Lombard calling. I’m wondering why we don’t allow skating at the Lombard Lagoon on Grace Street anymore. We always did that as kids. We even had a speed skating club here in Lombard. Can you find out for me? Thank you.

Lombard Park District Executive Director Paul Friedrichs explained: “For the safety of our residents, the park district prohibits skating on any pond with less than nine inches of solid ice. To date, the ice on all Lombard Park District ponds has been less than 9 inches. In fact, we have only allowed skating on the Lombard Lagoon once in the last 13 years due to the lack of ice thick enough to skate on.  Because of this safety precaution, the park district spends considerable time and effort to produce skating rinks in other areas off the ponds. Thank you for your inquiry and as always, please feel free to call the park district with any questions or concerns you have at 630-627-1281.”—JAC

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Lombard calling. I see that the state of Illinois is now allowing gambling on the Internet for horse racetracks and also through your cell phone, making it ultra-convenient. Isn’t that nice? Also, they want video poker machines in all the bars now. Two, three, five years ago you couldn’t even bet from the Internet. It wasn’t allowed, but now they want you to pay their bills. I guess that’s what it’s all about. The other thing is, the red-light cameras I was complaining about a year-and-a-half ago, now everybody’s complaining about the same thing. So, there you go. There’s my point.

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This is Lombard calling. CNN recently published a list of the top 10 states that are in financial trouble. First on the list is California. A very close second is Illinois. When are we going to wake up? The politicians, all of them, have failed. This is not a Democrat or Republican problem. Once elected, the politicians never keep their campaign promises. The agenda they run with is one that is set by political bosses so they can get re-elected. It’s time to start a new party. The only principle is to not vote for any incumbent. Shame on us if we allow the present incumbents to get re-elected and reward them for their failures.

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Villa Park calling. I have heard over the last month a lot of people in the neighborhood have had their cars broken into and ransacked. About three people on my block and a few people on the other side of town.  Now no one, that I know of, has been caught for these instances.  But whenever I ask these people what happened they say well I don't lock my car doors. Why? Why don't people lock their car doors? It is a pretty simple thing and can save you quite a hassle.  All the people I have spoken to have only had a few things stolen such as phone chargers, one had a wallet stolen but thank goodness none of them have had their cars stolen, it could have been prevented though.  So I am just letting everyone know what has been going on in the neighborhood. Make it easy on everyone and just lock your car doors.

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Why is it that Lombard's streets are so horrible when it snows? I saw one truck out Monday night putting salt down when there was no snow and there wasn't a truck in sight on Tuesday night when the streets were actually bad. I noticed this last year but I thought it would definitely get better this year. It hasn't. This is unacceptable, Lombard. You need to do better.

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This is a comment to the person from Lombard who called in about their neighbor blowing their leaves into the street. We have the same problem in Villa Park. People on our street have called about a guy who continually blows his leaves into the street, and he has lots of trees which equals lots of leaves. One time the police did come out, and it ended up that this guy was the one who called because one of the neighbors on the street had yelled at him for using his leaf blower at 10 p.m. The local police just don’t listen to the people trying to do the right thing.

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Why is it I felt safer when Bush was president than I do with the present occupant of the White House?

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Lombard calling. I’ve noticed recently that we seem to be outsourcing for water billing payments. They go to a post office box in Chicago. Number one, is there no company in Lombard that can handle this, or at least in DuPage County? And, number two, if we’re being outsourced, are we at least able to eliminate a position or two in the water department office staff? If not, it’s just an extra cost. How can I get this information? Maybe you can call somebody at the village and put an answer in.

Tim Sexton, director of finance for the village, explained: “The water bill payments are processed by the bank that the village has a contract with for all of our banking services. They began processing water bill payments for the village in 2005. The bank centrally locates all of its lockbox activity (payment processing) in one location to reduce costs. For the second question, as part of using a lockbox for the processing of water bill payments, we did reduce staffing by half of a full-time employee.”—JAC

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For the two callers who expressed such glowing support for President Obama’s superior ability to govern, here’s an alternative description: inexperienced, immature and way over his head. And, I don’t need Fox Network to come to that conclusion.

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Hi, north Lombard calling. I’d like to find out how we can get rid of these red-light cameras. They’re ridiculous and if anybody thinks it’s helping, ask all the people who get rear-ended at those lights. And I’ve already called my trustee and he hasn’t gotten back to me. So, I’d like to find out how we can get rid of those red-light cameras. Maybe if you print this here because people read it, we can get rid of them. You guys have a great service here.

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It’s a Sunday night and I was watching TV and a street sweeper just went by. I don’t think it’s a very good way to spend my money.

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Well, Village of Lombard, we have a golden opportunity here. President Obama has money set aside to improve roadways and railroads and the biggest problem with our downtown area—I think it’s very clear—is the intersection of Grace and St. Charles. If St. Charles were actually a through street, the amount of business we would get in downtown Lombard would be phenomenal—if people could take St. Charles without any impediments through Villa Park, through Lombard, and out into Glen Ellyn. Right now everybody avoids that intersection like the plague. You get a viaduct put in there and suddenly the whole east side of town is going to bloom and the west side of town is going to have more business, people coming through to see the shops. They stop, they eat, they buy. None of that is happening because that intersection is still messed up.

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Hello, Lombard. I’d just like to say to the people who say that the Moose is just a bar, they should have been present at the lodge on Dec. 6 when we had 68 children from Mooseheart at our annual Christmas party. To see the joy on their faces was overwhelming. In a conversation I had with one of the house parents I mentioned that each one of them has their own story. He replied to me, “Because of you people, they all now have a future.” God bless Mooseheart and God bless the people of Lombard.

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Villa Park here. Without the video poker, at least it’s a good thing it doesn’t interfere with all the lottery tickets being sold at just about every store in town or the new off-track parlor that we’ll have on North Avenue.