WurfWhile

In Friday’s Naperville Sun article, “County considers vehicle sticker fees,” they discuss a proposal for a $50 fee on vehicles in DuPage County as a method to plug up budget holes. The money quote is in the third to last paragraph,

“‘It’s been more than a decade since the county conducted a thorough strategic planning process,’ DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom said.”

That quote, however, is dwarfed by the lead sentence from a November 2005 article in the Naperville Sun, “$77,200 contract: DuPage teams up with NIU on long-term strategy,” that started,

“In the 20 years that Robert Schillerstrom has been with the county, DuPage has not had a strategic plan.”

That got me to thinking - just how long have those board members on the county board been serving - and how many have waited almost or more than decade before finally deciding that maybe a strategic plan might prevent, say, annual shortfalls of $25 million a year that have led to draconian service cuts? I can’t say that all of them are guilty of letting the problem fester - I know, for example, that Vice Chair Robert Schroeder (19 years of service) and Board member Pam Rion (13 years of service) sounded fiscal alarms before the easily anticipated crisis - but it’s obvious that they failed to sway a majority of the board, the group that deserves the blame. By my count there are at least nine sitting county board members (plus Chairman Schillerstrom to make ten) out of the 19 members of the board (including the Chair) that have served at least eight years.

So there you have it. A majority of sitting county board members didn’t care for most of their service to have a strategic plan - despite having a majority of votes including the influential Chair of the Board. Their lack of planning led to the fiscal disaster we now enjoy.

As for the plan we now have - here’s my take on it and another critical take on it. Let’s just say not everything is necessarily worth waiting for…. As I’ve said before, DuPage can do better - and we should do better. The ten long-time DuPage County Board members (and Chair) have had their chance. The lack of planning and fiscal crisis happened on their watch. They’ve got some explaining to do.