Here are a couple thoughts I have specific to Geneva's Park District and Library Board. It's more of an idea of rethinking the purpose and function of these bodies or institutions.

We love our library. My wife takes our four year old son there at least twice a week. I too take him to the weekly story times and have participated in other activities they offer. But libraries aren't used like they used to be.....More and more material is available electronically and let's face it families don't check out books like they once did. The board is forging ahead with dreams of building a bigger/better library. Should we instead remodel and repurpose our current facility. Rethink it's use and bring it up to par. The building is a bit worn and could clearly use a bit of TLC. The idea of issuing bonds to build a new library concerns me. We are all getting a bit tax weary.

Parks, parks and empty parks everywhere. Why are we maintaining and insuring all these empty neighborhood parks. When I'm off work during the week I have a hard time finding kids for my son to play with at the parks. The parks in the affluent neighborhoods are ghost towns. We might run into a nanny or mom here or there but outside of that they are empty. Families stay home. They have built there own parks in their backyards and basements. Including the schools we have nearly sixty parks or recreation area's. The majority of the pics of the parks at genevaparks.org lack kids.???

John Rice

Ouch John R!
I do take out books on line and i can tell you that the selection is not great. Additionally, libraries serve other functions with classes, lectures, etc. Going to the library helps me to maintain my sense of community. We cannot stand alone.

Parks are important too.We spend too much time in front of the TV. Recreation, community participation, and exercise are vital to the town. Pretty soon, we will see the team sports starting up and the parks will be quite busy.
Having a good library and good park system helps the value of our homes. I'm sure somethings in their budgets can be cut or reduced but I doubt that either would be a significant source of property tax reduction. Look at your bill to see how much goes to either one

Matilda, don't get me wrong. We love the library and use it all the time. But.....do we really need a brand new one? My feeling is that the current library could be reworked, rehabbed, etc... at a fraction of the cost of a new one. The community, my family, is getting tax weary. How are we going to pay for a new library? if we issue say 40 million in municipal bonds what is that going to do to our taxes? Do we really need a big state of the art library. Or can we have a small/rehabbed state of the art library in it's current location.

Parks....I was a kid in the seventies. We did not have all the electronic distractions which the young families and kids have today. We played outside from sun up to sun down. Today's young families tend to hunker down in the A/C during the summer months. They do the same in the winter. They don't use the parks like they were used twenty years ago. Of course I'm painting with a wide brush but in general the parks are under utilized. I'm an older father (47) with a young son (4). We are out and about during the week and on the weekends. It's hard to find families at the playgrounds. Wheeler, Dryden and a few others are exceptions.

I think we are geared towards an earlier time and not really filling the needs of the lifestyles of todays familes.

John

John. Ever tried to PARK at the library? Its a difficult library to use as a result. Both St. Charles and Batavia get a good amount of patrons, and frankly I am surpeised that the Geneva library is as busy as it is whenever I go in - and whenever I do it is very busy. Secondly, the one thing Geneva is missing in the downtown is SOME sort of a Community Center - we have nothing. Nowhere to hold any sort of a mid sized event. City Hall is ALSo too small for its purposes, too. The folks who work at City hall - some of them have offices in closets.

I agree with Laura above. You can lookup Illinois education salaries online. I don't understand why we don't change the way our county, or state for that matter, administers education. Our Tri-cities spend millions per year on superintendent salaries (some of the highest in the state) and many other salaries that are redundant across just our three cities. Why can't these be combined at a higher level, perhaps 2-3 per county? I'm all for paying teachers and investing in our school's assets. These items come in direct contact with our children everyday and need to be appropriately maintained. Paying 3 Superintendents, 3 Assistant Superintendents, etc, etc, etc in each of our relatively small cities seems like something that could be reduced.

I think pensions should be eliminated. I would be great if we all could get them, but we can no longer afford them, they need to go. Our property taxes are ridiculously high. I love St. Charles, but when I get on a fixed income, can I afford to live here?

