By Ted Schnell • BocaJump
A political group has emerged that intends to use threats of pain and promises of pleasure to pressure the City Council into complying with the group’s demands that the city repeal the business license, cut spending and refrain from raising or instituting new taxes to remedy Elgin’s budget woes.
Chuck Keysor, the former president of the Near West Neighbors Association, and Craig Mason, an Elgin CPA, are the founding members of Elgin OCTAVE – for Operant Conditioning To Achieve Voter Expectations.
If you are not familiar with operant conditioning, it is a psychological term for a form of learning in which pleasure and pain are used to elicit a desired response – desired behavior is rewarded, undesired behavior is punished.
Keysor and Mason say there is a groundswell against the city’s business license and against what they call poor decisions by city officials to continue spending taxpayer dollars on such things as the downtown Artspace project, the Bowes Creek Country Club, funding for the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Neighborhood Association, among others.
“We’re on the brink of a financial disaster – a $4.5 million shortfall, and they’re spending money like they’re going out of business,” Keysor said.
OCTAVE, he continued, intends to reverse that trend, and is focused on three main issues, all of which fall under the umbrella of fiscal responsibility. He and Mason say they and attorney Jeff Meyer and former City Council candidate Mike Curtin comprise the four-member core of OCTAVE, which they hope to build upon as they flesh out a framework for their organization.
The group already has a website and a Facebook page, and they have plans to add spread sheets to the website to track all council members’ votes on every spending decision related to spending.
“The only thing politicians respond to is them losing their jobs or not – that, in the long run, is what actually motivates them, because they like to stay in power,” Mason said. “They know if enough people get upset, they’re going to have to change what they’re doing.”
The idea, he said, is to condition the council to follow OCTAVE’s principles.
“These politicians had better pay attention or they’re going to lose there jobs,” Mason added. “If they do not follow (OCTAVE’s) principles, one, we’ll be in trouble financially, and two, people are going to be very upset, and when people are very upset, they vote out politicians.”
Mason added that given voter turnout in Elgin, it only takes 3,000 votes are so to get a new councilman elected.
Keysor added, “Of course we’d love to pleasure them,” by rewarding good behavior by council members.
Mason added the group “doesn’t want to sound adversarial – we want to work with the City Council as much as possible.” And, he said, he and Keysor have been meeting with individual council members to discuss OCTAVE’s agenda.
But “we just don’t see eye to eye,” which means OCTAVE must fall back on operant conditioning.
The two said they want to inspire the council to act responsibly by:
- Ending policies that are harmful to bringing business and jobs to Elgin, which would include repealing Elgin’s business license;
- Imposing no new taxes or fees or increases;
- And reduce unnecessary city spending.
Keysor said that these are hot-button issues to which residents he’s talked to are reacting strongly.
Keysor and Mason said the city’s bottom line must be core services – police and fire protections, garbage removals, roads and water/sewer services.
Both men claim there is growing support for their effort, although they declined to discuss that support in quantifiable terms. When asked how many people are supporting them, Mason said, “as many as we can get.” He also said Elgin OCTAVE has a mailing list, but declined to say how many names are on the list.
“We’ve got a lot of support so far,” he said. “We sent out one email to our mailing list and we got overwhelming support … I am very excited about the support we have so far.”
