More proof Elgin must fix basic services

Just as Elgin's emergency, mid-winter leaf pickup made it clear the fall program had left much to be desired, two big snowstorms within a week made it clear the city cannot handle large volumes of snow with success, either.

Elgin seems capable of dealing with up to six inches over a short period of time fairly well. But when the storms get bigger and longer, the city comes to a messy standstill, either because of poor coordination, lack of manpower or acceptance of failure.

It has been made exceedingly clear that when big storms hit, residents are on their own. Residential streets are at the bottom of a priority list and snowplow crews simply never reach the bottom of that list. With its emphasis on main roads, the city is certainly serving commuters. But its own residents, the folks footing the bill, are left to their own devices to get from those main streets home or to reach main streets to get to work or school. That's unacceptable.

With its inability to handle large snowfalls as they happen, the city also all but guarantees a rutted, sloppy mess is left behind for days, as happened last week. Police and public works coordination needs work during storms and the city must consider the irony of its office-bound department heads driving SUVs while its police officers drive rear-wheel-drive cars that become all but immobile during a storm, making police part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

But the current mess is really only a symptom of a larger problem, a marked decline in the quality of city services in a city where delivery of such services used to be a point of civic pride. Leaves. Snow. Potholes. Streets in general. Stoplights. Traffic flow. All those words evoke immediate growls from discontented city residents, and the city's response is put up cameras and mail residents tickets.

Surely, the city did not get to this point overnight, and just as surely, improving those services will not happen overnight, either. For the first time in a long time, the city has at least acknowledged there's a problem. The emergency leaf pickup was the first evidence of that acknowledgment. And Assistant City Manager Sean Stegall has been made responsible for assessing current public services and finding ways to improve them.

Fixing this problem is far more than a one-man job, though. It will require major policy emphasis from council members, the involvement of all city employees, coordination between departments and a commitment to reach a different result even if it means major changes in approach. It will require a commitment by residents to report problems, offer suggestions for their neighborhoods, follow rules that make service delivery easier and decide what they'll pay for services.

Simple? No. Necessary? Yes. Unless, of course, the city is content with ineptitude at delivering the basics as the status quo.