Something needs to be said about teacher pensions, something that is often ignored. In Illinois, public school teachers are not part of the Social Security system. They pay into their pension system nearly 4 percent MORE than they would pay into Social Security. The employer portion is borne largely by the State, and had they paid their portion in full and timely, the employer share would have been nearly the SAME as the employer portion of Social Security. The main reason these pensions are often larger than Social Security would be is that the teacher has paid in substantially more. The crisis today exists largely because of the failure of the legislature to pay the employer share. We're teachers covered under Social Security, can you imagine the state telling the Federal Government that they are going to skip all payment of employer share? Of course not. Now fixing the problem is going to be painful for everyone, but yes, you can afford to pay pensions. The cost is close to the same as Social Security for the employer. As for everyone not having pensions, that should suggest that more employers provide for them, not fewer. We don't all have health insurance, but that doesn't lead one to the conclusion that nobody should have health insurance. Shut off the FOX TV people.

Since the majority of our taxes go to schools, Mike's comments on teacher pensions hit the nail on the head. The math just will not continue to work and it likely will not with all the City employee pensions as well. Another is Park Districts both County and City need to stop buying land that they will never use, just to own it. Then in St. Charles the obvious is the horrible job our leaders have done in not dealing with empty commercial and the failing mall. The encumbents running should not be re-elected as they haven't served the people well in that respect. They sit on Council and expect everything to be brought to them like Royality and then decide if they like it or not instead of taking the initiative to make things happen and fix the problems they see we have! They have failed to get enough done on the major issues we face while they have no problem passing projects handing out our tax dollars (TIF money, tax rebates & more) to developers so they can make money! Their decisions are costing tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly covering non-performing TIFS they have passed and they just passed another that will cost every tax payer more in taxes even though they try and claim it won't. Elect new faces St. Charles!

Why don't we combine all three city's into one. That would mean a ton of savings from a staff standpoint and together we would be more valuable to the state lawmakers.

"Take away pensions"??? You can't take away something you've promised to someone when you hired them. You can only offer the job sans pension to new people and see if you find anyone willing to do the work.

Isn't it really too late to kill the new library? I have to agree that we as a society seem less book-oriented with the advent of more advanced forms of media. When the library starts putting out e-books that people can borrow on-line and load into their tablets, they'll be much more relevant. I'm imagining some software and copyright issues with a program like that, but that's what it would take for people to really start using the library the way they used to.

The school system is too top-heavy. 3 towns in a row "tri-cities" with separate and top-heavy administrations.

I just about cried when the City of Geneva shut off the right turn lanes on State St. as part of their beautification program. We have a shortage of bridges and people have to wait for the light to turn right on 31, causing a gridlock situation across the bridge in the afternoon. Why did we do that? I just cut through on River St and dodge pedestrians and cars pulling out of parking lots instead now. Same issue at the 3rd St. light. You can't turn right there because the curb has been extended out. Obvious answer: Build yet another pricey bridge?

A good deal of these comments seem to be pet peeves rather than suggestions to lower taxes. I would suggest that Illinois allows us to deduct sales tax with the formula used on the federal level. Aslo allow deductions for METRA and Entertainment taxes. Our cities also should agree to stop offering business prospects long year tax free inducements. Someone has to pay them, why me?

How about eliminating the extra projects like replacing playground sets in our parks that seemed perfectly good to me before? Or not replacing the asphalt sidewalks at Mr. St Mary's park with brick?? That had to be extremely expensive.

Let's eliminate Township Government and let the cities/county serve the Townships as needed? Combine Library Districts/Park districts into one or two for the Tri cities w. as many facilities as are needed under single administrations? Are we ready for one Fox Valley, IL. city? Could we have one school district reaching between Elgin and Aurora?

@ John R ..........Yo gotta be kidding . The Parks ???!! You have a problem with the Parks !!! I You have a right to an opinion, but that is the most asinine comment , I have heard on the Patch this Year ! and BTW, I see tons of walkers and Joggers , bikers all over our beautiful parks.
There are dozens of issues , that could lower our property taxes, leave the parks alone !

Let's cut back on police, fire personnel, teachers, parks, schools, libraries, roads. All of those useless stuff. I mean we pay police, but crime is reported everyday. Do we need people to learn how to use a big hose for fires? Kids aren't learning anything, why have schools, teachers or libraries. They are all playing video games, so parks are such a waste of space.

