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Illinois State Senate Candidate Michael Bond

Allstate Executive vies for senate seat

Candiate looking to relieve District 31 issues

By Kathy Gresey, Grayslake Times, 1-06-2006

After watching several northern Lake County school districts cope with multiple failed, referendums, Grayslake resident and parent Michael Bond decided to act. First he garnered the largest number of votes cast of 10 candidates to land a seat on the Woodland Consolidated School District 50 Board of Education: Second he is running for the Illinois State Senate District 31 seat.

Bond said that although his children’s school district wasn’t experiencing the degree of financial difficulty faced by other districts like Community Consolidated School District 46 and Gurnee School District 56, there was still a profound impact from those schools on the entire community. If the education system in an area isn’t successful, he said, other community structures begin to suffer.

“Looking at the direction that Woodland and neighboring districts were going caused me to take a quick turn”, he said. “People were leaving the community. Just by driving around you could tell there were less businesses here. This wasn’t my problem but it really had a direct impact on me. I wanted to bring my business skills to the school because at the rates that these referendums were failing, it was just startling”.

Bond is hoping to bring his business expertise to the State Senate as well. For the past 10 years he has worked at Allstate Insurance holding various budget positions. He joined Allstate in 1995 as an associate financial analyst and earned 8 promotions in his first 8 years with the company. He currently holds the position of corporate finance director.

"I have pretty high expectations of what our state legislature should be doing”, he said. “Allstate is very, very supportive. I don’t want to pick things up and leave. I want to fix things”.

Creating tax fairness and near term traffic solutions are two other areas that Bond highlighted during his campaign. "As the area’s population grows, better use must be made of citizen’s tax dollars”, he said.

“We have the ideas. What we don’t have is the money”, said Bond. “I want to be the person that goes to Springfield and fights for those kinds of things”.

"Creating a biotech corridor around corporations like Abbott Labs and Baxter Healthcare is another way to bring funds into the area”, Bond said.

“We need to build a talent pool. That’s why other companies want to move up here,” he said. “Companies want to be where people live and people want to live where there are great schools. We need a 10 to 15 year plan where you can attract great businesses. For us to be able to do this, things are going to have to be very well thought out. Without good leadership I don’t believe we are going to find good solutions to these problems”.

Bond is active in other community activities including youth sports and an annual youth oriented event. He and his wife Jennifer have three children and have been married for 10 years.

District 31 is home to 250,000 people. Its communities include Channel Lake, Antioch, Fox Lake, Lake Villa, Round Lake Heights, Round Lake Beach, Hainesville, Grayslake, Lindenhurst, Gurnee, Wadsworth, Zion, Winthrop Harbor and Beach Park.


	© 2006, Michael Bond for Illinois State Senate