Dear Friends,
I hope you are enjoying the sunny days of our springtime. After a long winter, it is sure refreshing to see grass turning green and flowers coming through the ground, which are wonderful signs of life and hope for our fair City!
Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in the swearing in of our new Chief of Police, Chet Epperson. Chet joins Cyndie Hall, our new Director of Tourism, Culture, and Special Events, and Adam Smith, our new Director of Education and Life-Long Learning, as recent additions to our leadership team. And just this week, we hired our new Director of Community and Economic Development, Reid Montgomery. I am extremely excited about each of these individuals, who will bring great energy and ideas to the City.
Cyndie Hall has many years of service with the City where she created and ran the Special Events efforts for the City and served as President of the Illinois Special Events Manager's Association. Adam Smith was formerly with Rock Valley College and brings a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership and major experience working with at risk youth to his post. Chief Epperson brings new ideas and energy for the Police Department with an emphasis on community policing and accountable, numbers driven management. Reid Montgomery returns to his roots in the Midwest as he leaves his post heading up economic development for one of the fastest growing communities in California, Elk Grove. Prior to working for Elk Grove, Reid spent many years in manufacturing where he became a Vice President and Plant Manager for the global electronics company, JVC.
Each of these individuals shares the vision of Excellence Everywhere and a commitment to our new approach to managing this community. This program, our Rockstat program, which we discussed at the State of the City Address in March, will be the basis for our cities continuous improvement and customer service efforts. We will have much more on this in the months ahead.
And thanks to the many of you who were able to attend the State of the City Address. For the first time, the event was held in the evening at the Coronado Theater, free of charge. We tried to give as many of our people in Rockford a chance to witness the event. If you did not get a chance to see it, you can find and download the print version of the speech at http://www.cityofrockford.net/index.cfm?id=1451. The speech highlighted successes and challenges over the past year, as well as discussed the foundation laid for work ahead. We also discussed some important issues such as the Sales Tax Proposal for funding for our road and other infrastructure projects, and our unfortunately high municipal property tax rate.
Our property tax rate is simply too high. I repeated the call for an all-out "war" on the property tax rate at the Chamber's recent Business Luncheon, where I joined County Board Chair, Scott Christiansen, in discussing our regional efforts to improve investment in our community. A video download of the speech is available at http://www.enginestudio.org/COC/Video/MayorsLunch-Morrissey.wmv. By working with other local government bodies, we can invest strategically to grow our tax base and reduce our combined property tax rate.
I appreciate the support that was provided for the 1% Sales Tax Proposal as well as Home Rule, as a way to reduce our property tax rate. While big issues like this come and go, these are issues of tactics, not ultimate goals. We must invest in our infrastructure (the 4 R's: roads, rail, river, and the fiber optic ring), and we can have different ideas about how to do it. However, our vision and ultimate goal is the same: Excellence Everywhere. We will continue to bring forth innovative ways of approaching our need to invest in that vision.
Most importantly, we will reach that vision through disciplined, continuous, and measured management. That is the single biggest change we are pursuing, but probably the one that gets the least focus from the press. That is the effort around which we will grow and achieve improvement throughout our City. That is the goal of our forthcoming Rockstat program. We captured the essence of this new approach through our organizational values: Accountability, Customer Focused, Team Driven, Innovative, and we Never give up . . . put those together and it spells A.C.T.I.O.N. ! We build a culture of excellence through commitment to these values, and disciplined effort that focuses on results.
I always invite you to contact me if you have ideas about the Sales Tax Proposal or other methods for property tax relief or ideas related to the City or the campaign. You can reach me at larry.morrissey@cityofrockford.net or 815.987.5590 for City related issues or through the campaign office 815.968.6672 for campaign related issues. Please do not use my City email address for campaign related issues.
Finally, I would like to send a continued thanks for all of the notes and calls of support received, and for continued financial support. As an independent, we cannot rely on the financial or grass roots support of either major political party. Since the last election, we have paid off considerable campaign debt and we want to be prepared for the future. Thank you again for your support.
Very truly yours,
Mayor Larry Morrissey