Marc Answers Questions from The Pantagraph

What do you hope to accomplish if you win?

I have three main goals:

1. Bring fairness to our economic policies.
2. Bring balance and stability to the council.
3. Bring more resources to bear on the infrastructure of our town.

The current council excludes and actively suppresses dissenting views. This is not healthy. Everyone’s voice should be represented.

What do you expect will be the three most pressing issues you will face?

The most pressing issue will be getting the mayor to consider alternative points of view. He has a very poor record in this regard. Other pressing issues will be adequately funding pensions and finding ways to carefully lower taxes now that we have huge surpluses and contingencies in our budgets.

What are your thoughts on the Uptown South plan and the underpass development?

I do not support the current plan for Uptown South. It calls for tearing down and replacing a perfectly viable facility at huge expense. It promotes a large anchor building with no defined purpose. It is extravagant and wasteful. The plan invests tens of millions of dollars into government buildings that will not generate any tax revenue or significant economic activity. I support some aspects of the plan for community green spaces and additional housing, but there are much better ways for this to be accomplished. The underpass is misguided and accomplishes little. Locating it on Linden would provide more benefits.

What are your thoughts on a new cannabis dispensary in Normal?

I am not opposed to a new cannabis dispensary in Normal. I believe the current council has done a poor job in managing the approval process. They have refused a license to people who have met the standards that the council had previously created. The recent applicants were a minority-owned business that would have been an asset to our town. This duplicity of action confuses the business community and makes our council look amateurish. The council needs to honor the rules it set up, or create a clearer set of guidelines. It then needs the integrity to follow those standards.

What are your thoughts on town infrastructure and conditions of roads?

The current administration dismisses the problem. Poor roads in Normal give the entire community a bad look. Prospective developers do not know where our boundaries end, so the reputation of the whole area suffers. College Avenue is an excruciating example where a local nuisance is also a highly visible gateway to the community, and the unfortunate backdrop to one of our most prestigious business partners. More coordination needs to happen with the City of Bloomington and the county to plan projects in ways that can minimize costs, downtime, and redundancy. We can do a much better job in this area.