E. Dundee debt has reader riled

Upon receiving my water bill this month, I was angered to find an additional "debt" fee of $17.80 tacked on to our usage total.

The village office informed me that this fee will be on every meter bill until 2018 to repay an EPA loan for water system improvements. At the village board meeting on Oct. 19, I discovered the situation is much worse than I thought. The loan was taken out in 1997 and rolled over since then but the village has decided to get serious about paying it off. Residents and businesses are now expected to contribute extra money for the next nine years to pay off this loan.

This means the Village of East Dundee has been purposely running a deficit water budget for more than a decade. Furthermore, they have recently taken out an additional $4 million loan to dig new wells. By the time the old loan is paid off in 2018, we can expect to keep paying extra out of our pockets to start paying off the new loan, or perhaps they will expect us to open our wallets wider even sooner.

I refuse to bail out our village for poor money management, and you should do the same. There are creative ways to start getting our budget back in line but they will only be implemented if you let the village board know that we are not made of money and balancing the budget should be a top priority. The next board meeting will take place Nov. 2 in the village hall annex.

Heather Skillicorn

East Dundee