Winfield’s Infrastructure Woes

This is an archived article from February 2010

Chances are you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the intricate system of underground pipes that bring us drinking water, carry away sewage and ensure rainstorms don’t leave us waterlogged. That is, of course, unless you’ve found your home flooded or your commute blocked by thousands of gallons of water gushing into the streets.

Winfield officials have been warned for years their system is in need of repairs, many pipes are close to 60 years old and worn down by ground water and acidic soil. Over the last five years Winfield Village President Deborah Birutis has failed to even marginally address a solution to mend Winfield’s crumbling infrastructure and miles of deteriorating roads throughout town. Now she’s in panic mode scrambling to get support from a taxed-out public for a referendum to fix the massive problems caused by her leadership mismanagement.

A few years back the village had a long cold snap with about a month and a half of below-freezing temperatures. Then, abruptly, the mercury rose and over the course of the next several months, 54 water mains broke, causing all sorts of havoc. The pipes were old. Some were ancient. And they were laid shallow without much protection. So with any radical changes in temperature, they were susceptible to breaking. The village is currently operating at about a 20 percent loss in their system of finished water out of the system through leaks and failures. How long could a business stay viable if they have a 20 percent shrinkage walking out the door?

The question that is now on everyone’s mind is: What has Village President Birutis and the village board done to stop the hemorrhaging of Winfield’s infrastructure?

The answer, absolutely nothing.

Trustee Jack Bajor has been the Public Works Committee Chairman for the past five years. Maybe Mr. Bajor can explain why over the last five years under his leadership he turned away from our screaming infrastructure needs and let the deterioration continue. It has been Mr. Bajor’s responsibility as public works chair to ensure the village’s infrastructure needs are met and the community is safeguarded. Public Works Chair Bajor talks a good game but that’s all it is, talk. Sadly, Mr. Bajor needs to be informed that ignoring these problems imperils public safety, diminishes our economic competitiveness, is penny-wise and pound-foolish, and results in tremendous missed opportunities for the village.

Winfield is near the top in DuPage County for the number of structurally deficient and functionally obsolete infrastructure. Why is Winfield in this predicament? The answer lies with Village President Birutis and her board. Ms. Birutis along with her village board blindly follow the anti-growth philosophy of Winfield United. Ms. Birutis espouse Winfield United’s self-serving and highly flawed position that Roosevelt Road should remain residential. This is a thoroughfare which is commercialized from the Lake Michigan to DeKalb and affords Winfield the best opportunity for revenue growth. The past five years of  Ms. Birutis’ economic plan has produced not one single dollar in new revenue. Revenues badly needed to repair and maintain the decaying infrastructure in town.

At the start of every year Ms. Birutis throws around the terms economic development – downtown redevelopment and this years was no different. But these are merely buzz words to try and hide the failed policies of her administration and mislead the voting public. In the last 6 years Winfield has not seen one new development, downtown or anywhere else.

How did Ms. Birutis think she was going to be able to fund the needed infrastructure improvements? Obviously she had no idea. So the village board pushed aside infrastructure initiatives, including basic maintenance and repair. If you think this is an exaggeration consider a little known fact, the village owns the fire hydrants in town, the village is responsible for their maintenance yet the village has not tested the fire hydrants in over 5 years. Hydrants must be tested on a regular basis to ensure they are capable of delivering water at a pressure and a rate of flow for public health and effective firefighting operations. If this isn’t a cause for concern, I don’t know what is?

Now throw in the board’s wasteful spending of $8 million in taxpayer’s monies earmarked for water, sewer and road improvements on projects to make themselves look good. Think $2 million for remote meters, $1.5 million for new water and sewer lines to an empty lot and $1.5 million for a new public works building. Try finding out where the remaining $3 million went, you’ll need a full scale forensic audit. While the village board boast about these projects they mean nothing if the village they are operating in has its vital organs fail on them.

What this board never understood is infrastructure spending is a crucial investment in the village’s future. Delaying infrastructure maintenance, repairs and replacement never pays off in the long run. Who can say what breach of public health and safety it might result in next time? Addressing Winfield’s infrastructure shortcomings should be of the highest priority for the community.

It is clear, maybe not to this board that getting Winfield’s infrastructure act together is critical to the town’s future. If Winfield doesn’t, it would be worse than foolish. It would be tragic.

Trustee Jack Bajor ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’

This is an archived article from January 2010

The newest local arm of Winfield United, the Winfield Post ran an article featuring Winfield Village Trustee Jack Bajor’s account of how the DuPage Water Commission misappropriated 19 million dollars in taxpayer’s funds.

