Typically when you hear “you have to hand it to Naperville city officials”, most folks would think more money is going from residents to the City, in the form of fees, fines, taxes, penalties, you name it. But not this time. This time city officials have uncovered money owed to Naperville from Dupage County.
It was just a couple of months ago what residents began to notice they were being charged a fee by the city for garbage pick-up, when in fact those residents were not using the city service. Just as residents are owed money from the City of Naperville, the City is owed money from Dupage County.
You have to hand it to Naperville city manager Doug Krieger and his staff for uncovering lost money due the City from Dupage County. Naperville city officials determined through research that Naperville was being shorted several hundred thousand dollars annually in fine reimbursement from the county.
It’s amazing what a couple of misplaced decimal points can do, along with a couple of missing ‘zeros’, and some mis-keyed data entries.
Krieger and staff noticed a decrease in revenues from traffic violations over the past several years from the county to Naperville. Several years ago the revenue was about $3.7 million, and last year it was down to $1.7 million.
That was a huge loss for Naperville residents. But now those misplaced dollars are finding their way back home to Naperville. That’s good news for Naperville city officials, and it should be good news for Naperville residents.
We’ll have to wait and see if city officials will now allow residents and groups to use municipal meeting rooms without charging a rental fee to do so. After all, it’s the residents who provided the funds through taxes to build it.
