Winfield's road plan suffers from myopia

Myopia is a condition of the eye that allows objects that are near to appear clear while objects farther away appear blurred and unfocused.

I recently attended the Winfield Town Hall meeting regarding the upcoming $3.3 million road referendum tax that will be on the November ballot. Village Manager Curt Barrett gave an outstanding presentation about why Winfield has found itself out of money. He stated that Winfield is dead last in retail sales tax generation in DuPage County. He also stated that Roosevelt Road was Winfield's best available corridor for sustainable commercial tax generation and that the village board has chosen not to zone the property appropriately to take advantage of this opportunity. Because of his honesty, I am sure Barrett is being waterboarded by Village President Deb Birutis right now.

As usual, the Roosevelt Road preservationists showed up en masse. The curious part was their argument for not exploring the possibility of developing Roosevelt Road into a sustainable revenue stream. Their argument is: "Why would Winfield develop Roosevelt Road knowing the market for commercial real estate is struggling?" Basically, they believe the village's strategic planning should only see far enough into the future to pass this referendum. Then, no plan is necessary ... We have our roads. Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Had our elected officials been capable of long-term planning this crisis would never have occurred. Asphalt needs to be replaced every 15 years. Any 4th grade student could tell you that the budget needed to contain 1/15th of the cost to repair every road in the village.

Failure to consider commercial tax generation because a temporary contraction of the real estate market displays just one more example of an inability to plan for the long term, and that, is myopic.

Tim Allen

Winfield