Of course Mr. Bajor plays the ‘blame game’ – he always has, he always will – but what’s truly annoying is the hypocrisy, the near-constant accusations where the accuser is far guiltier than the accused. The most common political hypocrisies are Mr. Bajor’s accusations concerning the fiscal irresponsibility of the DuPage County Water Commissioners, yet we all know, the current Winfield Village Board has brought us monstrous operating shortfalls and foolhardy spending.

Mr. Bajor should explain to the residents why under his watch six million dollars earmarked for infrastructure repairs were carelessly spent on unwarranted projects. Why he ignored the degenerating infrastructure to fund nonessential pet projects instead of critical needs. It took less than four years for Trustee Bajor the liaison to the public works committee to irresponsibly squander the entire six million dollars.

There needs to be greater accountability on the village board. Mr. Bajor has an obligation as a public official to report on the usage of public resources and answerability for failing to meet stated village objectives. Furthermore, Mr. Bajor has a responsibility to guarantee initiatives meet their stated goals and meet the needs of the community.

Unlike Steve Austin we just can’t just rebuild our six million dollar fund.

Video: Legalize that Non-Potable Stuff

Wheaton Christian Grammar School (WCGS) built a facility in Winfield. The building is an outstanding work and something the whole town can be proud of. They spent a boat-load of money making the building extra green and Winfield is lucky to have an institution that people come (from what I understand) all over the world to attend.

Jay Olson was working for Ryan Company and was an engineer on the project when it came before the village board. He worked to shepherd the project through the regulatory hurdles of both Winfield and DuPage County and interestingly enough, he was on the planning commission when it came to that body for review. He has a lot at stake in the project.

The current saga for the WCGS is they would like water to irrigate their sports fields with. In keeping with their green flair they would like to drive a shallow point water well and use ground water instead of Lake Michigan water to get the job done. Now for those of you of the ecological persuasion using ground water should be much better than using chlorinated, fluoridated drinking water. If you are a penny pincher you should appreciate WCGS saving the money it would cost to keep the fields green. And if you are a property rights kinda person like me, you should appreciate the fact the water that is below your dirt is your property for you to do with what you wish and the law has been written that way since King John signed the Magna Carta.

WCGS petitioned the Village of Winfield in February to allow them to drive a well and the village apparently did nothing with it until May 6th village board meeting. The first video clip I have for you is of Trustee Jay Olson and is 5 minutes long. It is worth listening to and I believe exemplifies why I think Trustee Olson is this village’s best trustee. Its lucid and cogent and when Trustee Olson is done speaking you get the feeling like you were asked to affix bayonets and CHARGE by a great general. (“Once more into the breach” stuff for you Shakespeare fans)

Compare and contrast the speech Trustee Olson did with the one that came right after him by Trustee Bajor:

I think you will agree with me that Trustee Bajor is almost unintelligible.  I attempt to glean some kind of point from his statements and I gather he is worried about; back siphoning of fertilizer and pesticides into the ground water. Considering this is for non-potable water it is by definition not for human consumption. An anti-siphon device is about a $5 in-line add-on at Home Depot. Remember this is a shallow well, anything you put on the top of the ground is going to end up in the shallow well due to rainwater regardless of whether you have an anti-siphon device attached or not. That is why drinking water doesn’t come from shallow wells. All the local residences in the area are on city water and the school is in an industrial area. Not too many people want to drink the ground water in an industrial area. On top of that, the school is located on a 35 acre parcel so if you were to put a shallow well in the center of it, and if it were to contaminate the ground water or draw down the ground water in a “cone of influence” it would have to draw that water across 20 acres of land before it became either a nuisance or a health hazard to anyone.

I don’t know. On one hand I feel really bad having to fisk Trustee Bajor like this on Winfield411 but on the other hand, that last village board meeting went 4 hours long. Did it really need to be that long? Was anything that Trustee Bajor said a legitimate point, question or musing? He rambled into West Chicago’s water quality which is interesting, I suppose but not so much when it’s hour 2.5 of the village board meeting and you have 1.5 hours to go. Not to mention, West Chicago is 2 full miles away from the well-head at WCGS.

Note to village board; you are elected to protect 1. Public Heath & Safety 2. Keep the Peace 3. Run business interests of the town 4. protect and preserve the individual freedom of the people and the businesses as best as possible. Anything outside of that is an overreach of your authority. Trustee Bajor, tell the guy from WCGS in one sentence that you would appreciate if he would put an in-line anti-siphon device on his well head and then give him the YES and send him on his way. Then, keep all your musings to yourself and let the good people go home a little earlier from the village board meeting.