First, the library should be user fee based. If you want to use a computer pay a fee. If you want to check out a book pay a fee. Tax payers shouldnt pay for illegals to use the library.

Second and most important, NO city employee should be in a union, I am quite sure there are qualified electricians etc, that we could pay half of what we pay to these over paid UNION employees,

Why should a librarian in Geneva be making over $100,000? Why should superintendents make over $200,000? Why should unions have access to taxpayers money and given an open check book? Why should a School Board be elected who have participated in pay to play activities? Why should the School Board be allowed to make decisons regarding taxpayers money without us taxpayers voting or going to a taxpayer referendum? Why are the public sector employees allowed automatic cost of living raises without merit accomplishments? Where are the rights of us taxpayers? It is just a matter of time as these biased systems will bankrupt us all. Owning the American Dream is going to be impossible as people will not be able to afford the outrageous property taxes which are rising faster than the inflation rate.

@ G. Ryan . YOU ARE 100% CORRECT ! I know 3 teachers in their mid fifties who are retired and making close to 100 grand a year in pensions each. Let's see if they make it to 85, we have 30 years x 100 =. Bye Bye American Dream for the rest of us .

Shut down a neighborhood park to save money? That's a drop in the ocean...the big problem is the exorbitant costs we're paying for education.
Costs that have risen exponentially over the last several years while enrollment and student performance have stayed flat.

The GEA/IEA public teachers unions are hell-bent on bankrupting the community and we have a chance this April to get some tough fiscalyy-minded people on the school board.

SHOW UP AT THE POLLS IN APRIL, or the Union will keep running the business of education in Geneva

Wow; other than Anthony, whose humor I suspect escape most of the recent commentors, Andy Rooney could not have been more om target when he said, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!"

Pleese forgive my spellung errers, I is really a hi Scool graduate; and I is rich.

Given that 80%+ of my tax bill is education, the only cuts that will matter have to be in education. I expect to be flamed for this one, but here goes: Combine the three school districts into one. There, I said it. Lose 2 complete administrative components above school principals. I understand the problems of consolidation at the state level, but dammit, that's not an excuse to maintain these antiquated town rivalries in the current and future fiscal quagmire. Secondary savings then materialize from less bussing of students (eg; we live 5 blocks from GHS, but the kids on our street attend STC East) There's also no question that the "pension" as we've come to know it must stop for all new/future hires to be replaced by a contributory system like a 401-k. Just as V-8 engines died with $3-$4 gas, the new economics can no longer support the pensions as designed in the 1940s and 1950s. Honestly, how can you rationalize a guaranteed return to the beneficiary on an investment? This system has no choice is this century but to bleed the taxpaying populace dry. The milk and honey days of sustained growth in this country are over. Our future is a cycle of stag- and in-flation punctuated by downturns and periodic deflation. Adapt or die, tri cities...

@Jan.... Monday at 1215 no problem finding a parking spot on James St. Majority of the tables available for patrons. Six of the ten computers available for use. I've never used the computers here but it's a nice area so thought I would give it a whirl.

@ Michael Mak. Michael I'm just tossing idea's around. From my experiance and obsearvations a lot of the playgrounds are under utilized. I think I said this but we use the play grounds all the time. I drive to various ones looking for kids, for my son, to play with and a lot of the times they are empty. There is a cost associated with maintaining and insuring these parks. I'm just wondering, out loud, if we need to rethink and retool our park district. I think we are maintaining a park system which was a better fit for the lifestyles that families had in the 60's and 70's.

Wheather you like it or not the young familes of today don't get out like they used to. The affluent families have built playgrounds in their backyards which rival some of the cities best. If they don't have one built out in their backyard then a neighbor up the street has one. They have outfitted their basements with indoor playrooms which would keep the most hyper five year old busy for hours. It's too hot for them in the summer and it's to cold in the winter.

I love parks we use them but go to genevaparks.org and click on the names of the parks listed. A pic pops up and they show no kids. That's accurate.

John Rice