I recently drove past the fire station and saw some people shoveling snow, but they didn’t appear to be firemen. Why are we paying someone to shovel the snow at the fire station when we have a bunch of able-bodied firemen who could get out and do that, among other things in these tough economic times?

Fire Chief George Seagraves responded to your question by saying, “Firefighters do shovel, snow blow and plow the lots, aprons and walks adjacent to the fire stations. Public works [employees] do make passes of our lots spreading salt and plowing to help during the snow storms when they are in the area.”—JAC

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I’m glad everybody got out to vote and I’m glad everybody voted down the two referendums in Villa Park. Now, for the people who voted for the referendum, here’s what I want you to do for the rest of your life. Since you so want to spend taxpayers’ dollars, we’re going to spend your dollars. Every year on Feb. 10, I want you to write a $250 check to Villa Park for the streets, and you must do this because you voted for everybody else to do this. You’re probably the same people who voted for air conditioning at Willowbrook High School. So, after you get done writing the Villa Park check, write another check to Willowbrook once a year. If you want to waste money, just send your checks to Villa Park to use on the streets so they can use it for the streets like you want, but don’t have everybody else pay for it.

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Hi, Lombard calling to complain about the snow that gets left in between the lanes of traffic. It makes it impossible to turn left into the businesses downtown. Why is Lombard the only town that does this?

In the Jan. 13 issue of the Lombardian, several photos were printed showing the village’s Unimog cleaning up the wind row on South Main Street. At the time, Dave Gorman, assistant director of public works, related that this process is usually done during the night, but with zero temperatures forecasted for the area, the work was done before the wind rows could freeze solid. Gorman said the wind rows are necessary on Main Street, St. Charles Road and Westmore/Meyers Road because these areas have business buildings, which are close to the street and are not set back. “There is little or no parkway,” Gorman explained. “We would be plowing the snow onto the sidewalk or up to the buildings, so we plow to the middle of the street.” Using the village’s Unimog, which has both a large snowblower and crane, the wind rows are “blown” from the street into large trucks, which transports the snow up to the village lot on North Garfield. “It’s a very versatile piece of equipment,” Gorman said, adding that if the storm is a “smaller event,” public works just “slush it up” by adding salt, which then saves time and money.—blm

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In the Feb. 10 Lombardian, I saw the page with the crossword and the weekly Sudoku and was just wondering who puts this paper together because the answer to the weekly Sudoku was right next to Sudoku, and the answer to the crossword puzzle was over the crossword puzzle. Perhaps it could be put on two separate pages.

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This is Lombard calling. Scott Lee Cohen announced he will not run for lieutenant governor on the Democrat ticket after he met with Madigan, but I would like to thank everyone who voted for Scott Lee Cohen because once again, you showed the rest of the United States that we truly have the most intelligent, well-informed voters in this state. Note the sarcasm.

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In response to a recent SPEAK OUT, I could be mistaken but I think illegals get checks for their children born in America. Along with eight other things you mentioned that they get certainly costs the taxpayer plenty. I think we all know it’s a matter of time before they’re all made legal. My question is, will they have all these freebies taken away? Because as an American born citizen, I didn’t get any of the things you mentioned and I didn’t expect to. And, Fox News is the No. 1 news show. Could that be because it’s fair and accurate? Personally, I haven’t noticed the cost of living going down at the grocery store, insurance, doctors, dental, etc. Only my savings and retirement are down.

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This is Lombard. Looking at this year’s budget, I can’t believe the staggering number that we have in this town for the pensions we have to pay to village employees. Perhaps like the rest of the United States, we need to revisit this issue. Perhaps we should no longer be held hostage to the unions. I do believe that if a person works for a town like Lombard his whole life he deserves to have a pension, but perhaps we need to get this all in line with reality. Perhaps these pensions are a little bit out of control. You know what? We can only afford what we can afford, so I’d like to think that our village officials would revisit all these union contracts and not be afraid to stand up to them.

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Watching the news, I see that a lot of schools are going to be cutting back classes for bilingual people. First off, you come to this country, America, you learn our language. If we went to any other country in the world we would be expected to learn their language.

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This is Villa Park calling. On Feb. 1 at the Villa Park board meeting, Trustee Bullwinkel asked Mr. Niemann for a status report on the off-track betting project. Mr. Niemann said the project was not going forward. We’ve got to find out who failed, or who dropped the ball. Somebody must have made a bad mistake. Let’s look into this.

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This is in response to the person complaining about the alleged Rush Limbaugh rhetoric. Local politics is not political, they say, but don’t believe it. Probably being a liberal, you, like the White House, want to squash the conservative media or even unbiased reporting, like Channel 32 or WLS Radio. Right below WLS is a liberal station and you should hear all the comments and names they call conservatives. Gee; the liberal proverbial May pole is the First Amendment. They don’t want conservatives to have this constitutional right. I wonder how much liberalism is in all those Chicago newspapers, being a very tight liberal city.

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Hi, Lombard calling. This is for the person worried about Sarah Palin’s three words on her palm. Barack Obama has hundreds of words on his teleprompter because there is no room on his palms for all his scribbly notes. What is the point this person’s trying to make? Wake up. It’s three words versus hundreds. What is this person so afraid of?

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I’d like to know how other people are disposing of their old pharmaceuticals. Are they throwing them in the garbage or throwing them down the toilet? I have a whole bunch. Walgreens and CVS don’t take them and the only place I heard of is the Naperville fire station, for hazardous materials. So, since this is anonymous, please be honest and say what you’re doing. It would be interesting to find out what all the people are doing when there’s no proper disposal available.

A number of area police departments, and the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department, also participate in a county initiative called the Rx Drop Box program. If you go to the county Web site, www.dupageco.org/recycling and click on the Rx Box Program link, you can find specific drop-off locations.—JAC

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Lombard calling. I really enjoy the Statue of Liberty standing in front of the tax preparer’s office on Main Street. Super Bowl Sunday he had a football in his hand; on Valentine’s Day, he had a box of candy in his hand, waving to everybody, really having a good time in this crummy weather. Keep it up, Bub.

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This is Lombard calling and I want to say congratulations to the Village of Lombard and its excellent decision to put an overpass for bikers and walkers at Grace and St. Charles. This is much needed and will be a wonderful, wonderful safety feature of our village and many of us to get to the new beautiful water park that the Lombard Park District put in for us. Way to go, Lombard. Great improvement. Keep up the good work.

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Villa Park here. Here we go again. The forest preserve wants millions and millions of dollars every time you turn around. Yeah, we really need trails with statues and artwork. They can’t keep the criminals out because they don’t have enough people to patrol these parks. Half of them you can’t even use. If you want to see artwork, why don’t you go to the Art Institute?

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This is Villa Park calling. I just wanted to know, when the machine tells you to leave a message of one minute or less, how a person could put such a long SPEAK OUT as in the Jan. 27 edition, the last column. I totally agree with it; but I talked as fast as I could and it took one minute and 15 seconds, just about to fit it in there. Perhaps, as I’ve done, I called back to finish my comment. That’s the only way I could see such a long comment get in there in one minute or less.

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Hello, Villa Park. I agree with trustees Cullerton, Bullwinkel, Taglia and Hegland. The police chief should live in town. I would be thrilled if he lived across the street from me. Maybe we can clean up some of the less than desirable areas in town if our chief lives here and cares about the town. For too long our village staff has taken our money and run to other towns to spend it. It’s about time someone stood up for the residents and taxpayers of Villa Park.