of our community. Property values / taxes - Implementing an agreement with Cleargov will not only strengthen our already strong bond ratings but it will give every person the ability to quickly find out how their tax dollars are performing relative to other similar communities. Once the city and other local taxing bodies adopt this uniform system for benchmarking only then will we ALL be able to clearly see where we stand and why we are among the highest taxed populations in the country. Permanent housing solutions for our homeless population - Many communities have found permanent housing solutions to be more cost effective than continuously sending first-responders all over the city. It's also the right thing to do. Inadequate network infrastructure - Elgin doesn't have a complete or functioning fiber-optic data networks. Partnering with Neighborly will start Elgin's journey toward a publicly owned open access network which will offer faster speeds and a more competitive pricing environment.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

First and foremost I love Elgin, amo a Elgin. As someone who sat for five years on Elgin's strategic planning commission I am up to speed with the many issues facing our city. This position also allowed me to become familiar with senior city staff, city council, residents who serve on committees, and others who are active in our community. Furthermore if elected I will be the only representative who resides in downtown. As a Downtown Neighborhood Association board member who has lived and worked downtown for close to four years I am uniquely equipped with the relationships, solutions, and ideas to help make progress related to the continued development of our beautiful downtown. Currently I sit on our Farmer Market committee and while attending Elgin Community College I co-founded a student group which focused on issues surrounding the Green movement. For those wondering I believe in climate science and estoy con las familias del sur. Lastly I am endorsed by our local firefighters, local building trade organizations, and the only candidate endorsed by Run for Something, a national organization with the mission of supporting young progressives. Gratitude - Urgency - Unity

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 general I prefer strategic and transformational leadership approaches. Speaking specifically to Elgin, I believe we need leadership which intentionally utilizes existing organizational structures, such as our committees and community groups, in an effort to ensure efficient progress. I also believe we need leadership which pushes for Elgin to adopt full-time representation. Not only is our Mayor and City Council part-time but they are at-large representatives. A city as populous as Elgin with a geographic footprint of 38 square miles deserves more adequate and intentional representation. I'm sure our current representatives wish they could spend more time focused on Elgin but many have other full-time positions in addition to raising families. It's not fair to them, to us, or our city staff. By design our city staff is risk averse, and rightfully so, which is why we need full-time elected representatives who are encouraged

to be bold but also held accountable by the public. My intention is to start this conversation and if the community agrees I propose we start planning our transition to full-time council within the next four years. This move will offer voters a larger pool of talent to choose from in future elections.

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?

I'm proud of our city for presenting a balanced budget and I applaud those who got use through those very difficult years after the great recession. Things were especially difficult here in Illinois during the lengthy state budget impasse. Despite these external circumstances Elgin has emerged with a strong AAA bond rating and is poised to develop some exciting properties. However, to the average resident like myself, our fiscal health may still seem ambiguous at times. Why are we among the highest taxed populations in the nation? Elgin is growing but why is Illinois losing more residents than it gains? A lot of that starts and stops with taxes. This is why I've been pushing the Elgin to partner with ClearGov for years. Though we may be transparent to the point of putting all of our financials online for the public, what do those 200+ page documents mean to residents? How do we know how well our tax dollars are performing relative to other communities of similar size? It starts with bench-marking ourselves against every community in Illinois and that's what ClearGov does. Their platform also enables us to better forecast individual line items in the budget further strengthening our bond rating.

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

Partnering with Neighborly. This organization guides communities in their pursuit of constructing 21st century data networks. Neighborly helps municipalities build publicly owned open access data networks which, among other things, enables us to sell access to existing internet providers. They liken it to parcel delivery companies using our highway/tollway system. As we move faster and faster down the path of technological advancement seemingly one thing is consistent, the need to quickly connect. To be competitive Elgin needs a robust fiber optic network. Neighborly brings a full stack solution, from planning to operation, and offers options when it comes to ownership. If a community wants to own the project from the start then Neighborly helps them build a funding stack by leveraging public bonds, private investments, and state / federal grants. Otherwise Elgin could opt to allow Neighborly to build and operate a network. This option eliminates our public bond portion, nothing ends up on Elgin's balance sheet, and as part of the contract in 5 or 7 years Elgin could exercise our option to purchase the network once it's profitable. In all cases communities see much faster speeds at or below their current monthly cost.