Not fair to charge for meeting rooms

I was disappointed to read that the Naperville City Council is going to charge $25 for reserving a room at city hall.

They have never charged before. They say this is necessary to cover costs, but the city hall is open at night, so there are really no costs involved in keeping the building open for residents to use the rooms. These rooms are used by clubs and civic groups and neighborhood associations. Many of these groups are doing things for Naperville, that make Naperville a positive place to live. And most of them operate on a shoestring budget.

Yet the city council is starting to charge them a fee for reserving one of the many rooms at city hall.

They expect to make about $25,000 from these fees. This will go a long way toward their $1.8 million deficit. Getting about 1 percent from clubs and nonprofit groups is not going to make up for the municipal deficit. And the city hall was paid for by the taxpayers - the very residents that want to use the meeting rooms.

Maybe if the city council didn't give away so many tax breaks to big corporations and downtown developers, they wouldn't have to put their deficit on the backs of clubs and nonprofit groups.

I applaud the three council members that voted against the fees, Boyd-Obarski, Gustin and Krummen, and for the rest of you, you have a black mark against you that I will remember at the next election.

Julie Federico

Naperville