The city of Naperville has spent hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars in an effort to re-establish their image, an image that has been tarnished by the actions and decisions of city management including the Naperville city council and city manager’s office. The city’s effort is not working. Residents are quickly learning that things are not ‘right’ in Naperville and they demand to know why. Residents are asking, ‘What has happened to Naperville?”
Most recently a large group of residents have focused their energy on informing all Naperville residents and others that problems exist in Naperville and action is necessary to ‘right the ship’. Leadership is void in Naperville politics, and Naperville continues to drift sideways.
We encourage you to visit www.reclaimnaperville.org to learn more about Naperville’s lack of leadership, and how Naperville residents are coming together to do what Naperville city officials can’t or won’t do, and that is to re-establish Naperville’s image by making the right decisions and taking action to get things done.
Reclaim Naperville’s ‘About Us’ page states,
“ReclaimNaperville.org is a grass-roots group of concerned citizens dedicated to returning Naperville, Illinois to the people who live here.
There is no affiliation with a political party – just a set of beliefs that citizens have a right to be informed, heard and respected by their government.
Too many decisions are made by politicians doing what they think is best despite massive input from the voters to the contrary – including election referendums and petitions signed by thousands of residents.
We offer this site as a source for anyone to learn about what is really going on.
It was started to help voters become informed before casting their ballots in the April 9th 2013 Municipal Election.
Beyond that, we will continue to update the site to keep you informed with facts- collected here for you to more easily digest and make up your mind for yourself.
Ours is a beautiful city. But, all is not as it appears from the outside. Be informed. These people are spending YOUR MONEY.”
A Recent Comment posted in paper: “WeThePeople | March 25, 2013 3:57 AM | Reply
The fear mongering about wards is more about loss of power, loss of control, and mostly about money.
If wards (or districts) work perfectly well at the county, state, and federal level I would certainly love to hear an intelligent argument as to why they can’t or won’t work at the local level.
The people spoke loudly and by a large percent when they voted FOR wards. I anticipate going back to at-large representation will fail for a couple of reasons. First and foremost the sitting city council clearly has no clue as to how badly they have angered the vast majority of Naperville voters by their self-dealing tactics. Second, the city going to court to delay the implementation (at the urging of the sitting city council) was another slap in the face to the will of the voters.
On the long shot that the referendum succeeds there will be two likely courses of action that follow:
First, there will be a law suit to demand the will of the people from the first vote be fully implemented because if it isn’t the whole electoral process becomes a mockery of fairness and justice. Once the ward system is implemented then an equitable amount of time should be allowed to dismantle the ward system and return it to the at large system. Fair is fair and I’ve heard the ACLU is already interested and watching this one.
Second, the binding referendum process has been blown wide open by this. The city council should have been more careful about what they wished for when they did this. The people can now circulate their own binding petition and I know one group that is ready to go for wards again and another group that is ready to go after dismantling the smart grid and another group that wants to tie city hall’s hands with regard to TIF’s and tax abatement’s like they just gave Walmart.
The current city council is going to regret they ever pointed the way forward with binding referendums. Until now most people believed all the people could do were put forth non-binding referendum questions and only the city council could put a binding referendum on the ballot. This is a major game changer and all hell is about to break loose.”
After attending a couple of city council meetings (concerning Smart Meters), I cannot believe the arrogance of some of the councilmen and city attorney. Even Mayor Pradle (Officer Friendly) has really disappointed me by some of his recent actions to bypass the will of the people. Hopefully, the next election will change all of that.