Chairman’s Corner: “Kane County Connected”

Today’s humor: I’m proposing hiring a “community organizer.”

Well…not really… we already have one of those in the White House. The Community Coordinator positions we’re talking about here at the county are something entirely different.

Initially, I thought we needed a public relations director, like we’ve always had, to describe all the positive things that the Chairman’s office was doing. However, what’s much more important is what 515,000 of us, through our elected board members, are doing together.

Therefore, rather than bringing in a spinmeister or continuing with lobbyist contracts, we’re looking for a couple of teammates who will serve as project managers to get the real work done.  

Everyday county business includes justice being dispensed, roads being built and kept clean, zoning being considered, taxes being collected, all the many things that people take for granted.

Please, for a second, consider what unique characteristics make a place worth living in forever? If we were merely mercenary, we would just ask how do we retain and attract employers and productive taxpaying citizens?

Now that the County Board is working in its second year of fulfilling the commitment of freezing property taxes, so that we ask taxpayers for no more than in the past, the more employers, shoppers, investors who we attract and retain, the more people there are to lift a fixed tax burden.

We’ll begin the community coordinating process by identifying important segments of our population and the activities they naturally enjoy. The list is only limited by our imagination…veterans, taxpayers, employers, moms (and dads), youth, seniors, travelling retiree ambassadors, pet owners and even gardeners…

Within the next six months I hope that you’ll hear a lot more about the work that these Community Coordinators will be doing, leveraging a small army of talented Kane County citizens doing what they like to do….naturally!