Carole on the Issues

I am working on drafting a comprehensive overview of my stances on issues facing our County.

I have an accounting degree from the University of Illinois, and in these trying economic times, we need someone at the helm of the ship with the experience and background to cut taxes and encourage business growth in our communities. When the Government cuts taxes, we will create jobs, and with jobs, opportunities.

I am running this campaign 'For the People' to restore fiscal integrity to our County, create jobs for our families and work to ensure that your tax 'investment' in our County is spent in the most responsible possible way.

There is one issue facing our county, and it impacts all of us. Its Name is JEB, that’s right JEB, JOBS ECONOMY and BUDGET. These are three intertwined issues that are not, and can never be separate. If we do not have good jobs in our County, we can never improve our local economy, and if our economy is not growing, we will not increase revenues to the county.

What does that mean? That means, we will not be able to provide services to the investors in our county, we will not be able to support improvements to our infrastructure, our property values will suffer, and with that our schools will suffer. In these times, in 2009, we have one major issue, and that is JEB, of all the other issues brought up by my opponents every last one of them can be attributed back to JEB. JOBS ECONOMY BUDGET.

I don’t think many people know this about me, but I used to drive a tow truck. Carole Pankau, driving a tow truck in Chicago Winter. I drove a tow truck because Husband John and I owned an auto repair shop, and sometimes we needed an extra tow truck driver. This experience was vitally important to me because I know what impact government has on Jobs and the Economy.

If we increase property taxes, my profit goes down, and I will either have less money to re-invest in the economy, or I will cut expenses, like one of my employees. If I cut an employee to make up for increased taxes, then there is one more jobless person in the County. If there is one more jobless person in the economy, that is one less person buying goods and services, paying taxes, helping to grow our economy. What happens then? Then our revenues at the County fall. Less revenue? Less revenue means fewer road improvements, fewer services, we will begin to remove some of that ‘Jewel’ quality our county has right now.

If we are to address this 800-pound gorilla, JEB, we need to work together to CUT taxes, and I mean cut! We can not do that until we implement zero based budgeting, until we scrutinize every expenditure in the County budget, until we measure and test every program in the County to ensure we are receiving value from that program, and most importantly we can not fix this issue until we are committed to stretching every tax payers investment as far as we possibly can.