-By Warner Todd Huston
To save his bloated city budget Mayor Daley sold the Chicago Skyway toll road. Then he sold the city parking meters. And now? Now Daley wants to sell the city water system in order to keep paying all his broken nosed pals their monthly stipend.
CBS Channel 2 is reporting that that Chicago is considering leasing its water system.
Apparently there is a local precedent for this idea already in the Will County city of Homer Glen that leased its city water services to a German-owned company.
Amusingly enough, the mayor of Homer Glen is also named Daley (no relation) and he told Channel 2 that his residents pay about three times more for their water than neighboring communities. Just imagine what Chicago’s residents will end up paying if Richard Daley sells off the city water contract!
The Homer Glen Mayor says that the German-owned company claims that they need the higher prices to make infra-structure improvements. At some level I don’t doubt that. After all, since when does a city ever care enough about its facilities to keep them top-of-the-line and in premium shape? Most cities let infrastructure decay faster than unconcerned city workers can get around to fixing it all.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Chicago’s city water system is in really horrible shape physically and technically.
Still, if Mayor Richard Daley sold the city water system and caused city residents to see a three-fold hike in their water bill it would be tax insult to tax injury in the City of Chicago. Just one more reason why living in and doing business in the City of Chicago is a fool’s choice.
**UPDTE**
I have been alerted to a little technical flaw in one of the points above. It seems that Homer Glenn did not lease its water system to a private company. What happened was an area that was previously unincorporated and now has been subsumed by the village of Homer Glen gets its water from the private company. So, just to clear that up.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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