Jennifer Curtiss: Candidate profile

Bio

Name: Jennifer Curtiss

City: Fox River Grove

Office sought: Village trustee

Age: 33

Family: Married

Occupation: Financial services

Education: College, Western Illinois University (Bachelors of Business with an emphasis in Finance)

Civic involvement: FRG Lions Club, FRG Lioness Club, FRG Centennial Committee, Volunteers at many community events throughout the year

Previous elected offices held: Village trustee

Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected? Yes, 2015.

Issue Questions

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

1. Downtown Redevelopment- Our downtown is in awful shape and unfortunately many of those buildings are beyond their useful life. Most of the buildings have sat vacant for as long as I can remember. I will continue to work with the board and staff to try and attract developers who would be interested in revitalizing our downtown. We have a facade grant program that existing business can take advantage of to improve their storefronts. We also welcomed a new business, Sticks Pub & Grub and hopefully in the next 6-8 months we'll have a Culver's. 2. Police Pension- Our police pension is only approximately 34 percent funded. I am committed to spending the next four years increasing our pension contributions. We have made some progress but still have a long way to go.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

My enthusiasm, dedication and love for my community. Fox River Grove is a great place to live! I believe it's important to be involved in your community. I am highly committed and engaged in my role as Village Trustee. Over the last four years (and over one hundred meetings), I have only missed one meeting and it was not a budget or capital meeting. While I am still learning new things all the time, I have grown so much from the experience I have gained through my first term. You can depend on me to do what's right for Fox River Grove and the people that live here.

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.

I recently completed an Influence and Situational Leader program through my work. It helped me to increase self-awareness and observe others and how they prefer to be communicated with. Sometimes you have to be able to adapt your leadership based on a specific situation. I adapt easily to different situations. Because of that, I am able to collaborate well with others for the greater good of our community.

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 budget is in good shape. The Village Board and Staff are constantly looking for ways to save the taxpayers money without jeopardizing services. We have outsourced where it makes sense to do so and have a capital asset replacement plan in place. There are two things we need to take actions on that are vital to our future. It is important that we start to make more aggressive contributions to our police pension as this continually takes up more of our property tax dollars each year. We also need to create a water main replacement fund and start planning for main replacements. Currently, there are no reserves to replace water mains and some of our mains are very old and may not have much life left in them.

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

Fox River Grove has sidewalks that lead to nowhere or in places no sidewalks at all. I would like Fox River Grove to be more walkable and this is right on trend for today's growing suburbs. It would be great to someday better connect the North and South side of town and have paths that connect to our beautiful parks. I would also like to see Hunter's Farm and Victoria Woods better connected to the rest of town.