Tuesday, December 6, 2011
What’s up with Elgin?
Well, with regard to the CTA . . . not much even though the ubiquitous assumption is that Elgin supports the project.
Recent conversations with the Mayor of Elgin, the Elgin City Manager and the Elgin EDC have completely debunked that assumption. In fact, not one of these entities has taken an official position despite the fact that information regarding the project can be found on their respective websites.
There has also been very little ‘official’ communication between Elgin and the Carpenter organization. A recent Open Records Request (ORR) to the City of Elgin garnered only 47 pages. The Perryman Group’s infamous report “The Sky’s the limit!” extolling the economic benefits of the CTA squandered 38 pages, the bulk of the offering.
Only two documents - an email and attachment sent to the City Manager, Greg Vick - are of interest. The email is a rather desperate plea to the City of Elgin to send supportive comments to the USACE regarding the permit application for work on the CTA. The date of the email is April 19, 2011 just a few days before the original April 25 deadline for submission of comments.
The attachment is another pitch for support that was originally sent to ’supporters’ of the CTA on March 24, 2011, the day before the Public Notice was posted by the USACE. The FOIA to the USACE for the submitted public comments had provided the first page of this document which we now know consisted of three pages in its entirety.
Mr. Carpenter’s best efforts to drum up support were ignored by the City of Elgin and it seems most everyone else as only two favorable comments were ultimately submitted to the USACE.
