Christine Gregory

“We are losing people at a ridiculous rate. That hurts us because then you may have some people who are here who have the skill set to fill jobs, but if half of those people have left the area then you have trouble maintaining that business here because then you don’t have enough people to fill those jobs they have to offer.

“We also need to see a difference in the way we do taxation around here. I feel like the people within Decatur are taxed and fined to within an inch of their lives.

“We’re not working with people that are millionaires and billionaires. We’re working with people that make minimum wage sometimes at two or three jobs and when they see their taxes being spent and being taken away from them and they don’t have the ability to take care of themselves, it just does something to you mentally. It does something to you to have to feel like you need a Link card because you can’t provide for yourself.

“Just because we’re just Decatur doesn’t mean we have to be just Decatur. We can be so much more. We can take care of the people who are here. We can provide jobs and we can provide different business opportunities. There is so much room for entrepreneurship here.”

Christine Gregory
Decatur, Illinois