Take Charge of Our Local Economy

For economic development to lift all boats in Skokie, I would make it a priority as Trustee to ensure that local dollars are recycled within the community as much as possible.

We need to see our Skokie community not through the eyes of an outside investor who only sees an empty vessel that’s defined by our convenient regional location, but as a living, breathing ecosystem of people, businesses and services.

In its classic handbook, Working Neighborhoods, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, where I organized housing co-ops for low-income people in Chicago and assisted groups engaging in community economic development, summarized the “healthy neighborhood economy" as one featuring a single dollar multiplying itself as it passes through local hands. With every transaction, the bonds among residents, workers, businesses, and financial institutions only strengthen, as this graphic shows:

[From “Working Neighborhoods: Taking Charge of Your Local Economy.” Chicago: Center for Neighborhood Technology, 1986]

As Trustee, I will:

• Make Skokie a good place to be rather than merely a convenient town to drive through.   

• Promote and support local businesses, entrepreneurs and institutions through financial incentives and by removing barriers such as excessive fees.  

• Ensure that economic incentives serve a public purpose in genuine partnerships with private investment – no corporate (Amazon) tax giveaways!   

• Leverage emerging opportunities to grow beyond stale, out of date and ineffective economic development models.

• Reform TIF (Tax Increment Financing) and other economic incentives to ensure that public funding delivers public benefit and, where appropriate, to ensure that Skokie is subsidizing locally owned and controlled small businesses first.

• Explore the creation of a community development credit union as a source for local savings and investment.