Stan Lester - Platform

PLATFORM of STAN LESTER - Candidate for HIGHLAND PARK CITY COUNCIL 2017

I am a very different kind of candidate.

My honorable and worthy opponents can point to long histories of public service.

I cannot.

For the past 25 years, my service has been privately devoted to the care and support of aging and ailing parents through the final decade of their lives and the care and support of adult children struggling to find places for themselves during troubled times.

Now, my time to serve our community has come.

What I can offer is innovative thoughts and ideas for actions to make dramatic positive changes to our governing practices and policies to enable Highland Park to become a leader and an example for how to enhance democracy to work better for all citizens. We must start at the local level and build on strengths from the bottom up. The core of my platform proposals rest upon four guiding principles:

Inclusion,

Participation,

Obligation and

Technological Innovation.

For many years now, we have been witness to a steadily increasing trend in voter apathy and disengagement.

In the 2015 uncontested election for our Highland Park City Council seats, the highest vote getter received 1779 votes. That total represented about 8% of the 22,000 eligible, registered voters in our city. The 2013 contested election saw the highest vote getter receive 4896 votes or approximately 23% of those entitled to vote. 2011 saw that number at 5616 or 26.7%.

Why are we electing officials with such small proportions of our votes? Do we not care about our city’s government?

Are our minority groups (seniors, young new voters, Latino, African American, etc.) distressed, depressed, disenfranchised? Are we so disillusioned with government that we’ve opted out of the process because we no longer believe that our vote counts?

I personally believe that each and every voter is a critical bastion of our democracy and democratic process. We must reverse this apathy and disengagement to make our lives better.

Therefore, my platform planks include the following far-reaching and long-range life-changing proposals:

1 COMPULSORY VOTING

Over thirty countries including Australia and Belgium have some form of compulsory voting which requires citizens to register to vote and to go to their polling place or vote on election day.

I propose that Highland Park begin the process to legislate compulsory voting. Your right to vote is not only a right and privilege but also an obligation to your fellow citizens to engage at least to the extent of showing up and giving voice once every two years.

The City of Highland Park should endeavor to initiate necessary changes to make it as practical as possible for each and every voter to comply with this obligation. Changes including but not limited to:

1. Moving election days to weekends.

2. Changing election days to warmer weather time periods.

3. Extending voting hours.

Penalties for non-compliance can be in the form of fines payable to the city for general expenditures.

Here are some links to additional explanations and information about this concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/a-feasible-roadmap-to-compulsory-voting/413422/

2 PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING

The Highland Park government management and staff currently are completely responsible for formulating and passing a budget for each year. They engage in countless hours of meetings and hearings to help direct them toward this goal which has yielded our city a long series of “award winning” budget presentations. They do a terrific job. But there is an important element missing. The people do not get to vote on it. There is a growing movement across America, which is called “Participatory Budgeting”. You can find extensive documentation about it here:

https://www.participatorybudgeting.org/what-is-pb/

I propose that we improve our standard practice by:

1. Examining input from all segments of our society.

2. Providing for voters to make the ultimate decision on some meaningful portions of how discretionary budget money is spent.

3 DIGITAL CURRENCY

In December of last year, the state of Illinois announced the Illinois Blockchain Initiative.

https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/doit/Pages/BlockChainInitiative.aspx

A unique opportunity exists today for Highland Park to become an early adapter and participant in a new technology, which has the potential to dramatically change the way the world handles money and payments.

There has been an extensive amount of publicity and “hype” in the past couple of years about Bitcoin and Blockchain technology. Now, this is being replaced by reliable, legitimate announcements like the one above and this:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-will-get-native-support-microsoft-excel-year/

What is Bitcoin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc2en3nHxA4

or

https://www.weusecoins.com/

I propose that our city take the lead here in Illinois by examining, investigating and embracing this technology in initially:

1. Accepting payments for city services in bitcoin along with the standard cash, check, credit card, bank transfer, etc. methods.

2. Encouraging and assisting merchants in our retail and service economy to also begin to accept bitcoin and other digital currencies as payment for local goods and services.

The financial benefits compared to credit cards immediately result in fees to the merchant (and the city) being reduced from the standard 2.75% credit card fee to a general .5% fee for accepting and converting bitcoin into dollars. This can be done automatically, on a daily basis, if desired.

This also creates an additional market where merchants can add incremental sales to bitcoin users.

What is Blockchain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WG7D47tGb0

And later, in examining and adopting blockchain technology to record asset ownership and transactions in a transparent and public way. See what Cook County is doing below…

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/chicago-s-cook-county-to-test-bitcoin-blockchain-based-public-records-1475768860/

4 DIVERSITY IN LEADERSHIP

About 35% of Highland Park’s registered voters are over the age of 60. None of our city council members are. I am.

Each year of our lives gives us new and broader experience and perspective on how things work. My life experience will work hard for you. You will choose 3 of 4 candidates for city council running for 4-year terms in this coming election. In a separate group, you will choose 1 of 3 candidates for a 2-year term.

The political process has placed my name, STAN LESTER, at the bottom of the ballot in my category. I think of it as “saving the best for last.”

If what I’ve written above hits a responsive chord in you, I ask for your vote.
Vote for a different approach.

Give me one of your three ballot choices or feel free to just vote for me only if you agree that I am very different and my platform points make sense. And you are ready to re-engage in Democracy.

Also, please look at my website, http://stanlesterforcitycouncil.com , and donate or ask questions. Each donation will help me to spread this message.

I am grateful for all comments or questions you may have. Please send them to me via email or on the website so I can digest and reply to all of them.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

Stan Lester

stanlesterforcitycouncil.com

stan.lester@telemap.com

847-432-0021© for City Council

Paid for by Stan Lester for City Council, 801 Marion Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035.

© 2017 by Stan Lester for City Council

Paid for by Stan Lester for City Council, 801 Marion Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035.