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Name: Duane (Rick) Dudek
Age: 61
Town: Cary
Office sought: Village Trustee
1) What skills, qualities or experience do you possess that separate you from your opponents?
To begin, experience. I have 10 years on the Cary Village Board, and am the senior Trustee by a wide margin. My decisions have always been made impartially, and while not always popular, they have benefitted the Village of Cary, both socially and financially. With over 30 years in the finance world, I understand the unique manner in which municipalities must handle their budgets, and have worked diligently during my term to reduce spending by cooperative purchasing, careful consideration of hiring when attrition occurs, and outsourcing certain services that can be done less expensively than using Village staff. I have been an advocate for moving forward on key issues facing the Village, including our need for a new Village Hall, Downtown Streetscape improvements, and developing a pro-active position on bringing new businesses into Cary to help improve revenues and control taxes. Even with the challenges we have within our Board, I always look to be a collaborator, try to stay positive, and focus on what is best for our residents.
2) What can the Village of Cary do and what should it do to ease the property tax burden on homeowners?
The next Village Board must invest in an organized, targeted, and on-going strategic plan to bring new businesses into Cary, plain and simple. Since the last recession started in 2007/08, I have been part of our Board's efforts to control our expenses, which we’ve done very effectively, but we are now running as lean as is possible without putting the safety of our staff and our residents at risk by having our employees, including our police staff, work under the stress of being asked to do too much. My running mates, Christine Betz and Chris Naatz, agree with me that bringing in new business, both retail and commercial, is the most important commitment we can offer the voters, and we are ready to do just that. Cary must also work to retain and support our current base of business, and not see them leave for other Communities. We must make our Town “business friendly” by knowing our vacant inventory, streamline the process of approval for businesses needing variances in order to come to Town, and consider incentives for businesses that generate large scale sales tax revenue, such as grocery stores, brand name retailers, or automotive sales and service.
3) How would you describe the climate in Cary government for businesses? What needs improvement? What's working?
Given the challenges we’ve faced generating a consensus within the current Board on many key issues, I feel we do not send the type of positive message out to the business community that is the key to our future, at this time. There have been Trustees that shift direction on issues, have addressed potential developers in ways that are not professional, and have made several issues very polarizing within the Community as a whole. With the economy just now seeing business once again want to invest in new development, this is a time, more than ever, that the Cary Village Board must present a positive and unified front to those searching out a community to possibly locate their business in, and sadly, we spend more time moving apart than we do coming together. What needs improvement you ask .. ? That should be obvious from my response to your first part of this question. As for what is working, I’d say “our staff, top to bottom”. We have talented, resourceful, committed department heads, and staff that truly cares about the Town and its residents. They form building blocks from which to grow, and grow they clearly want to help us to do!
4) What will be the biggest challenge that Cary residents and their village government will face over the next four years and how will you meet it?
First, the next Board needs to set aside any personal prejudices or trust issues that may exist, and we must strive to improve upon our working relationships. We need to work more together and less apart. An example of this is the Meyer Material extension history. When it concludes in 2018, this project will have funded over $7.1 million into our budget since 2008, and will have paid for squad cars, new Village Hall technology and building repairs, numerous project design costs, and may be funding nearly $1 million in Downtown Streetscape improvements soon. When the Meyer project is over, so is their financial contribution, which will leave a significant budget gap that we have no replacement for at this time. So as I suggested in question 2, our primary challenge is budgetary, and as part of the next Village Board, I will strive to bring a unified effort to pro-actively strengthen our top line revenue base by building up our retail and commercial business sector, to not only fill funding gaps, such as the Meyer contributions, but to lessen the burden on our taxpayers as well. Making Cary “business friendly” and searching out targeted new businesses is an effort we must succeed upon, and we need to bring the next Board together to all work to accomplish this for the residents. Strengthening Cary financially during my next term is my #1 priority.
5) The Pedcor complex has been a divisive issue in Cary for several years? Now that the complex is completed, what are your thoughts?
You mean “Garden Place Apartments”, right, for we have no PEDCOR complex in Cary, it’s Garden Place!! So I’ll start by saying that Garden Place has been and still is misunderstood, and was an easy target when it was an approved development on a vacant piece of land. Now, $18 million dollars later and nearly ready for final landscaping, Garden Place is a beautiful addition to Cary that will help 60 families, WORKING families, to have a fantastic Community to call home, and live in a place they can be proud of. The only part of this development that I wish we had done a better job on, would have been to have taken more time to thoroughly explain to the Community how the financing arrangements work for projects such as Garden Place, for it is a unique method and many people feel their tax dollars are supporting Garden Place, which of course, they are not. Rents are affordable because more equity is raised, the owner borrows less money, and when the mortgage is lower, so are the payments, therefore allowing for the lower rents. The formula is simple, and the equity came from private investors, not the taxpayers. Sadly, Garden Place has polarized the community mostly due to misrepresentations of the truth, and the next Village Board needs to quickly bring the community back together to the Cary many of us feel has been lost during this process. There are people living in Garden Place, people perhaps less fortunate than those who opposed the project, but individuals who deserve a chance much like many of us had in our lives.
6) What should Cary residents expect to have happened in Cary by the end of your term?
I have joined with Christine Betz and Chris Naatz because we all share the same vision for Cary, and what we commit to the residents during our term is the following: 1) Generate a balanced increase of new retail and commercial businesses that come into Cary thru our proactive outreach. By improving our business climate, we will improve our top line revenue, and hold the line on taxes, not to mention adding destinations to Cary that our population may now be going elsewhere to spend their money at. 2) Invest in continued beautification throughout the Village of Cary, with emphasis on the east and west entryways to spur development there, as well as in our Downtown District to retain and grow the existing or new businesses operating in that area. 3) Stay a good steward of our taxpayer’s money, and continue to look at every possible way to reduce costs and do more with less. The Village portion of an individual’s tax bill is approx. 5% of the total, and thru those collections, we run a team of 50+ employees, provide numerous public services and police protection, maintain miles of streets, and insure that our population of over 18,000 residents live in a Community they can be proud to call home.
In sum, our Team, “Positively Cary," feels that our residents deserve more, and that starts with giving to them our 3 campaign commitments, described for you here.