Thursday, September 15, 2011

Welcome to My World

Tonight is date night at Village Hall. It's the Open House to meet and greet members of the Storm Water Commission for an evening of bullhockey, as they unveil the exciting details of their 22-project flood management plan. 
          My street is slated for one of the 22 projects, number six on the countdown, I believe. Basically, we're going to get more sewer grates. The fact that we should have had more sewer grates installed when the curbs were added twenty years ago will be pointed out to the village by me and others in my neighborhood. It's also reason to keep expectations low. 
          I went. I'm back. I asked the following questions: 
ME: It's going to cost around 22 million to execute this village-wide flood management plan. Who is going to pay for the individual improvements to our neighborhoods? 
ANSWER: I don't know.
ME: Will the money be a grant, a bond issue, or do you already have the cash?
ANSWER: I don't know.
ME: You claim that my street hasn't had improvements to its infrastructure for fifty years. What about the improvements you already did to alleviate flooding twenty years ago? The ones you can see in these pictures I have right here. They didn't seem to help. 
ANSWER: What improvements?
ME: How come this map has no indication of all the backyard flooding we complain about on my block? 
ANSWER: What backyard flooding? 
          The grandfatherly person I talked to was a consultant for the company called in to make the flooding assessment for the village and determine which neighborhoods need work. He couldn't have been more uninformed.
          And they didn't even serve refreshments.          

2 comments:

Donna. W said...

You go, girl.

Chris said...

Did he look like Alec Guinness? Maybe he was not uninformed, he was merely using a Jedi Mind trick on you in a "These aren't the water improvements that you're looking for" kind of way.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!