As for the question of the use of your non-potable water for non-potable purposes, the answer should be a resounding YES for commercial users such as the Winfield Christian Grammar School, public users such as the Winfield Park District and private users such as the citizens of Winfield.  Watering gardens, watering grass, washing cars and filling swimming pools can and should be done with water that is not human consumption quality. It’s fiscally intelligent, it’s ecologically sound and your ground water is your property.

Chicks and Ducks and Geese Better Scurry…….

If you didn’t know, I am making myself a royal pain in the ass at the board of trustee meetings. I ask questions during the question and answer time the village board would prefer were not asked and they prefer not to answer. But for the first time, Trustee Jack Bajor took the opportunity to answer my question in a very oblique way.

The question I posed was the one I shared with you on a previous post on Winfield411.

The question was, “If you held a race between your plans for developing the Town Center and developing Roosevelt Road, which project do you think would be completed first?” I challenged the village board to use their discussion time to kick around the answer to that question and I encouraged them to use the resources, such as the two engineers they have on the board to come to an answer.

It took an hour but Trustee Bajor answered my question, sort-of. Basically what he said was, he thinks we should focus on filling the empty commercial spaces that are on Geneva Road before we consider development Winfield’s “periphery” such as Roosevelt Road.

I have to admit I was a little gob-smacked by his answer. “periphery” makes me think of the westward expansion, Conestoga wagons slowly being pulled behind oxen, and

Artist Rendition of Roosevelt Road in Winfield

little house on the prairie. Aside from that, the idea that we somehow need to fill our empty commercial space before we consider working on Roosevelt Road is laughable. It’s like saying to developers that you can’t build any NEW houses in Winfield until all the USED houses in Winfield are sold. (oh, wait, I think we are doing that now…)

If you prefer a Pink Floyd quote, Jack Bajor is basically saying, “You can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.”

I believe that he is forgetting the three ‘L’s of real estate. Location, Location, Location. You can’t say to a developer, “No, you can’t build that building on the Roosevelt Road corridor but we have some nice buildings on Geneva you should look at.” Well, technically you can do that but it’s ridiculous.

So when the public was given their second opportunity to speak, I reminded Jack Bajor that Roosevelt Road is not the “periphery” of Winfield and that there are no Conestoga wagons ambling down the road. Roosevelt Road is a commercial road from the cerulean shores of Lake Michigan all the way to where the cow’s befoul the air in Elburn. That is EXCEPT in Winfield and that tragedy represents a wealth transfer tax between all the people of Winfield and the few that live on Roosevelt Road like Village President Deborah Birutis and Village Trustee Jack Bajor.

Bleeding to Death in a Room Full of Doctors

Deborah Birutis:

Bachelors of Science in Finance – John Carroll University

Masters of Business Administration – Lake Erie College

Vice President of Finance – Consumer & Industrial Companies

Glen VadeBonCouer:

Finance – University of Illinois

Jack Bajor:

B.S. in Civil Engineering

Masters Degree of Public Administration

23 Years of Municipal Experience

12 Years Engineering Consulting

So we find ourselves and our village without money in our budget for roads. As a citizen and a taxpayer I have to ask how this happened. From what I understand, each of the three trustees listed above are either on the finance committee currently or have been on the finance committee in the past 5 years. Deborah Birutis was the chairwoman of the finance committee for the better part of the past 4 years.

The purpose of a budget is to make sure that an organization like a company or a town does not get hit with very large expenses that can not be serviced out of revenues in any given year. Roads would fall into that category. In a properly done budget, a fraction of the service life of an asset would be set aside each year for the replacement of that asset as it wears out. So if a road lasts 15 years, you set aside 1/15^th of the value of the road so that in year 15 you have all the money you need to replace the road.

Winfield is currently going to referendum on $3.3 Million for road repairs. Winfield’s revenues were $8.2 Million last year. So we have an expense that is 40% of our operating revenues. This is exactly what a budget was designed to prevent.

I am searching for a way to understand how this happened. It would be unfortunate but understandable if between last years budget and this year’s budget something unforeseen happened to the roads that caused us to have to complete $3.3 million dollars in repairs. Say for instance a comet strike, nuclear war, renegade bulldozer… Barring these unforeseen events, the roads could only have deteriorated naturally which would have been accounted for in a properly constructed budget.

As a citizen, I want to know how a village board with two finance majors, one with an MBA and experience as a Vice President of Finance together with an engineer whose job it is to council other towns on the state of their infrastructure couldn’t or wouldn’t account properly for the state of Winfield’s infrastructure.

