Some things seem to defy logic. Hillary Clinton hasn’t been indicted for her email issue, the Chicago White Sox have been winning, and Naperville Township’s highway commissioner (Stan Wojtasiak) hasn’t agreed to save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Naperville city officials have offered Wojtasiak an opportunity to make local government more efficient by streamlining expenses without sacrificing services, and Wojtasiak continues to delay approval and implementation of the plan.
City officials have addressed his concerns, and acquiesced to his requests, yet Wojtasiak balks at every step of the process. It’s obvious that the township highway commissioner has no intention of signing any agreement, which in essence would save thousands of taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes .
This is a classic example of what is wrong with government at every level; the needs of one or a few, trump the needs of thousands.
Naperville city officials have made every effort to satisfy Wojtasiak with major concessions including matching current levels of service and maintaining an administrative assistant to the tune of approximately $80K per year including benefits. There have even been some offsets including street lights, but Wojtasiak’s response has been the sound of crickets. City officials have invited Wojtasiak to meet with the council, but again, nothing but the sounds of silence.
It’s possible that highway commissioner Wojtasiak is holding out for an agreement which would double his salary, cut is limited workload in half, and increase his vacation time to 50 weeks per year.
The bottom line, if push comes to shove, Wojtasiak is on the wrong side of right, and Naperville city officials have available options which could vaporize the highway commissioner’s authority, and leave him on the outside looking in. City officials don’t want to go that route, however, considering the benefits of helping thousands save money on their property taxes, vaporizing Wojtasiak’s perceived authority is very doable and becomes quite attractive to taxpayers.
There is one other nuclear option to quickly resolve the issue. Mayor Steve Chirico was a Naperville Central high school wrestling champion. Considering Wojtasiak is not that interested in talking, maybe he’d be willing to meet Chirico on the mat, with the winner taking all.
The forced annexation option is an unsettling choice. This would definitely piss off all 900 unincorporated Naperville residents and send a chilling message to all Naperville residents. The city has a lot of authority it has only exercised in the past when all other options have failed. But the more frequently city officials use these more authoritarian options the more comfortable they get with using them, which increases the chance that next time they may simply skip all the other options and just cut to the chase.
It is important to remember Naperville is not the only city with a township highway department. Other cities, including Aurora, are look at what is happening with this situation. How it is handle and the out come will effect the decisions and actions of these other cities.
Naperville township residents should realize that withoput the City of Naperville residents paying township taxes, their tax bill for Naperville Township would rise approximately 4,200%
Yeah, Fred, as a resident of an incorporated section of Naperville, I was just thinking about that township entry on my property tax bill and wondered what I got for paying into that. Of course, I think the same thing about several of the other entries too. 😉