Winfield’s Good Old Days Near an End?

At the June 17 Winfield village board meeting the topic of discussion was the road referendum that will be on the Nov. 2 ballot. The village board is asking the village residents increase our property taxes by 200 percent to fund $18 million in deferred road maintenance.

I understand that Winfield’s roads are in disrepair but I find it foolish to give my authority to the village board to increase my real estate taxes without them first composing a plan to create sustainable revenues for the future. This plan should probably include developing Winfield’s most promising retail corridor which is Roosevelt Road. In what can only be described as a rhetorical “red herring,” Village Manager Curt Barrett informed me that in order to address the needs of the village roads we would need sales taxes of “$100 million,” and it was not as easy as “flipping a switch” to find other funding sources in place of the referendum.

Twenty minutes earlier Rich Bysina from the Winfield Chamber of Commerce asked village board members if they could pick up the tab for police services for the annual Winfield Good Old Days. Based on the responses from the trustees there is about a 50 percent chance there will be no Good Old Days this year.

I find it hilarious that Mr. Barrett can compartmentalize my demand for sustainable revenues into “only” needing them for road maintenance. From time immemorial money has been made for villages through the careful cultivation of commerce. Winfield should have started 20 years ago but there is no time like the present to have a plan. It’s time for Winfield to make money the “old” fashion way, by earning it, or Winfield’s Good Old Days will truly be behind it.

At the Board Meeting with Mr. Allen

Village Board Meeting News, June 17, – 2010

1) A presentation was given on how Winfield & West Chicago’s jointly owned waste water treatment plant’s life could be extended until 2025 with only $17 Million in investment to retro fit it with the proper equipment and get the proper certification from the EPA.

2) The village board discussed taking a vote to put the two Road Referendum ballot questions on the ballot. (apparently this hasn’t happened yet) We heard a presentation from the bank in charge of floating the bond issue. The final price per home owner would be $233.99 in additional real estate taxes per year per home that has a value of $300K. The bank representatives talked about “Build America Bonds” which are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment. During the public comments part of the meeting I had that exchange with Village Manager Curt Barrett that I wrote about here.

2) The Winfield Chamber of (not so much) Commerce asked the village board to pick up the cost of Police & Public Works for Good Ole Days. The cost is $6000 and there was some skepticism in their voices. It would not surprise me if Good Ole Days was canceled. The newest development is there will be no carnival rides this year because none of the carnival ride operators can make any money at the event. Bob Bersodi (sp?) made the public comment that Winfield should move the festival to a more prominent place to increase attendance and I completely agree. Winfield’s village board has relegated Good Ole Days to an afterthought and it has been dying for a longtime now. It would be nice if one or two of them would get some business sense and move it to a place where everyone can make money.

3) The New Sign Ordinance is closer to passing but still not voted on. The only thing worth reporting is how Joel Kunesh found it so amusing that the sign ordinance has been in the works for 3 years. Note to Joel; 3 years for a sign ordinance should be a clue that you are incompetent.

The only thing left to report is, during my running gun battle with Village Manager Curt Barrett, apparently Trustee Mrugaz took issue with my final public comments on the matter.

There is a bit of a story to report but first you need to understand the procedure. The village board meeting has a “committee of the whole” section. In Committee of the Whole there are bullet points that get discussed and after each bullet point, the public gets to comment on the bullet point that is being discussed. At the end of all of the bullet points, the public gets to comment again on anything (at all) they would like to talk about. After the general public comments, the village board gets to make general village board comments.

So I took the general public comments section to rebut some comments made by Village Manager Barrett. Then, I confess,  I walked out of the room. Some have characterized it as “Stomped” out of the room. Either way, I have not seen the video of what happened when I left but there was some additional discussion.  I guess Trustee Mrugaz felt like I should have waited around to hear him yell at me. The way I see it is, I routinely send the village board emails or stand before them and ask relevant questions about the subjects at hand and most often they ignore me. I see no reason why I should give them a courtesy that they so often deny me.

Are Winfield’s Good Ole Days Behind It?????

