City misleading in township dispute

There has been a lot of publicity recently about the City of Naperville's efforts to consolidate the unincorporated portions of Naperville Township into the city. Unfortunately, most of the talk has been behind veils of smoke and mirrors from the city.

The city is claiming all sorts of projected savings if they take over operation of the township road district duties, or even better, incorporating all unincorporated property in Naperville Township into the city. The fact that the city will reap a sizable reward for this, an effort to balance a deficit budget. The projected savings are illusory at best, and a deliberate effort to misguide the public at worst.

One prime example of the misinformation is in the discussion of maintenance/repairs of streets. The city uses a much longer time frame in planning for repairs and replacements of pavement. That permits them to use a much lower cost per mile in their budgets. The fact that the roadway may be potholed and damaging to cars that use it is never mentioned.

A perfect example of the disparity is adjacent to the intersection of River Road and Aurora Avenue. Just to the southeast of that intersection is the unincorporated Lawnmeadow subdivision, with virtually perfect street conditions. Just to the northeast is the incorporated Willoway subdivision. Streets in Willoway are badly deteriorated, with many patches on top of older patches, and many potholes not even patched.

If the city would use an apple-to-apple comparison, they might be able to show some honest benefits to taking over the roadways or incorporating the properties. There are many doubters about that. But until they use only honest apples, orange-to-apple comparisons are a waste of everyone's time and efforts to understand, and will get the city little support.

Henry Robert Hofmann

Naperville