On Monday, local business owner Justin Lipes announced he will be running for Mayor for the City of Monmouth in next year’s election. Lipes states that he would focus his campaign on five areas of interest to the community; Change for local businesses, the need for a larger retailer to balance out the loss of Shopko, creating a task force to review and/or make cuts to the budget to help offset raising taxes, transparency of meetings through video recordings and to listen to the residents.
“There has been a lot of struggle with the downtown and getting businesses here, but I know we focus a lot on it. Personally, obviously now we need a retailer. So that is a big issue with Shopko going away, that is a big problem. Galesburg is close, but we need to try and keep that tax money right here in Monmouth. It is just convenient. An actual big retailer would help a lot. Business is going to be a big focus, but one thing we have to remember is we cannot focus so much on bringing new people here that we forget about all the people that have been here and working hard and keeping businesses open. Also, obviously we need to get into the budgets. The City has kind of struggled with a lot of the budget issues with the police and fire and a lot of that stuff. One of the problems with the budget and the balancing is not finding the right places to make the cuts and what happens is the burden goes on the people, raising taxes, and that seems to be the answer, like the status quo, for a lot of municipalities, not just Monmouth. A lot of times they don’t want to make cuts, nobody wants to be that person, but you really have to dive into the budget and look deep into them. You can’t just cross over them. It takes time. I might have to build a team and have people who are educated in those areas to take a look at it. We will just have to make cuts where they need to be made,” Lipes states.
Lipes owns four businesses including the Tac Shack in Monmouth and Peoria, Blue Falcon Battleground, which is an indoor nerf arena for kids, and the Good Shepard Defense Company.