At the June 17th Winfield Village Board meeting the topic of discussion once again turned to the road referendum that will be on the November 2nd ballot. The village board is asking the village residents if we would like to have our property taxes increased by 200% to fund 18 Million dollars in road maintenance that should never have been deferred in the first place. As usual I rose to the podium during public comments to reiterate that I was actively working to educate the citizens about the road referendum. I understand Winfield’s roads are in disrepair and need to be fixed but I also understand our current administration is actively working to deny any vision or plan to create sustainable revenues such as developing our most promising retail corridor on Roosevelt Road. As such, I find it foolish to give my authority to the village board to increase my real estate taxes without first hearing some kind of plan that assures me I won’t have to be taxed again the next time some piece of Winfield’s infrastructure wears out.

When I finished speaking Winfield Village Manager Curt Barrett, in a display that would have given his high school rhetoric teacher apoplexy, trotted out not only a straw-man but also a dish of red-herring. He informed me that in order to address the needs of the village roads we would need sales taxes from “$100 Million in retail sales on Roosevelt Rd” and it was not as easy as “flipping a switch” to find other funding sources in place of the referendum.

Now hold that thought for a second.

Twenty minutes earlier Rich Bysina from the Winfield Chamber of Commerce rose to the podium to ask the village board if they could see their way clear to picking up the tab for police services for the annual Winfield end of summer event known as Good Ole Days. The cost is $6000, the same as it was last year. There was plenty of trepidation and from this observer’s point of view, there is about a 50% chance the village board will say “NO” and there will be no Good Ole Days this year.

Now contrast the fact Winfield cannot find a measly $6000 in it’s budget to fund a long standing Winfield institution against the chiding I took from Village Manager Barrett about not being able to “flip-a-switch” or the unlikeliness of finding “$100 Million in sales tax revenue” in developing Roosevelt Road.

Mr. Barrett, our politicians have not even laid the groundwork to have revenues of 6 flipping thousand dollars, to create a table-scrap of a “quality of life” Winfield wide event. How pathetic is that?

Village Manager Curt Barrett

I find it hilarious Mr. Barrett can compartmentalize my demand for sustainable revenues into “only” needing them for road maintenance. At the February 27th road referendum town hall meeting Mr. Barrett suggested to the gathered crowd that Roosevelt Road could create sustainable revenue but the political will was such that it was not an option that was available. So I guess I am to understand that either Mr. Barrett drank Village President Birutis’ Kool-aid or else the water-boarding she gave him for making such statements in public has adjusted his attitude. What is perplexing to me is that President Birutis is on vacation this week. The boss isn’t there to suck up to. Shouldn’t Mr. Barrett leave what was an obvious political defense to the politicians?

From time immemorial money has been made for villages through the careful cultivation of commerce. Both sales tax AND commercial real estate tax help to remove the burden of funding government from the shoulders of the citizens. It will take time, maybe ten years or more. Winfield should have started on this twenty years ago but there is no time like the present to have a plan and a vision for how we will make sure we never find ourselves in this position again. It’s time for Winfield to make money the “Ole” fashion way, by earning it, or Winfield’s Good Ole Days will truly be behind it

(Garbage) Sticker Shock

Every bill you pay to the village of Winfield is going up this year. If that weren’t enough indignity, our only perk that this town offers is being scrapped. Fall leaf vacuuming is coming to an end.

Here is the story; Waste Management used to charge $15,000 dollars per year for four mobilizations of their leaf and brush pickup equipment. Now they want to charge $55,000 for the same service. Now if you are the skeptical sort like I am, you might wonder how a contracted service like waste hauling was able to un-bundle something you would think was built into the contract already. The second question you might ask is how did it EVER cost $15,000 for leaf vacuuming 3,500 households four different times a year? The price seems way too low from the very beginning. God’s honest answer is I haven’t had time to ask these questions. But I will try to get them answered for you.

The village manager, Curt Barrett did a cursory investigation for prices from another leaf vacuuming operation and found the price to be $80,000. So let’s take it on faith that the new price from Waste Management is pretty good.

The village trustees were evenly split in the beginning between finding the money somewhere in the budget to continue on the service and making the residents bag their leaves to be hauled with the regular trash. If the resident’s are made to bag their own leaves, the sticker cost talked about at the meeting would be $3.10 per bag.

The only point scored was by Trustee Chuck Martschinke who said, “If we stop the leaf vacuuming to save money, what is going to be the added cost to our town for having to clean the storm drains out every year?”

