Time for Elk Grove to consider benefits
The city of Chicago is starting to buy land in Elk Grove for the O'Hare expansion. No one should be surprised. Drive down Higgins Road, look to the south and you will see them pouring concrete and paving the new northern runway.
The Elk Grove administration has fought O'Hare expansion since before I moved here almost six years ago. I have yet to read that the village has won a lawsuit. The one thing the village has done is spend millions of tax dollars on loss after loss to protect 14.8 acres.
In 2003 when Gov. Blagojevich gave Chicago the power to take land from the suburbs for O'Hare expansion and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled private property can be taken for capital improvement projects managed by private individuals, the village's fight was all but defeated.
I commend and thank Mayor Johnson and the trustees for fighting the good fight and trying to protect our property and tax base. I believe the expansion is a necessary evil -- however, there are fundamental and ethical problems with the process, with the airport layout and with giving any community the power to take land from another community. For these reasons I will not support the expansion.
This village, however, is at the crossroads. We residents need to say it is time our tax dollars stop going to pay attorneys for lawsuits we are not winning and be used to bring new businesses and change to Elk Grove Village.
The administration and my fellow residents (should) look at the expansion as a way to generate new revenue -- hotels, stores, entertainment and possibly a convention center. There are numerous empty properties and many vacant storefronts in the strip malls -- which need to be developed into retail spaces with Targets, Menards or Best Buys.
I see no reason why sales tax revenue from new business can not offset any drop in property tax revenue from the loss of property to expansion.
It is time to look to the future in a new way. It is time to make the airport expansion benefit Elk Grove Village.
Joe Hollerbach
Elk Grove Village