Many Galesburg residents say they want more manufacturing jobs to come to town, and a candidate for Governor who stopped in town yesterday (Thursday) says he does, too, and likes a partnership that could make it happen.
Democrat JB Pritzker, inbetween stops in the Quad Cities in Peoria, toured the Galesburg-Area Vocational Center at Galesburg High School Thursday, with Ray Whitehead and others from Pegasus Manufacturing and Whitehead’s new venture, Jupiter Machine Tool.
Pritzker tells WGIL the partnership in place between Pegasus, District 205, and Carl Sandburg College is something he’d like to see more of.
“This is one of the best programs I’ve seen,” says Pritzker, “where a local company is a progenitor of the program here, and has partnered with the community, with the high school, and with technology companies to make sure that the kids are getting the kind of training they’ll need to be in advanced manufacturing.”
Pritzker says he’d like to see more school districts provide more vocational education.
Then, Pritzker repeated a familiar refrain: his claim that incumbent Governor Bruce Rauner hasn’t brought any real jobs to Illinois since being elected.
“Unfortunately, we’ve got a Governor today who bad-mouths the state everywhere he goes,” says Pritzker. “That means companies don’t really want to Illinois, because the leader of the state is bad-mouthing it. Of course, he invited Governor from around Illinois to go on TV and bad-mouth the state. Then, he went abroad and bad-mouthed the state. So, it’s very hard to attract businesses here when you’re doing that. If you’ve got a Governor who understands what the best, and most important asset of the state is, which is our people.”
Rauner has long used jobs-related events to tout additional jobs he claims the state has added.
