Private Lunch with O’Fallon Mayor Gary Graham The City of O’Fallon has a lot to brag about with many awards recognizing their community. They have healthy finances with property taxes making up only 1% of the City’s budget, AA+ bond rating, double the recommended amount of cash reserves, over $195,000,000 in total assets and 16 years of balanced budgets under the years of leadership that Mayor Graham has provided. O’Fallon is a very Builder friendly community with over 125 new home permits this year thru October of 2016 they lead the charts in St. Clair County as well as being #5 in the STL MSA in new homes starts on average from 2010 to 2014. O’Fallon currently has over 4,000 platted lots available. The Mayor shared his #1 goal has been to protect home values. The addition of the “Medical Mile” in 2017 was highlighted bringing in over 1,300 employees and potential $1.3 million in additional retail sales from 15,400 sq. ft of new space that will become available. Professional Women in Building Council members gather for a picture with Mayor Graham. Bottom row (left to right) Andrea West with Fulford Homes, Cherity Freeze with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Brittney Ragsdale with CA Jones Inc., Michelle Null with Benchmark Title, Jan Johnson with Garrett E. & Herschel E. Johnson RE & Dev., and Tracy Butler HBA Executive Officer. Top row (left to right) Chris Matteo with Fulford Homes, Linette Warnecke with TheBANK of Edwardsville, Shelly Leffler with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Beth Jacob with Jacob Family Enterprises, O’Fallon Mayor Gary Graham, Sue Schultz with Sandberg, Phoenix von Gontard and Mindy Shafer with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. O’Fallon Park is the 6th biggest venue in the STL region for visitors. The Family Sports Park will become a national tournament destination that has so much to offer and room for growth with more baseball fields and all weather turf soccer fields. Plans to improve downtown will tie in with the visitors that have been coming in for sporting events with transformations of First Street investments that will be funded from hotel tax revenue from out of town visitors all to be completed by fall of 2017. O’Fallon currently has over 1,000 hotel rooms and will be adding more as things progress. Mayor Graham was an absolutely delight as he shared the news and took questions from the audience. The Mayor will not be running for another term in April 2017 leaving a long list of respected leadership accolades. 15
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