Get your Boots on

The developer is gone and people have stopped calling our house to voice their opinion, our town is not signing a pre-annexation with a development 26 miles away and hopefully the land it is located on has officials that will see its merits. I still think it could save their schools especially in light of their failed referenda. I hope those parents who opposed the subdivision see what the county actually has planned there instead are 13 story high rises and high density industrial. They should call their board members in opposition to that too. Ok, if you’re just walking in on this and I’m talking in cryptic bits, I’m sorry. I guess I just want to say I am just thankful that the phone is quiet today. In the last week, I’ve taken messages from developers, community leaders, Senators, State Representatives, Press from three counties and concerned citizens from everywhere. I wish all these people still cared about tiny town after the smoke clears.

We need a sewer plant to the tune of 6 million dollars. We take in about $580,000.00 a year in revenue for the village. My water/sewer bill is $80.00 a month. There are just three of us and one of us is a mini person. The rates had to go up in January and they’ll go up again in July because the plant has to get built. Our good Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama managed to secure a small grant for the new plant but we still have to find the funds for the rest of it. The village’s elected officials have explored every avenue for revenue (including a very recent and controversial pre-annexation agreement, that didn’t go anywhere). What are they planning now? They have a couple of developments they are still trying to work the details out on and they are continuing to search every avenue.

How did we get here? Over the past 30 years most of our elected officials and residents put their heads in the sand and pretended there was no problem. This didn’t seem to work because people in tiny town continued to flush. When I first moved here we didn’t even have water meters – everyone’s bill was a flat rate $15.00. So there wasn’t much action on the situation until about 8 years ago. The current facility is rusting out. Its 40 years old and just past its lifetime. There may come a day when the EPA shuts it down and the county has to truck our waste to their facility and we will pay who knows what a month. The plant shouldv'e been replaced in 1987. What’s my point? I guess my point is this, if you continue to pretend there isn’t a problem the crap will continue to pile up until it’s a crisis.