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.

A Dear John Letter;

John Karowski, owner of John’s Restaurant & Tavern came to the Village Board meeting on April 15 and requested to expand his outdoor seating area. I reported shortly after the Village Board meeting that the trustees uncharacteristically sought ways to expedite John’s request to make sure that he could be operational in time for summer. Just a few days later, the plan fell apart. The following is a story of a local entrepreneur, dreams and the crushing weight of Winfield bureaucracy;

The Concept;

“Patio’s do well in the summertime.” is what John told me during an interview last week. What he wanted to do was take four parking spaces along the east wall of his restaurant and turn them into a seasonal patio area. What exactly he wanted to do with the 16 x 40 foot space is what every entrepreneur wants, the flexibility to adapt to changing needs on a day to day basis. So he suggested the space would make a great outdoor “smoking only” area that would separate his smoking patrons from his non-smoking patrons. He thought about having an occasional “Baggo” tournament to mix things up. He also suggested it just makes good overflow space for his already popular patio.

The Look

Every entrepreneur needs an attractive, safe and comfortable place to do business in. John’s is no exception and has done a great job with his current trellised patio. What John would like to do is fence the 16 x 40 area and reclaim the space for the summer from the 4 parking spaces on his east wall. In the off-season, he would take down the temporary fence and return the space to be used as parking. The fencing he intended to use was going to have an attractive wrought iron look to it and was going to have footings in concrete so as to provide the structural integrity which is necessary to stand up to the abuses of weather and patrons.

The Costs

John estimated to cost of the tables, chairs, fencing, lighting and installation at about $7500.

The Bureaucracy

In order to get the ‘OK’ from the village to make this patio happen, John would need to pay a $300 permit fee up front and then deposit $3000 with the village. The $300 is just gone and is a revenue generator of sorts for the village. The $3000 is supposed to be an up front deposit for engineering work. The deposit would be drawn against on an as needed basis  as plans needed to be reviewed and professional services needed to be paid for. John would also have to come up with a plan to put before the planning commission. The planning commission meets once a month, so he would have to time the submission of his plan to the planning commission appropriately to get on the agenda. If there is something bigger on the planning commission agenda, John’s proposal could be bumped to the next month. Then, once the planning commission approves the plan, provided they don’t send John back to the drawing board to modify the plan, then present the plan a second time to the planning commission, it can be delivered at the next available opportunity to the village trustees to vote on. Of course, the trustees could choose to ask more questions, sending John back to find more answers and having to wait for the next trustee meeting, provided the agenda for the next trustee meeting isn’t booked with more pressing issues. In the meantime, summer has been eaten up by the glacial march of bureaucracy.

The Editorial

All this bureaucracy serves to create a barrier to doing business in Winfield. It’s sand in the gears of innovation and if you consider this plan John had was to be completely on John’s own property it is a confiscation of his property rights. It is also a metaphor for pretty much anything anyone wants to do here in Winfield and suggests why Winfield is a Ghost Town. I realize that to some degree there needs to be regulations for land development and that is a responsible part of governance but to the extent there is a $3300 bureaucratic overhang for a $7500 project that only appears from May 1 through September 30 each year you would think the village could modulate their response to John’s request. Compounding the problem is the arbitrary regulations. It only costs $300 for a sidewalk cafe license and that needs no trip to the planning commission but to have that, you need to be putting your patrons on a sidewalk. Seriously, how much different are these two concepts? What is more perplexing is for a town that is supposedly promoting commerce in our town center why are we charging anything to the entrepreneur? If we were really encouraging commerce we should bend over backward to help see John’s dream realized. “Encouraging development” what does that mean anyway to our village trustees? Does saying “Go John, Go!” constitute the extent of their “encouragement”?

If you want to see business flourish in the nation, state or town, get the government out of the way.

Winfield: Ghost-Town Center

When business need to increase revenues they have to work harder or work smarter. They have to satisfy their clientele and lure new customers using advertising and word of mouth. They have to perform so well for their clients that their clients want to keep coming back over and over again. When governments need to increase revenues they just raise taxes.

Winfield politicians claim to want to create a thriving town center. They have grand plans of a triumphant town center where business thrive and cash registers sing but their latest action to “Help” our town center along is to raise parking rates for the Metra commuters by 33%. You don’t need to be an economics major to realize that if Winfield’s parking prices are 60% above West Chicago and Wheaton that Winfield will lose parking traffic to our neighbors to the East and West. With the decline in parking traffic will come a corresponding decrease in retail traffic at our convenience stores, service stations, our two restaurants, etc.

Raising parking rates to 60% above our neighboring towns and driving business out of our town center is a peculiar way to show support for Winfield’s existing entrepreneurs. Increasing parking taxes is an obnoxious affront to the working men and women during these trying economic times. It is completely counter productive toward achieving our politician’s stated goal of a thriving town center.

Coming from a village board that does not understand business, growth or progress, it’s exactly what I would expect; turning Winfield’s Town Center into Winfield’s Ghost Town Center.

West Chicago Parking Rates $75 Per quarter;

http://www.westchicago.org/Services/MetraLotPermit.html

Wheaton Parking Rates $60 Per Quarter;

http://www.wheaton.il.us/about/getaround/default.aspx?id=906

Winfield’s New Parking Rate $120 Per Quarter

Budget Brings More Broken Promises

The Winfield Village Board’s budget—and the disregard it shows for the urgent need to address unmet revenues needs in Winfield—is incredibly disappointing.

In April 2009, Deborah Birutis campaigned on turning the Town Center into a thriving center of economic life, reducing water rates, and holding the line on taxes, remarking she would make a commitment to the residents to bring new revenues into the village coffers. Unfortunately, Birutis and her village board have done little to honor that pledge.

At a time when Village President Birutis should be offering bold proposals to address the major economic problems the village is facing — she has instead choose to punitively raise fees and tax the residents to try and make-up for her failures.

Ms. Birutis and her village board are asking for a massive $3.3 million dollar tax increase to repair the village’s roads, maintenance which has been neglected for the last 5 years under her watch. She hiked commuter parking fees to the highest in DuPage County, and is proposing red light cameras in town.

There are even darker clouds on the horizon.  Birutis along with her board, have included in this year’s budget a shocking  24% increase in water rates taking the current rate for water & sewer from $9.51/thousand gallons to $11.80/thousand gallons of water consumption — and slashed the police department’s budget making it impossible to have a full complement of trained officers on the street.

Ms. Birutis and her village board should be offering solutions, not backpedaling on its promise they made to the residents. Wrong-headed service cuts, fee hikes and outrageous tax increases are no way to address Winfield’s financial crisis.