Village officials ready for more planning

President Sarto sent the following message about the Village’s upcoming Strategic Planning meeting:

Once again this year as we did in 2006, the Village Board and the staff will hold a Special Meeting at Randall Oaks Golf Club. The purpose of this meeting is a Strategic Planning Session.

Last year I opened this session with some remarks that were meant to set the tone for this worthwhile planning session. Again this year I will be making some opening remarks. A year ago my comments were very upbeat and positive about our future. I stated: “This meeting reflects extraordinary changes that have taken place in the Village over a relatively short period. It reflects elections in Carpentersville. We are at a crossroads. We have before us today an opportunity that only comes around once in a while. We are in a position to make sure that our programs are moving in the right direction and addressing the issues that we as a Village need to face. We are on the right course.”

I went on to say: “The Village now has an outstanding staff. Our job on the Board is to now keep our good people. So, today, we are here to help build and develop a strategic plan that will identify issues that may involve short-term, medium-term and long-term consequences. We are ready at this time to move ahead in this strategic direction.”

I continued: ” Our predicament in the Village is to think as a dreamer. We need to think outside the box. This is a good thing. We need to look and think about the bigger picture. In my opinion, we can do better than we are doing now.”

I concluded my opening remarks with this: “What is important is that the Board members and staff now seem to be on the same page and ready to go. We need to conceptualize a future and then decide how we want to get there.”

That was last year. So, much has happened in that short time. Here are some of the thoughts that came from that session just one year ago. These were the comments from the Village Board members given in one on one interviews with the facilitator: Under the heading “Core Values of Carpentersville”

1. Down to earth community that reflects a

2. “diverse” demography that helps make the

3. Village a highly family oriented place to live.

4. The village has a “small town feel” even though

5. it is located in a highly populated suburban location convenient to

6. shopping and other cultural amenities.

7. The Village offers a wide variety of housing stock ranging from very affordable single family homes to those on the high end.

8. Carpentersville is a maturing community that is known for its high quality drinking water, hard working residents, and high quality schools.

9. In summary, Carpentersville reflects the future now. It displays the characteristics of a family oriented, ethnically diverse, high service community where municipal government sustains a high quality of life with a small town feel.

Listed below were the top 5 “Strategic Issues” that we identified a year ago:

1. Improve the Village infrastructure (i.e. roads) Build a Public Works Facility, Identify funding sources for additional Village staff, especially for Public Works, Educate citizens about the need for a potential property tax increase to fund needed infrastructure improvements.

2. Have the Village engage in more intensive business/retail recruitment. Focus on economic development. Increase Village Revenues, i.e., grants, sales tax, and link to economic development.
-Hire an Economic Development Director.
-Hire an Economic development advisory firm.
-Create an Economic Development Council to advise the Board and Village.

3. Engage in active redevelopment of those areas of the Village that need it.

4. Improve the Village’s Image:
a. externally in a broad sense, and
b. internally between Board and staff.

5. Have the Village grow wisely.

I’ll let those reading this make up their own minds in grading the Village on achieving those goals that we set out to accomplish one year ago.

Bill Sarto – President
Village of Carpentersville

Carpentersville gets international attention

No longer does Carpentersville simply have a place in the national spotlight. The Village has now gone international, with the latest piece appearing in The Guardian’s Observer magazine (The Guardian is a United Kingdom new source):

The fight against the Hispanic revolution is gathering momentum in small towns across America. None is more on the frontline than the seemingly sleepy Illinois village of Carpentersville, one of a string of towns hereabouts that were founded by Irish and Polish immigrants, thrived on trade and factories, and have now hit harder times.

This excerpt is part of a longer analysis that appears toward the end of the lengthy article, which speaks of a more far-reaching issue:

For decades, Hispanics have existed mainly in the shadows of the American dream. Now they’re taking to the streets in their millions, in the biggest march for equality since the Civil Rights movement. And with $1 trillion to spend, millions ready to vote and their own candidate for President, Hispanics hold the key to the new American century.

The portrait that is painted of Carpentersville is, once again, not pretty to look at. And, with pending litigation against the Village for alleged discrimination — while the Village and paramedics may be found to have immunity — we could be faced with the reality of seeing the town labeled, as Hazleton was in a Zogby International Report, as “full of racism”.

A Zogby International report issued Wednesday paints a harrowing picture of Hazleton as a city where racism is rampant and people live in constant fear of racial profiling and losing their homes and/or jobs if taken for being in the country illegally.

Just as in Carpentersville, the news in Hazleton, PA is not all bad. There are some good strides being made there as well. Unfortunately it is overshadowed. Unfortunately, “but” has to be inserted in order to tell the fuller picture.

Even if there is some admitted “political opinion” injected into the report on Hazleton, and the articles on Carpentersville, opinion shapes ideas, thoughts and plans. Seeing that Carpentersville has struggled with image problems for the better part of a decade, its those types of opinions that we could do without. Which makes it more important for the Village Board to put down their swords, make a public commitment to the residents and business owners to work to move past the division and spite of the past (that goes beyond the current group of Board members) and raise their level of communication.

Doing so would give this blog something to praise, rather than things which deserve criticism.