Michael Kolodziej: Candidate profile
Bio
Name: Michael Kolodziej
City: South Elgin
Office sought: Village trustee
Age: 58
Family: Wife Kristina (27 years)- preschool director in Hampshire, Daughter Taryn, a senior at St. Charles North HS, Son Devin, a graduate student at Western Illinois University majoring in Sports Management.
Occupation: Retired high school English/Speech teacher. Currently teaching SAT prep classes, coaching speech at York High School, and works for the Kane County Cougars.
Education: Master's degree in Education
Civic involvement: President of the St. Charles North music boosters, Knights of Columbus, involved with the Boys and Girls Clubs, coordinated SCN Veterans Day concert, involved in various South Elgin civic activities.
Previous elected offices held: South Elgin trustee
Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected? Elected five times for 4-year terms. Started in 1999.
Issue questions
What are the most important issues facing your community and how do you intend to address them?
Continued revitalization of our road infrastructure village wide and reequipping of our village parks. I plan on making ALL parts of our village a priority when deciding where to spend our sales tax dollars and Motor Fuel Tax dollars when financing these projects over the years. The same is true with our parks in where we can continue to pursue grants to finance such projects. With our first TIF district soon expiring, it is also key to strike now in order to encourage development to re-energize and redevelop some of our blighted structures in TIF Districts 1 and 2. I also want to maintain high level services village wide without any cutting of them while maintaining the lowest municipal tax rate in the Fox Valley area. This can be done by continuing to be fiscally conservative,
What makes you the best candidate for the job?
I reach out to ALL of South Elgin. I am responsive. While some may not like the message, I am willing to respond to both positive and negative feedback. I am a listener and I empathize with residents and their concerns. I also have 20 years of experience which gives me a rich history of knowledge being able to see where we have been and where we need to go. With that experience, I am able to bring facts to the table vs. misinformation. I also have a sense of humor and know that I am no more important than any of the constituents I represent.
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.
As an experienced communicator and speech teacher/coach, I feel I have a way with words in order to clearly inform and perhaps persuade my fellow board members. I think I have the respect of all of my colleagues on the board. Even though we may not always agree, there is a mutual respect for each other. We all come from various walks of life, but we have been and will continue to be an effective village board. I like to hear all perspectives when making a decision. I would say that my style is one of communication, respect, and cooperation.
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?
Unlike many other bodies of government, we are fiscally sound. We recently cut water rates for our residents and we may be looking to do so again. The South Elgin line of the property tax bill has actually gone down over the past 10 years. Very few boards can make such a claim. Yet, we have increase our number of police officers, built a new public works building, aggressively been replacing roads and infrastructure and parks, continues to see responsible residential and commercial growth ti offset raising taxes, and have developed our parks and recreation and public works programs/staff/equipment. We get a big bang for our buck. I think our biggest challenge is to responsibly develop our downtown area that pleases those who want it to change and those who do not want it to change.
What's one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?
We need better community opportunities for disadvantaged and troubled youth. We also need to continue to crack down on those who speed on our roads. We have looked into both of these issues, but we need to do more to ensure safety and opportunity for our youth.