Last weekend I attended the annual conference of the Illinois Municipal League held in Chicago. What is NOT included in the presentation materials is the Saturday luncheon speech of outgoing IML President Mayor Scott Eisenhauer of Danville, Il. I am passing it on to you (LZ elected officials, staff and residents because in my opinion it was the best speech that I have ever witnessed and capsulizes the plight of municipalities in the current environment of a depressed economy, reduced economic development, shrinking revenues, increased demands for services, pension shortfalls and an environment that forces all of us to do more with less. Take a few minutes and read it. Regards, Tom Poynton Mayor Lake Zurich -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mayor Scott Eisenhauer’s (Danville, IL – Outgoing IML President) Speech Delivered to Gathered Elected Officials and Municipality Staff at Illinois Municipal League Annual Luncheon October 19th, 2013 by Mayor Scott Eisenhauer I want to share with you what an amazing honor it has been to serve you over this past year. I have had the pleasure in the last twelve months of meeting many of you, and in doing so, have gained an even greater appreciation of the dedicated, talented, and passionate people who serve as municipal officials. When we have had the chance to talk, I heard some very similar themes. I have heard from you that communities are tired of the annual difficult decisions you make by reducing personnel, consolidating services, and looking for creative ways of maintaining a balanced budget at a time when other levels of government are not only unable to do so, but when they do come up with a solution it usually includes some revenue reduction or unfunded mandate which the cities and villages must bear. Yet again this year, attempts were made to reduce the amount of Local Government Distributive Funds to municipalities and were it not for your determined efforts to fight off that challenge we would not have won this round. What I did not hear people say is how much better it would all be in spite of these difficult challenges if we just had a local government shutdown. And sadly, many have suggested, that unless you were a federal government employee, you may not have felt the negative impact to your daily life during that two week period when they were shut down. Imagine instead if you as municipal officials made the same decision….things are too tough, we can’t get along…let’s just shut down for two weeks. What would be the impact on the daily lives of your citizens then….no garbage collection, no sewer repairs, no police and fire services, no road work…..if you don’t think what you do matters every day to the residents of your community, imagine a two week shut down. What I also don’t hear municipal leaders say is “non-essential employees do not have to report to work”…thanks to the challenges we face, any “non-essential” employees were laid off years ago ….and in many cases, essential employees were let go simply because it had to be done to balance the budget. I have heard you talk about unsustainable municipal public safety pension systems and the enormous cost of lifetime PSEBA benefits for catastrophically injured employees who simply are NOT catastrophically injured. And I think what frustrates us the most is not only the negative impact it has on our ability to maintain balanced budgets, but rather as municipalities they are bills we are being asked to pay yet have NO control over how they are created. It is unfair for the state to set the benefits while you are asked to write the check to pay for them. What you don’t hear municipal officials say is they understand it takes the legislature several years to solve a problem which costs us millions of dollars a day, because we don’t understand that. We don’t understand why if a problem is that big you don’t just hole yourselves up in the capital and work on it day and night until it gets solved. In cities and villages we are faced with crisis constantly but we act immediately to resolve it….we don’t form a plethora of committees to hold countless public hearings over a period of years only to say at the end of the day we don’t have a resolution….in a situation like this time IS money and its money coming out of our pockets, and you have said, and we must all continue to say to the state, solve YOUR problems so they stop creating more problems for us. But most importantly what I have heard you say is how much you LOVE your community….how passionate you are to make a positive impact on your cities and villages. And that’s what I think sets us apart from other elected officials….that true, genuine love for your towns. I don’t hear state and federal lawmakers talk about how much they love their district, and perhaps that’s part of the problem, but I challenge you to have a conversation with any local official and not see the sparkle in their eye when they talk about their community. It’s that drive, that dedication that, in spite of all the punches thrown at us by other levels of government, some which may even knock us down, we get back up, dust ourselves off, and get back in the ring. We do that because we know that’s what our citizens expect us to do. A recent poll showed that the only form of government the American people have faith in today is local government….and that’s because they see you every day, they have access to you every day, they can yell at you or ask you questions in the grocery store, but most importantly, they know you are fighting for them every day. Our challenges in the next year will be very similar to the challenges of the last several years…..LGDF, pension reform, struggling revenues, greater demands for service….and yet our citizens have the confidence in you to stay in the ring, never throw in the towel, and eventually outpunch the opposition…..and you will do those things because of the love you have for your community. When I was first elected, a friend of mine gave me a copy of the Athenian Oath which I put on my wall and read often. This oath was taken by the young men of ancient Athens when they reached the age of seventeen and said the following: “We will never bring disgrace on this our City by an act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for the ideals and Sacred Things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the Citys laws, and will do our best to incite a like reverence and respect in those above us who are prone to annul them or set them at naught. We will strive increasingly to quicken the publics sense of civic duty. Thus in all these ways we will transmit this City, not only not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.” Thank YOU for what you do every day as passionate municipal officials to make your cities and this Illinois Municipal League, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was before. May God bless you and may God bless our cities and villages.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:14:19 +0000
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