'Green' is great, but worth $200,000?

As residents of Glen Ellyn can attest, the cost of building a new park district recreation center can quickly escalate without proper stewardship. In Glen Ellyn, their sports complex came in at a cost 51 percent higher than initially expected.

Now, the Carol Stream Park District has $37 million to spend, including $17 million for its new recreation center. I trust the administrative and legislative staff of Carol Stream will learn from the lesson in Glen Ellyn. However, after seeing the Carol Stream Park Board and executive staff make one of its early decisions by making this recreation center a “LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)” certified building, I now have serious doubts.

Being “green” is great, in fact, I would hope and encourage the park district to pursue a “green” building, however, studies have shown that LEED-certified buildings do not significantly outperform non-LEED buildings, and many believe because of the high administrative costs of obtaining LEED certification, it is an egregious waste of time and money. The district says it will spend $140,000-$200,000 on LEED certification, and it calls those “soft costs,” which is clearly another term for overhead.

They say those costs will not increase the cost of construction and “likely” will be covered by state grants, which is fine, but that's not the point. I am astonished no one has come to the realization that someone is paying for those state grants too, and that is us, the taxpayers.

Being green is clearly the right thing to do and we need to strongly encourage it, but, grants or no grants, we don't need to pay $200,000 for a questionable certification and a shiny plaque on the wall of a building.

John Jaszka

Carol Stream