To me, this is exactly like bleeding to death in front of 3 doctors while the doctors stand around and scratch their heads.

Winfield: Long Division Without the Vision

In the realm of politics, it is not often that absolute certainty will make an appearance in issues or problems that arise. Politicians find endless ways to argue the minutia of an issue. So when the hard sciences of math, physics or chemistry show up in politics the results can be harsh.

Winfield is faced with a budget problem. We need to go to referendum for a   $3.3 Million rehabilitation of our neglected roads. Then, every year after that, our new budget needs to accommodate $705 Thousand for yearly maintenance to keep us on a 15 year road replacement cycle.

Budgeting for the roads is not difficult math to understand. It is known widely by competent village managers and village engineers that asphalt needs to be rehabbed or replaced every 15 years. Thus, easy math states that one needs to determine the cost for replacing all the roads in a town, divide that by 15 and budget for that amount every year.

In addition, because asphalt is made with crude oil (a volatile commodity) the budget needs to account for inflation and adjust accordingly.

It is interesting to note that the dollars identified to fix this problem are actually pointers to how the budget got so far off track. The yearly amount that the village needs for maintenance ($705,000) divided into the up-front amount that the village wants from us ($3.3 Million) equals 4.68.  In other words, 4.68 is the cumulative number of years that maintenance was deferred on our roads.

Thus, for about the past 5 years, it should have been crystal-clear to the village board and the finance committee, that we were under-budgeting for our road maintenance.

The only question left to ask is which elected officials have been sitting on the village board and the finance committee and for how long?

Deborah Birutis –Current Village President has been a member of the Finance Committee all 5 years she has been a board member and was the Finance Committee Chairman for 4 years,

Jack Bajor – Has sat on the Finance Committee for  1 Year and has been a Village Trustee for 5 years.

Glen VadeBonCour – Has been a member of the Finance Committee for 3 years, is the current Finance Committee Chairman and has been a Village Trustee for 3 years.

Anything But That

On February 23rd at 6:00 pm I was in attendance at the Village of Winfield’s Budget work shop. This budget workshop was attended by Village President Birutis, every village trustee, Village Manager Curt Barrett, Police Chief Bellisario, and several members of the village staff. The idea of the workshop was to analyze the budget line-by-line and scrape whatever fat might still be sticking to the budget’s desiccated corpse. In my honest opinion, and this coming from a frequent critic of the village politicians, there is no more fat to remove. To their credit and considering the financial needs of the village are required to be met by law, the talk turned to tax increases and service reductions.

On the tax increase side of the equation, village residents can expect water rate increases over and above the required amount set by an audit to repair and maintain our infrastructure. We are also facing sewage processing increases, an additional garbage rate increase and the installation of red light cameras. On the service reduction side of the equation, we are looking at outsourcing the police department to the DuPage County Sheriff’s department. Plus eliminating the no-charge leaf vacuuming and yard waste pickup, which Trustee Jay Olson has stated as, “taking way the only perk that we have in this village.”

Without question the situation is dire. At the end of the meeting, Village President Birutis asked all in attendance that she was interested in hearing any ideas that could make or save money at the next budget workshop which was to be held on March 2nd, at 6:00 pm.

Now, hold that thought for a second…

On Tuesday morning of March 2^nd, a package had been placed in my door. It contained two documents; a copy of a white paper written by former Winfield Village Trustees, Chris Levan and Dale Bianco entitled “Sustainable Revenues for Winfield: A Compromise Plan for Roosevelt Road” and a copy of a document  written by current Village President Deborah Birutis and Village Trustee Jack Bajor entitled, “Sustainable Revenues for Winfield, No Compromises Needed.”

The first paragraph of the document written by Birutis and Bajor reads; “On October 13th 2005 Chris Levan presented his “Compromise Plan” for the commercial development of Roosevelt Road. Authored by Chris Levan and Dale Bianco the plan argues that Winfield is faced with “declining revenues” and that “the commercial development of Roosevelt Road is needed to narrow our existing revenue gap in the general fund.” President Birutis goes on to claim, “This is simply not true.”

Four and a half years after writing “No Compromises Needed” Birutis is contemplating raising the village’s portion of the resident’s property taxes, by some estimates up to 200%.  If this isn’t the ghost of village boards past haunting the village board’s present, then I don’t know what is.

So the question remains, who among the current village board members will have the courage to announce, at a village meeting, that they have indeed contemplated an answer to Village President Birutis’ final question?

My assumption is when Ms. Birutis asked for any ideas for solutions to close the budget gap, if someone should suggest commercial development on our most promising traffic corridor you would find what she really meant was, “Anything But That.”