On face value, the trustee’s were weighing a very interesting ethical dilemma. Should the village board bury the increased cost in the garbage sticker rate? Or would that be unfair to the people who have no leaves or no need to have vacuuming? (Such as people who live in the townhomes.) The increased cost per garbage sticker was not small. It would increase the sticker cost to become $3.40, which is up from the current $2.89. (Although for the record Winfield is getting a garbage sticker price increase anyway so 0.51 cent gap is sort of a grey area.)

In the end, the balance tipped in favor of making the citizens bag their leaves, and I believe the rationale was out of kindness to the garbage sticker buyers that did not have leaves to vacuum.

But let’s think about this for a second. One of the purposes of the government is to facilitate services that would otherwise not be able to be coordinated by the citizens themselves. It seems to me that the village board gave up on this a little too easily. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

There are 3500 households in Winfield. The new leaf pickup price is $55,000 which is a cost per household of $15.71 per household. Let’s assume that only 2500 households could use this service, now the cost would be $22.00 per household. I live on a lot with 3 fully grown silver maple trees. If I had to bag my leaves I would probably need 50 bags to get the job done. The cost in yard waste stickers alone at $3.10 per sticker would be $155 and that is before you factored in the value of my time and aggravation because clearly the job would become much longer and much dirtier. So the differential is between roughly $25 if the village coordinates the leaf vacuuming and $150 if they do not. That’s a really big range.

What if the village sold a $15 leaf vacuuming sticker that is 8 inches by 8 inches square. The homeowner would staple the sticker to a stake and pound the stake into the ground next to their leaf pile. The truck would come by on the appropriate day and vacuum the leaves and take the sticker. If the truck needed to come by a second and a third time you would buy another sticker. The program would be “opt in” so the people that really thought they were better off by bagging their leaves could do so. I guarantee that the village could make their $55,000 back and probably bank a few bucks. Even if the village came up short, they seemed perfectly happy to lose $15,000 on the deal.

The final unanswered question is one of history. Apparently there is some history with leaf burning and some great compromise with the residents that allowed people to have their leaves vacuumed instead of needing to burn them. This was all before my time, I moved in to town in 2003. If anyone knows this history and can write it up, maybe the nice folks at Winfield411 could publish it.

UPDATE:

This is the email I just received from Winfield Village Manager Curt Barrett about it;

We have approximately 3,500 households in the Village.  The Village is in the second year of a five year contract with Waste Management, but in a cost cutting move we have looked for leaf collection alternatives.  Adding the leaf expense into regular sticker costs would result in a $3.40 sticker price for the remainder of the contract.  To offer customers a choice I have been seeking terms for a special leaf pick-up property owners could arrange directly with a vendor if they do not want to bag.  I think this is essentially what you are suggesting.  Beyond what the Village may agree works, it is not just our decision as we are attempting to renegotiating mid-contract with the waste hauler.

CDH and the 7 Stages of Grief

Central DuPage Hospital (CDH) is one of the premier hospitals in the world. Think about that for a second: we have one of the best, most talented groups of medical professionals in the world in our town. But if you showed up to a town hall meeting you could be sure to hear griping and grousing that CDH is not “…paying their fair share…” especially when there are town bills to be paid and the Winfield residents do not want their taxes raised.

But to the contrary, CDH does pay their fair share.  The fact is CDH pays about $500,000 per year in property taxes on the parts of their operation that are for profit. They also pay sales taxes and in 2008 pledged to donate $100,000 per year for the next three years to hyper-local Winfield charities. CDH donated $47 million in free health care to hospital patrons that could not afford to pay in just this last year. They also do plenty of other things too, but that is an editorial for a different day. The fact remains CDH is classified as a non-profit hospital and for approximately the last 100 years not-for-profit hospitals have been property tax exempt. This is a cold hard reality and much like you, my dear reader, they do not have to give a penny more than what is decreed by State of Illinois law. For some, the obvious wealth of the hospital is distracting; like a magpie with a shiny piece of tinsel, every other magpie wants some too.

I was recently at the Winfield Town Hall meeting on February 27th to talk about the road referendum which is up for a vote this November. The usual suspects had the usual complaints about CDH; that CDH was not paying their share of the road repairs. Curt Barrett, the Village Manager did an excellent job explaining for what I believe was the first time ever uttered at any town meeting, the hospital is doing everything it has to, up to, and exceeding the call of duty as laid forth by Illinois Statute. He also mentioned very diplomatically while the hospital may use Winfield, Highlake and Jewel Roads, it would be laughable to expect them to foot any of the bill for our crumbling residential streets.  If you were at the meeting and saw the map displaying the roads in need of repair, the $3.3 Million road referendum and the $705,000 per year we need extra is exclusively for residential streets.

