People want tax cuts until it effects something they feel is necessary. When you make a blanket statement like cut everything by 20%, services that are already operating on a thin budget will be deciminated. That is why I voted no on that referendum.

In Oswego, the Village President & Trustees could have easily eliminated the $7500 yearly / Oswego Rider (15 Oswego Riders = about .05% of our Population) for the Park-N-Ride and with "those savings" adequately fund that additional $.75 / month on each phone bill for 911 improvements that will serve 100% of people in Oswego..

Brian "personally" pushed for that $.75 / month item on the ballot.

Brian also "personally" pushed for that new Home Rule .5% Sales Tax he imposed on us.

Despite his words otherwise, he will "do nothing" on the nonbining 20% reduction in Village of Oswego expenses / taxes voters desire.

Hey Brian, let me Chair a Citizens Committee of 5 people on this and we will have a report and recommendations ready by year end for a public hearing.

This election also proves Choo Choo Brian LeClercq, the misguided taxpayer unfriendly Oswego Village President, is wrong in wanting to raise sales taxes by 1% to get an Oswego Metra Station to handle very few potential riders when the less costly alternative is to have Oswego residents drive 15 minutes to the Aurora Metra Station.

Hey Brian, you failed (72% said NO!) to get taxpayers to pay more 911 services ... so how the heck do you think taxpayers want a Metra Station here which will result in 1% more sales tax and other increased taxes to pay for a $125,000,000 project?

In this economy, you are dreaming if the State & Feds are going to shell out that money

Now you are aware of the kind of people that are your neighbors.

They never take into account anything other than their own pocketbooks. (which amusingly enough, ends up costing them more money)

Michael,

I am also a veteran. Happy Veterans Day. I would think things like this would be the last to be cut. Others would be police and fire. However, do we as taxpayers really need to pay for golf courses, bike trails, more parks, etc when the economy is bad and our property tax rates are in the top 1% in the entire country? These are the services we are fighting against. This is time to start cutting the non-essentials. Things we never should have paid for in the first place. If swego needs a golf course, then great. A business owner should open one without government subsidy.

Advisory questions are like popularity polls ayar. You can agree or disagree to just about anything when you know it isn't actually going to impact you. Even if a 20% reduction didn't end up violating any laws and/or other types of legal requirements set by Federal or State gov, what kind of operating budget would some bodies have left after paying out on union contracts? We usually only hear about percentage increases.
What we don't hear is by the time steps are added in, seniority increases, longevity pay, equivalency, back-loaded pension increases individuals could be getting 6% and higher increases per year. Tax-payers want transparency? Why are union negotiations in the PUBLIC sector funded by the PUBLIC secret? If there are going to be PUBLIC sector unions all negotiations should be open. You can't have real budget reform without laying one of the biggest pieces of the pie on the table.

Alex, thanks for the answer. So what your saying is that it would take a Tax Cap Referendum [PTELL] [like Cook County has/had] to have local taxing bodies be required to act to lock down on taxes? is this correct ? again, this is just curiosity, not trying to be a pain. gpa.uillinois.edu/system/files/TenYearsofTaxCapsinIllinois.pdf

Kendall is a PTELL County. Bonds are excluded.
Use a search engine and read about some of these contracts, there's even some old ones out there. Try to figure out the bottom line from those. There's plenty of info if you care to read it. Read a letter to ed in another state where some unionites would actually be getting over 12% increases.

Given the history of Kendall County residents, they rejected the aggregation measure because 'government is bad'.

The vote breakdown, between the REC center and the electric aggregation, sends a message that the majority of residents either do not understand basic finance, or simply hate anything that has to do with government.

As for the 'reduce all levies 20%', well... I wouldn't take financial advice from the residents of a county that held the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Elected officials get put in their positions to make these choices, and should be left to do so without the micromanaging nonsense involved in that 'reduce 20%' crowd. Anyone with any corporate experience at all knows that micromanaging something actually increases the costs, not decreases them. No matter what their intentions, the majority of voters are making decisions to increase the expenses, regardless of if they think otherwise.

Kibitzer, the article about the Rec Center is still on the site, but it has moved off the front page due to newer articles being published.

It's just too funny for words. The citizens of Kendall County vote overwhelmingly in favor of a fantasy land advisory referendum demanding government cut costs by 20% and, on the same ballot, overwhelmingly vote to appose electrical aggregation, which would ACTUALLY CUT their electricity costs by 30-40%. You cannot make this stuff up!

nd treat them like the rest of us? Oh my. That is unacceptable.

This is a perfect example of an uninformed voter.

You were voting on the rate of your electricity SUPPLY, not the charge for your delivery. Look closer at your ComEd bill, and notice that there is a section for 'supply' and 'delivery'. The vote would have affected your supply charge, not your delivery charge. The delivery charge would have remained the same as always, but you would have had a lower supply expense from buying in bulk with your neighbors.

I can not begin to tell you how funny it is to watch the completely uninformed vote to increase their own expenses, while at the same time vote for a 20% reduction in taxes.

Kendall County = The land of the uninformed majority.

For Tim,

You seem like a real nice guy with all of your sarcacm and put downs. I am not one of the people who voted as you describe, but does it really make you feel superior because you read some information?

I wish you were as smart as me too. It would have prevented you from making that completely uninformed post.

Your ignorance of how things work in the world, does not automatically mean your ideas are right. Nothing of what you just said is even remotely true, and I will not waste time explaining why, to someone who obviously didn't even take 10 minutes to figure out those questions on their own.

I thnk there were over 30 differnt areas that voted on the electrict agg....I belive every one except kendall county approved the measure. Mr. Johnson is spearheading the 20% tax reduction, yet votes against the ability to lower electric rates? Ironic? Yep. You always would have had the choice to opt out of any competing company and kept your com ed. Isn't the free market a great way to ensure you get better rates? yep. In many ways kendall is a backwards county.

Mark, in one sense you're correct. If more people purchase their electricity deliver from a third-party provider then ComEd 'could' make up the 'loss' with higher rates. They could also make up that loss by becoming more efficient and lowering their own costs, as you stated.

ComEd currently, as has since deregulation in 1997, been able to sell electricity wholesale to other carriers. Since then, in an effort to remove the monopoly companies like ComEd had on the production, delivery, maintenance, and billing of services, energy commodities were developed. Now, the customer has the ability to determine what company to use to supply their electricity. As an added benefit, these third-party companies can supplement their supply by using wind, solar, or competing providers (other than ComEd). The net effect is electricity costs have not risen at the same level as they did before deregulation.

Don't for a second think that ComEd is not making money on this. Once the regulated price caps expired in 2007, ComEd raised their wholesale prices dramatically. One of the down-sides of deregulation is the price is volatile and there's no guarantee of always paying less than the ComEd rate. The effect of competition has always been to make prices lower than they otherwise would've been. That is what we're seeing now.

Gene, public questions are solely presented to persons within the "boundaries" of the proposition. In preparing for the election we had to create additional ballot styles for precincts that contain voters within municipal borders - the electrical aggregation question was not on those ballots for the Nov 6, 2012 election; while voters that reside in unincorporated areas received ballots that included the County's electrical aggregation question.

Brian, this is non-binding and we really need to start looking at costs. We are in the top 1% highest property taxes in the country. Something is wrong. Everyone is saying we can't cut anything. That is ridiculous. We can. There is a large amount of waste in any government because unlike business, they don't need to deal with it. They just increase taxes.