The Night Your Right to Vote Died

Today is primary election day and all across Illinois citizens are taking time out from their busy schedules to cast ballots for the major party candidates that they hope will contest for office in the November general election.  Some will win, some will lose, but those decisions will be made by the will of a majority of the voters.

And beyond selecting candidates, in many communities, voters will be deciding whether to raise taxes or to borrow money to spend on a wide variety of projects.  Why, in the Village of Lyons, they are even voting to reduce property taxes.

In the Village of Merrionette Park, voters will be deciding about whether to borrow the modest sum of $400,000 for the purpose of replacing the Village's 911 software.  They will also be voting on another $850,000 loan for the purpose of purchasing a new fire ladder truck.

The Village of Indian Head Park will see a referendum for roadway improvements not to exceed $2,500,000 in bonds.  And the Village of South Chicago Heights plans to borrow the same amount for the purpose of constructing a public safety facility for use by Police Department, if the voters agree.

The very affluent Village of Winnetka wants to upgrade the Village's Stormwater Management Program that includes building a tunnel under Willow Road to discharge stormwater into Lake Michigan, at an estimated project cost exceeding $30 million (plus substantial bond financing costs), that is, if the voters give their okay.

But there will be no such vote in the Village of Lemont.  While our village government continues to chase after money to use to build their much ballyhooed rental sports complex on the downtown property owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, they made sure you would have nothing to say about it.

The six trustees all voted back in January of 2013 for the ordinance to allow the borrowing to pay for their scheme.  They knew they were in the cat bird’s seat.  They could do what they wanted.  The candidate filing deadline had passed, so it was too late for anyone to oppose the mayor or the three trustees whose terms were up in the April municipal election.  They held a sham hearing about the project several weeks after they had already made their decision.  And the weather was miserable, so they knew there was no way that the people could mount any opposition.  Our “fast track” mayor boasted that ground would be broken the very next month.

But to their great surprise, the people did respond, and using the only tool they had not been robbed of, they set off to collect enough signatures to win a referendum vote for all the people of Lemont.  Days passed, then a few weeks, and hundreds of petition signatures came rolling ing.  In less than three weeks, the “Let Us Vote” group had amassed nearly 1,700 signatures, more than double the number needed.

And when the petitions were accepted, even the mayor congratulated the group for participating in the democratic process.  Now everyone awaited the chance to vote on whether to borrow $21 million to build the rental sports complex.  The months passed, spring, summer, fall and then winter.  No news from the village, the vote was soon to come on March 18, 2014.

But in January the mayor finally spoke and said that the referendum would not be held, the ordinance would be withdrawn.  And he followed through when on February 6, 2014, the village board voted unanimously to withdraw the ordinance and kill the referendum.  Stunned, we could not believe that any government could so flippantly deny the will of the people.  We were shocked that our elected leaders could so boldly ignore and disrespect their constituents.

As you head to the polls on this beautiful late winter day; remember that you could have voted today on whether our village should take on a debt of forty million bucks (with interest).  But your leaders did not trust your judgment and even lacked faith in their own arguments in favor of the plan.  Instead, they took the cowardly path by denying a vote by the entire community, a community that they claim to represent.

So when you talk to your children or grandchildren about the heroes of the American Revolution, men like Patrick Henry, Daniel Morgan, and Thomas Paine, men who risked their lives to preserve your rights, remember that you are only talking about ghosts.  Because in Lemont at least, the spirit of Democracy that these heroes represent is dead and gone.

You know, they often refer to ancient Greece as the cradle of Democracy.  Well if Democracy were to be found in a cradle in Lemont, it is no more.  Our village trustees and mayor crept up on that crib on a frigid night in February and strangled it with their votes.