Your Cook County tax dollars at work

This summer a private contractor resurfaced the North Branch Running and Bicycle Path that begins at Milwaukee and Devon in Chicago and ends at the Chicago Botanical Garden in Glencoe. I'm not sure the path needed to be redone, but the asphalt portion looks pretty good. Runners like myself prefer crushed gravel, and that portion of the work is terrible.

And it's not just me who's noticed. Last week while I was running, a cyclist recognized me, and pointed out that the edge of the crushed gravel is not only not well crushed, but the edge of that part of the path, in Harms Woods in Skokie, isn't graded well--it appears the the gravel is destined to be quickly eroded by the elements.

And I'm not road-apple picking here: Similar shoddy work can be found up and down the trail.

As for the photograph on the right, I took that one a couple of hours ago, it's just north of Beckwith Avenue in Morton Grove. This segment of the path hasn't been completed--that's because a water main appears to be broken and water is bubbling up. I haven't been on that part of the trail in a week, the water was bubbling then too.
I'm sure residents of states in drought-stricken areas will be horrified to learn that we have water to waste.

Speaking of waste, the dysfunctional government one-party rule unit known as Cook County Government wants to raise taxes. And yes, in response to a commenter on this blog, I'm fully aware that the Cook County Forest Preserve District and Cook County Government are separate public entities, but they are run by the same board of supervisors led by the same board president.

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Marathon Pundit Chicago River dumping follow up

A couple of weeks ago, Niles Journal reporter Daniel Cameron interviewed me on the telephone about my July 17 post about a milky substance I saw pouring into the North Branch of the Chicago River.

From his article, What Is This Stuff?

Concerned, Ruberry decided to get some evidence. He continued his run a mile and a half south to his home, grabbing a camera to take pictures. When he returned two hours later, the substance was still pouring out of the tunnel.

"This wasn't runoff from some guy washing his car," said Ruberry. "Whatever it was, there was a lot of it."

Ruberry, who works in telecommunications in Niles, decided to take action. He called the Cook County Forest Preserve Dist. The district said it would come investigate, but when it hadn't appeared after 15 minutes, Ruberry left the scene.

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The Cook County Forest Preserve stated last week that it had no record of Ruberry's call, but said it would perform an investigation.

This does not surprise me. Among local law enforcement agencies, the Cook County Forest Preserve Police is regarded as a patronage haven for ward-heelers.

Think Chief Wiggum and the fictional Springfield Police from The Simpsons, and you have a pretty good idea what to expect from them.

Here's what I did that afternoon: I called 911, and the dispatcher transferred me to the Forest Preserve Police. If there is a next time, I'll call, based on information I've gathered since July 17, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Cook County Water Reclamation District, and a non-government group, the Friends of the Chicago River.

The Cook County Forest Preserve Police can be tough when they want to be. Here's what I wrote a few months ago about a reputed incident, in a post about the crime rate in my hometown of Morton Grove:

Oh, in late 2005, while running not too far from the spot where the drifter's body was found, a Cook County Forest Preserve policeman, on a bitterly cold day, confronted me about allegedly--and I want to reiterate, allegedly, urinating fairly deep inside a grove of trees. No one else was there, which says a lot about the law enforcement force derisively known at "the tree police."

It's nice to know Chief Wiggum's boys have their priorities straight.

The polluter has not been caught.

Later today, or perhaps tomorrow, I'll have some more North Branch of the Chicago River pictures--this time of the flooding from this week's heavy rains.

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WorldNet Daily gets it wrong on my hometown

WorldNet Daily likes to jump in on stories quickly--sometimes too quickly. In response to the renewed debate on gun-control, WorldNet tried the tired high-school formula of "compare and contrast."

In 1981, years before I moved here, Morton Grove, Illinois enacted a handgun ban, the first in the nation. In response, the Cobb County, Georgia town of Kennesaw made it law that each household own a gun. Crime would go up in the "Wild West" atmosphere of the new Kennesaw, and go down in Morton Grove according to the "experts" at the time.

From WorldNet Daily:

The crime rate (in Kennesaw) initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.

By comparison, the population of Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, has actually dropped slightly and stands at 22,202, according to 2005 statistics. More significantly, perhaps, the city's crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent. Today, by comparison, the township's crime rate stands at 2,268 per 100,000.

Kennesaw's population has soared for one simple reason--the town was overrun by the sprawl of Atlanta. The same thing happened to Morton Grove right after World War II, but as empty-nesters became prevalent in the 1980s among post-war suburban boom-towns, the population went down, as it did in hundreds of similar towns during that time.

I don't have the statistics in front of me, but crime in Morton Grove went up in the 1980s and 1990s largely because a seedy strip of motels on Waukegan Avenue became the residence of choice of drug dealers, prostitutes, and other no-goodnicks. The Village of Morton Grove, exercising its eminent domain powers, tore down the motels in 1999 so a renaissance of Waukegan Road could bloom. Crime went down a lot across Morton Grove (Gee, I wonder who committed all those offenses?) but the Waukegan Road commercial renewal is something we're still waiting for here.

But the new street lights are real pretty.

Since I moved here in 1999, I know of two murders in Morton Grove. The first one involved an Oklahoma drifter who somehow ended up dead in a forest preserve outhouse near the local running path. The other killing involved a businessman whose body was found around 2003, wrapped in concrete and placed on the roof of one of my favorite restaurants. Roofers working on a neighboring business noted something odd, and found the entombed victim, who was likely killed because of numerous bad business dealings. He was last seen alive in the mid 1990s.

I can't remember if the victims were shot to death, but even if there wasn't a handgun ban here, it probably wouldn't have made a difference for the two men.

The handgun ban is a stupid law, but to say crime is higher Morton Grove because of it is disingenuous. As with most middle class suburbs, Morton Grove crime largely consists of shoplifting, small-scale burglaries, domestic disputes, vandalism and incidents of drug possession. A local politician told me a couple of years ago that the only arrests he knows of involving violations of the handgun ban involve oblivious drivers being pulled over on a traffic offense--with the police discovering a gun inside the vehicle. Needless to say, although I'm not one of them, there are handgun owners living in Morton Grove

Do a little more research next time, WorldNet.

Oh, in late 2005, while running not too far from the spot where the drifter's body was found, a Cook County Forest Preserve policeman, on a bitterly cold day, confronted me about allegedly--and I want to reiterate, allegedly, urinating fairly deep inside a grove of trees. No one else was there, which says a lot about the law enforcement force derisively known at "the tree police."

I told him I was stretching, and he drove away.

That Morton Grove "crime" went unreported.

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