Is Your Vote Owned By The Machine?

If you live in Lisle, you probably received an ad in the mail yesterday from state representative Connelly, paid for by the campaign for Cawiezel, Boyle and Young.  It seemed strange - three trustees running together?  And why would a state representative have such a compelling interest?  So I googled Connelly to learn more about him.  Turns out this guy is a real piece of work -- he even has a special nickname: Mike "Ubi est mea" Connelly.

My initial reaction to the ad for Cawiezel, Boyle and Young was that it was funny and ironic.  Funny because it reminded me of cliques in high school, and ironic because here we have 3 people who are asking us to elect them as community leaders, and they have neither the independent thinking skills nor the backbone to even run their own campaigns.  Then I remembered seeing campaign signs touting Cook and Carballo for the Park District Board, and I recognized the pattern.  It's not that Cawiezel, Young, Boyle, Cook and Carballo can't run their own campaigns (presumably they could if they were allowed to) -- what's behind their combined campaign advertisements is the political machine that they owe their political lives to.  It might not be as large and efficient as the Chicago machine, but it's a machine nonetheless.

So the ad for Cawiezel, Boyle and Young is not funny.  The boys chomping on cigars in the back room downtown are not laughing.  They are telling you how to vote  They are telling you to vote for 4 more years of Cawiezel, Boyle and Young - 4 more years of higher spending and higher taxes.  They are telling you to vote for Cook and Carballo, so the Park District can continue to do less with more.  Will you obey the machine?  Will you do what you've been told?  Is your vote owned by the machine that owns Cook, Carballo, Cawiezel, Boyle and Young?  The machine that uses Mike "Ubi est mea" Connelly as its mouthpiece?  We'll find out tomorrow morning.

p.s. if you don't take the time to vote in this election, your answer to the question posed by this post is "YES"

More than $ 600,000 of wasteful spending endorsed by Cawiezel, Boyle and Young

Wasteful spending by public officials is never a good idea, but it's really a crime when it happens as revenues are plummeting.

Did you know that the Village of Lisle is proposing to pay out $244,000 to (10) employees as incentives to get them them to quit?  Add that $244,000 to the obscene "legal fees" paid to Ancel Glink, and you have more than $600,000 of wasteful spending (not that this is the only waste endorsed by trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young -- it's just the most recent).


This kind of waste will continue, and your property taxes will continue being raised every year regardless of the economic environment, as long as trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young remain on the Village Board.  Every vote for Cawiezel, Boyle or Young is a vote to continue waste and raise property taxes.

Clarification

The ballot in this election uses the phrase "vote for not more than..."

Just to be clear: you do NOT need to vote for more than two people for Village Board Trustee -- if you vote only for Ledvora and Wilkie, that is a perfectly valid vote.  Same goes for the Park District Board -- if you vote only for Hummel, that is a perfectly valid vote.

Lisle's Future Is In Your Hands

If you read this blog, you know how badly Lisle needs change.  You know about 8 consecutive years of reckless deficit spending.  About 10 years of tax increases.  About pay to play, secret board meetings and the "Glink stink".  About the plan to bring gambling to Lisle.  You know that as long as trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young remain in power nothing will change.


There is an election April 5, and early voting for that election is available to you now.  Don't wait until April 5 unless you have to.  Vote at the Village Hall this week - Monday hours are from 7:30 a.m. till 6:30 p.m., and Tuesday thru Friday hours are from 7:30 a.m. till 4:30 p.m.  Make sure all voting age members of your family vote.  Every vote counts.  Joe Broda was reelected mayor in April 2009 by a margin of only 233 votes. Of the 13,761 registered voters in Lisle, only 3,485 voted in that election.


Electing Ledvora and Wilkie to the Board of Trustees will not solve all of Lisle's problems overnight - after all, it took 10 years to get into the mess we find ourselves in.  But electing Ledvora and Wilkie is a necessary first step in the right direction.  If we don't take this first step, we have only ourselves to blame for continuance of Lisle's downward spiral.

What Goes On In Lisle Stays In Lisle?

If you live in Lisle, what's your vision of what Lisle could be in the future?  What would you like to see Lisle become, if you were dreaming about a great place for your kids and grandkids to grow up in?  Something like Wheaton? Naperville? Maybe even Oak Brook or Winnetka?

Think again.  Your mayor and trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young have a very different vision -- one that sees a Lisle more like Gary, East St. Louis, and Joliet.  One that relies on gambling as a principal source of revenue.

One of the reasons why they've been paying exorbitant legal fees recently is their interest in bringing gambling to Lisle -- below is from a list of invoices submitted to Lisle by the Ancel Glink law firm in February:

What Ed Young Doesn't Want You To Know: Part 3 -- the Meijer property

Ed Young was a founding member of CRADL, the group that prevented Meijer from opening a "box" store on a 67.5 acre site on Maple avenue.  Perhaps that was the right thing to do at the time, but that was more than 10 years ago.  For more than 10 years, that 67.5 acre site has been vacant.  That site could have been generating $1MM + in sales tax revenue for Lisle every year, year after year (almost enough to offset the cost of the "Taj Mahal").

Year after year for more than 10 years, Ed Young and the Lisle trustees have done nothing to encourage any kind of commercial development of the property.  Instead, year after year Ed Young and Lisle trustees have increased the property tax levy to make up for the "opportunity cost" of the sales tax revenue which could have been generated on the 67.5 acre site.