I liken what Winfield residents feel to the seven stages of the Kubler – Ross grief cycle; Stage 1: Shock, Stage 2: Denial, Stage 3: Anger, Stage 4: Bargaining, Stage 5: Depression, Stage 6: Testing, and Stage 7: Acceptance.  We are in shock, we are faced with a daunting bill for roads and an increase in taxes (Stage 1). We deny the taxes required to be paid by CDH are limited by State Statute (Stage 2). We are angry and maybe a bit jealous of their obvious wealth (Stage 3). We have sent a litany of politicians knocking on their door to bargain for money (Stage 4). Over time, the facts about our roads, the costs, and how we arrived at this juncture in Winfield history will bring depression (Stage 5).

But take heart! If we can bring ourselves to come to accept CDH is not our town’s personal sugar-daddy we can explore and test opportunities for sustainable revenue generation (Stage 6). Winfield has assets that are as yet untapped. We have parcels of land that can be developed and we have the natural beauty of being surrounded by Forest Preserve Districts and walking trails.

With a little vision we can deliver on the promise that Winfield holds. Consider Winfield blessed we are not trust-fund babies living on a revenue stream gleaned from someone else’s hard work. Our seventh stage is the acceptance we need to rely on ourselves, our assets, and our own ingenuity to claw our way back to fiscal health. Winfield needs to take ownership of our village’s problems not pawn them off on our most promising industry. At the end of this ordeal we will find our village stronger because of it.

Winfield’s Road Plan Suffers From Myopia

Myopia is a condition of the eye that allows objects that are near to appear clear while objects that are farther away appear blurred and unfocused.

I recently attended the Winfield Town Hall meeting regarding the upcoming $3.3 Million Road Referendum tax that you will be asked to vote on this November.  The meeting was on February 27th at 11:00 am and there were about 45 people in attendance. The meeting began with a long and detailed presentation by Village Manager Curt Barrett about how and why Winfield has found themselves out of money for road repairs in our supposedly balanced budget. To his credit, Curt Barrett did an outstanding job. He did not gloss over the fact Winfield is dead last in retail sales tax generation in all of DuPage County and when asked to identify for the gathered crowd what the name of the road that had the best potential for retail sales tax generation, he said ‘loud and proud’ the best road for development in all of Winfield was Roosevelt Road. When asked a follow up question of whether Roosevelt Road was properly zoned for commercial development, he said without hesitation that it was in-fact NOT zoned properly for that purpose.  Based on his answers, I am sure if Winfield had its own Gulag, Village Manager Curt Barrett would already be banished to hard labor for life by President Deborah Birutis.

As usual, the Roosevelt Road preservationists showed up en-masse. The curious part was their argument for not exploring the possibility of developing Roosevelt Road into a sustainable tax revenue generator in order to relieve the tax burden on Winfield residents. Their argument is; “Why would Winfield develop Roosevelt Road knowing the market for commercial real estate is struggling? “. In other words, they believe that the extent of the Village’s strategic planning should be to incorporate the vision and foresight NOT to plan 5 and 10 years out, NOT to find a long term plan for generating revenues, but only to see far enough into the future to pass this referendum and start work on the roads in 2011. Then, no plan is necessary… We have our roads. Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Not this time.

Our current elected trustees ignored a budgetary problem that had they been capable of long- term planning would never have occurred.  With proper long-term planning, the budget would have the money for the roads without going to Referendum. The rate at which asphalt deteriorates has been known for the last 100 years. The cost of commodities that go into asphalt has been open and notorious forever. The Village does a budget every year and in that budget if they see their costs rising they either need to adjust the budget to the revenues or adjust the revenues to the budget. In corporate America this is done all the time. Apparently not so much in the public sector.

The Village paid untold thousands of dollars to develop the Town Center Plan as a strategic vision. Any developer worth his salt will tell you that Winfield Town Center will at best be a backwater to anything we could do on Roosevelt Road. The untold thousands of dollars would have been better spent either on a strategic plan for development on Roosevelt Road or should have been directly used to repair our roads.

Our town currently lacks Vision and Strategy but with respect to the roads, this failure is strictly about a lack of Priority, and that, in my mind is myopic.