Apparently this became a story when an employee of the Better Government Association looked up a salary at Open the Books, an online database of Illinois public employee and government financial information. Open the Books is a project of For the Good of Illinois, a good-government organization founded by former gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski. Vive…
Basement-less Police Station, Costs of Moving a Sewer Line: Related?
[Change of title, minor reworking completed about 9:40 a.m.] From the Daily Chronicle yesterday: DeKALB – Some members of the DeKalb City Council raised concerns Monday about the lack of a basement in the new DeKalb police station. The issue surfaced while a representative from PSA Dewberry, the architecture firm in charge of designing the…
Dixon Redux from Yet Another DeKalb Point of View
The appearance of “Dixon Embezzlement Serves as ‘Case Study’ on Oversight Practices” over the weekend gives me another shot at commenting on this story (now that I am out of the hospital, hopefully for a good long time). Thanks, Rockford Register Star! First, let’s take care of the error in the story.
DeKalb Barbs Orange
Has anyone else seen the new street sign downtown in purple with the city’s three-leaf logo? The purple does not match anything else. If anyone is going to spend tax dollars on new street signs, then they should be in DeKalb Barbs orange, using the school’s logo. Here is the D logo. I bet a…
A Different Perspective on Dixon
While the media and citizens are pointing fingers at Dixon and throwing out accusations of folks being asleep at the switch while their comptroller allegedly helped herself to tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, I have a different perspective to throw out there. How did Dixon get by on less for all these…
The FY2011 Central Area TIF Report
…can be found here (It’s a 64-page PDF so give it a minute to load). As an incorrigible repeat offender I could not stop myself from submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain the following information: 1. The breakdown of the transfers so we can tell how much is going to the…
It’s About More Than Chickens
There are already chickens in DeKalb. There always have been and there always will be. Council’s refusal to slap the official okey-dokey onto the practice just ensures chicken-keeping will remain underground, in tight-knit neighborhoods where folks don’t fink on each other. What’s changed is the energetic 20-something who found that her hen-keeping proposal could not…
The Burden of Transparency
You’ve probably seen this e-mail wherein Mayor Povlsen scolds Mark Charvat for making plans to pack the house during the DeKalb Township Annual Meeting without telling him. — On Mon, 3/19/12, Povlsen, Kris wrote: From: Povlsen, Kris Subject: So much for Transparency To: “‘markX@X.com’” Date: Monday, March 19, 2012, 2:30 PM Guess this says a…
SAVED!! Pure Oil Building in Geneva
Geneva’s City Council voted against allowing the demolition of the Pure Oil Building at their Committee of the Whole. It is such a cute building. I still miss our Old Post Office . . .
Geneva’s Pure Oil Building
Time is running out to sign the online petition to save the historic Pure Oil Building in Geneva that houses the PURE Gardner gardening shop which is here: http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-mayor-and-the-city-council-of-geneva-illinois-save-the-historic-pure-oil-building The Geneva City Council will discuss it on Monday night’s agenda. The Kane County Chronicle has an article here: http://www.kcchronicle.com/2012/03/23/demolition-of-pure-oil-building-topic-of-geneva-meeting/axcf9kt/