This is why the parking ban should be continued. The ban was in place when our population was 65,500. Now it’s only about 49,000, based on 2003 U.S. Census estimates projected to 2006, a 25 percent decrease.
With two el trains passing through town, we should do everything we can to discourage global warming-producing cars. Hey, it’s your grandchildren who will find that sea-level rising has turned New York City into Venice and Miami into Atlantis.
A neighbor was threatened at gunpoint by two men who were hiding in their car at night when my neighbor returned from work. Cars are used as hiding places for the drug-dealing and drug-using felons who infest our village. The mobility of the West Side felons in cars has spread their blight into northwest Oak Park and the parking ban is needed more than ever.
Nighttime parking tickets are a significant source of revenue for the village. Removing it means increased village fees for everyone.
As far as taking away the time from night-time patrol officers, the major part of property crime occurs during the day when people are at work. Garage break-ins occur at night, but police patrols never stop a crime; they just investigate it once it’s done. Besides, there’s not enough cops to stop the epidemic of crime we have.
For apartment dwellers fearful of walking to their apartments at night, the village should adopt the model that thousands of universities have had in place for decades. Call stations should be placed in the parking lots from which the driver can call for a police escort. The driver can also call the police escort from his/her cellphone before arriving at the parking lot. In doing this, the police would still be patrolling, but they would be spending an increased portion of their time near the troublesome parking lots. The village staff could spend $250,000 of taxpayer money and drive to UIC and walk around to “study” the call stations and “interview” the UIC police about their call station setup, or they could just do it.
As always, we need the ban to facilitate emergency vehicle access.
My advice to this irresponsible village board is to stop wasting the salaries of village officials on this issue and focus on the two greatest pressing needs of Oak Park:
1) To exert control over the out-of-control spending of the overstaffed village (480 employess, one for every 100 residents), schools (25 percent of the District 97 students are in special ed), and park district ($2 million to expand their offices, $15 million to move ballfields around, chop down trees, and repair/destroy the historic recreation centers allowed to decay under the John Hedges administration), all of which has resulted in 28 percent of the houses now paying over $10,000 in property taxes, and
2) To combat the economic and demographic malaise which has led to the population decreasing from 65,500 to 49,000.
Les “Wake Up Oak Park” Golden