Nunzio Pulice: Candidate profile

Bio

Name: Annunziato " Nunzio " Pulice

City: Wood Dale

Office sought: Mayor

Age (on Election Day): 57

Family: Married with 3 Children

Occupation: Purchasing Agent

Education: College Graduate

Civic involvement: Wood Dale Lions Club, Knights of Columbus Holy Ghost Parish

Previous elected offices held: Alderman City of Wood Dale

Incumbent? If yes, when were you first elected? Yes, 2011

Issue questions

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

Taking care of our infrastructure, minimizing flooding and airplane noise. We continue to work on our roads, sanitary and storm sewers, and water mains by continuing to update our 5 year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) and most importantly following through with the completion of projects. Flooding is also addressed in the CIP in which we are in the 1st phase of a multiphase multiyear project. Regarding Airplane noise, Wood Dale is part of the Suburban O'Hare Commission which has hired aviation experts to help us improve the night time Fly Quiet Rotation as well as seeking alternatives to the runway headings of the future that could help minimize noise.

What makes you the best candidate for the job?

I feel that I'm the best candidate because the residents' concerns are my concerns and I care about the future of the City as well the residents that live here. My vision is to look at the potential of Wood Dale and help plan for the future versus being short sighted. Ultimately, this will help us save money in the long term, while continuing to move the city forward.

Describe your leadership style and explain how you think that will be effective in producing actions and decisions with your city council.

My leadership style is to treat people with respect, which in turn helps with productivity and growth for the City of Wood Dale. I feel that my calm demeanor, attentiveness to citizens' needs and willingness to hear what the Council members have to say brings about good constructive conversations. The last thing I want is a City Council that is a rubber stamp for me, which I feel would minimize our future growth.

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 continue to have a balanced budget and retain 9 months of operating cash reserves, which means if all revenue were to stop we could operate all City Services for 9 months. We are able to maintain that reserve while keeping our public services at a high level, sometimes improving them as well as slowly adding additional services. This is why we continue to update our CIP on a yearly basis, so we can budget properly and come up with solutions that will improve infrastructure and services for many years. Short term fixes, or what I like to call the band aid approach, is not an option we like to take because that leads to higher costs over the long term.

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

One thing I would like to see more of is an improvement on us becoming a closer community. We have been striving to get more community involvement from the residents of Wood Dale. For instance, our Comprehensive Master Plan was open to all residents and allowed them to voice their concerns and give their input on what they would like to see for the future of the city. As I previously said, the Residents' concerns are my concerns, so as we gather the community together for meetings like this, their input is appreciated. Other things that I would like to see happen would be to create some small working groups of citizens throughout the community to discuss what they enjoy or do not like about the city and find where we can make improvements.