Donald Sawicki
Republican
Granite City
Age: 57
Single
Children: None
Job: Self-employed engineer, author, consultant
Phone: (618) 877-0941
Web: county21.com
Facebook: --
Twitter: --
E-mail: donald@county21.com
Education: B.S. in electrical engineering, University of Illinois
Previous offices: --
Qualifications: I have worked on numerous technical committees with large budgets, typically tens of millions of dollars, and sometimes difficult goals. Many of these committees were formed to address specific problems when standard procedures and solutions were not available. Skills I obtained working these projects can be useful to county government committees. I have worked on projects at large corporations to develop and test new avionics, and improve existing hardware and software. This involved dealing with various inter-corporate departments and outside suppliers and federal agencies. This experience can be directly applied to county government operations.
Top issues: Property taxes are too high and increasing too fast, especially when they should be decreasing. Actual property values have dropped dramatically, but property values for calculating taxes have not and are not even close to actual. Property tax entities should be limited to the money that comes in based on realistic property values and fixed and reasonable rates. Get PTELL, limits property tax increases, in Madison County. Eighty percent of Illinois, including all counties in and around Chicago, have this law. In 2004 a non-binding referendum for PTELL passed with an 86 percent majority. Nothing has been done to date.
