Forum: Homer Glen mayor taking credit for others’ work

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Homer Glen mayor taking credit for others’ work

You recently printed a letter from Homer Glen Mayor Jim Daley thanking you for featuring an article about the improvements being planned by the Illinois Department of Transportation for 159th Street.

Daley then goes on to take credit for a number of other road projects in Homer Glen, including adding turn lanes on 151st Street, adding turn lanes on 143rd Street, and more than eight miles of road resurfacing on 143rd Street.

What he fails to tell your readers is that the turn lane improvements were initiated and planned by the previous administration. Especially embarrassing to read is his taking credit for resurfacing 143rd Street (a Will County road) — because 143rd Street wasn’t repaved. Ironically, 159th Street was repaved, but the state did that work.

In his haste to take credit for work done by others, Daley is misinforming your readers. Daley hasn’t brought one new road project to the board in his four years in office. He has not brought one new drainage project.

Residents should not be surprised to read more of this type of deception in the next village newsletter and in his upcoming State of the Village address. When you haven’t done anything, you have to say something. After all, you can’t just make it up — right?

Russ Petrizzo

Mayor of Homer Glen, 2001-’07

Nonprofit organizations key to economic recovery

Regardless who wins the election for mayor of Chicago, making our way out of the financial crisis rocking our city and state will require increased economic growth and vitality in the city and its communities. Our future mayor must have a focused strategy for rebuilding the city’s fiscal foundation.

One key but often overlooked element in the economy of our communities is nonprofit organizations and the foundations whose support sustains their work. Nonprofit organizations are surprisingly robust economic engines, generating nearly 10 percent of Illinois’ gross state product and making up nearly 9 percent of the state’s work force.

These workers provide a spectrum of essential services that are otherwise unavailable to residents. Whether it’s job training, workforce development, community economic development planning, community shelters, environmental protection, cultural offerings or programs that protect kids form violence, nonprofits play a crucial role in Chicago’s communities.

And foundations are critical repositories of best practices, research and development, as well as effective conveners of influential networks for regional and local problem-solving. While philanthropy lacks the capacity to plug the multimillion-dollar hole left by the city’s financial crisis, it can leverage significant nonmaterial assets toward developing sustainable solutions

When the public and nonprofit sectors form partnerships and work together, they can have a real impact. For example, in 2006, leaders from Chicago’s philanthropic and nonprofit communities partnered with the city and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to develop the Chicago Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve transportation options and increase use of clean and renewable energy sources.

We encourage the next mayor to tap the expertise and resources of the nonprofit and philanthropic communities to produce win-win efficiencies and reforms in the way government does business in Chicago’s communities.

Valerie S. Lies

President & CEO, Donors Forum

Chicago

Egypt offers lesson for Chicago voters

Chicagoans could learn something about hope and possibilty from Egyptians, when they vote and refuse to be dictated to by the massive marketing and advertising campaign of the one candidate whose election insures the continuation of the same old politics of special interests and unbridled power trumping the people’s needs and welfare.

Edward Juillard

Chicago