Efficiencies in DuPage government

One year ago, I had the honor of being inaugurated as the new DuPage County Board chairman. The past year has provided many opportunities to make county government work more efficiently and more productively on behalf of DuPage County residents.

I’m proud of the accomplishments the county board and I have achieved together this year.

Just last month, the board approved my 2012 budget plan that cut costs for the third year in a row without raising property taxes. We modified employee benefits that drain limited resources while ensuring our policies more closely mirror those offered in the private sector. We’ve eliminated dozens of positions and experienced an unexpected rise in retirements that allowed us to assess the need and cost of each vacated job.

Taxpayers expect local government to consolidate and share resources when possible. We recently entered into an agreement with Kane County that will allow us to close our costly and underused juvenile detention facility and transfer offenders to the regional facility in St. Charles. This measure will yield substantial savings to taxpayers in the future.

While we’ve made progress in our efforts to reform county government, more work is ahead. The long-term effect of the recession will continue to impact the economy and local government. A recent article pointed out that the overall value of DuPage County property has declined 7 percent since the beginning of the recession. The last thing local government should do is ask for more from overburdened taxpayers who continue to deal with lower home values, unemployment and rising expenses.

It is our duty to make sure county government doesn’t add to this burden. In 2012, I will continue to seek greater efficiencies and more cost-saving measures to fulfill the expectations of DuPage residents to make local government work better.

Daniel J. Cronin

Chairman

DuPage County Board