Villa Park here, earlier this month I noticed a buzzing sound in the backyard so I thought I would check it out; what I found was, to say the least, disturbing. It was the main feed for the Com Ed transformer arching and sparking on a tree limb that has grown out of control. I called 9-1-1 and the fire department responded immediately, and told me there was nothing they could do about it, and said they would call ComEd. Great, right? ComEd came out that day and informed me that it needs to be taken care of immediately, and they would send their tree crew out to trim it right away. So, two days later I get a little flier stuck in my door telling me no action is necessary, meanwhile, the tree limb had been so badly burned by this, that it burned right off the tree. I called Com Ed again, again the little flier stuck in my door; no action necessary, regular tree trimming scheduling would resolve the matter. This time with a phone number—voicemail, bahh. Still the line continues to buzz and spark, no reply from anyone. I even called Pam Zekman from Channel 2. What gives? Am I to wait for a catastrophe before action is taken on an obviously dangerous condition?

Deputy Chief Steve Stapleton of the Villa Park Fire Department said that if you contact him, he will personally follow up with you. The phone number is 630-833-5350.—JAC

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How many more years do we have to put up with Mr. Hulseberg? He has been around for a long time. It didn’t look like he had Lombard’s best interests at heart when he took a 5 percent raise last year. My taxes went up and I got a 10 percent pay reduction. Aside from that, anyone who has a good word for our village manager, please call in and share your thoughts. No relatives, please.

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This is to the person who wants to thank a union and if we went to work with him, we wouldn’t be leaning on a shovel. He must be the one person who actually works while five other union guys make sure you do it properly.

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For the person who called and wanted a ballot proposition to get the village to answer questions, no need to; it is easier to call your trustee and have them repeal the silly rule that the vIllage manager wanted them to pass. He apparently doesn’t want to answer questions, because then he has to remember the “spin” he told.

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I’d like to see or hear the village’s powers that be provide a rational answer to constituents as to why they won’t respond to so-called anonymous questions. The policy passed in the blink of an eye if you weren’t paying attention, and since then, no discussion, nada, even though two trustees said they thought they were voting for something different. Would officials tell the public how and why they came up with this policy if a specific person asked them?

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Are the village president and the village manager twins? Neither one has done anything to improve downtown, neither one will answer questions, both blame the trustees for their poor decisions, both wanted the Lombard Public Facilities Corp. and both have stayed in their current position too long.

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To the caller who was rebutting another caller about SPEAK OUT being a political forum or not, I agree, we have the right to speak out about all sorts of politics, from local on up. I think you missed the point, though, which is using SPEAK OUT to talk about our local issues and leave state and national politics to some other forum. I already know there are strong views on both sides and we will not likely come to any middle ground, so I want to know more about what people think of local situations. I would bet that’s how the column got started; to be a community forum—key word, community. Just guessing.

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I just want to know why the police don’t pull over all the people who drive in the rain without their headlights. They are seemingly the biggest cause of accidents.

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Hi, could the person who was talking about getting a question put on the ballot please give us a day, time and place where he or she is going to be having a meeting? There’s probably going to be a lot of us who would like to attend.

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Hello, Lombard. I really think that the village sets people up for failure. Our market on Saturday is probably one of the smallest markets I’ve seen in this area. I know the Town Centre does very well trying to pull in the best companies, businesses, but I think our village isn’t really tuned into what we really need; it’s about what they want and not what we need.

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I would like to respond to the reader who said that since Borders and the other major bookstores are gone, that naturally, the next thing that would happen, the next wave coming along, would be the library going. I think that would be one of the most unfortunate things we could see happen. The library is an incredible institution; it was founded magnanimously hundreds of years ago by Benjamin Franklin. It’s fair for every citizen, it’s fair for the public; they are the gatekeepers of knowledge. They do not discriminate in the books they carry nor censor what they carry. They are merely archivists, as it were.

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In response to the call about Obama bashing, Obama should be criticized; the overspending Republicans should be criticized. Obama has increased spending over $3 trillion in three years. The reason we have a huge debt is because of spending, spending and more spending. Obama is trying to scare seniors and use the millionaires and billionaires as a scapegoat. Again, 3 percent of that group pays 40 percent of the taxes; 47 percent of American pay no taxes. Obama is a very poor president.

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Republican Rep. Peter Roskam’s lockstep promotion of the cut, cap and balance scheme will force everyone except the richest Americans, including Mr. Roskam himself, with shouldering the cost of this nation’s debt. Ask yourself who has gained from the last decade of tax cuts? Certainly not the foreclosed and the unemployed.

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We have a dysfunctional Congress. The government must be shut down, our credit rating must be downgraded and finally, we must elect new representation to Congress who truly represent citizens of this country and not ideologies and special interests.

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Calling all lazy Lombardians out there. Get out there and clean up your branches. I have a couple of lazy neighbors on my block who, clearly, the branches did not fall from their small parkway trees; if a storm blew off part of your roof would you expect the village to pick that up for you too? I remember the days when we didn’t even have bundled brush pick-up and we would have to haul everything in our vehicle to the village hall so it could be chipped and then spend the next hour cleaning up our vehicles. It’s a great program the village has, so go clean it up already. Items required: twine, garden pruner and a few minutes of your time.

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This is Lombard calling. I would suggest to Lombard residents that since the village does not reply to any of their questions, when the random residents receive the community survey, they should not fill it out and they should not send it back, because it is an anonymous questionnaire. They’re not answering our questions, why should we answer theirs?

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I just want to speak out about the Lombard Idol at the Taste of Lombard. That little girl won and the judging let somebody else win. What type of message are we sending our children; do your best and then you can’t win? It’s a principle and it is discouraging children. That little girl should have won. It was totally wrong how the judging went. Everybody in the audience knew she won, yet they gave it to somebody else. I was very disappointed in the Lombard Idol and the Taste of Lombard for how we acted and how this little girl was disappointed. Obviously everybody knew she won. I just wish people would recognize who the true winner of this is and the principle of what’s going on. This shouldn’t happen. Again, I am very disappointed in Lombard Idol.

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Lombard here. You can’t change a zebra’s stripes. You also cannot change a community developer turned village manager. We have many properties vacant. We have many torn down and vacant town businesses. We have vacant lots where people used to live. We have a theater property we now have to mow. We have a hotel in Yorktown that Lombard residents may have to pay for out of taxes. Mr. Hulseberg, speak out or please leave. Enough is enough.

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This is Lombard calling. To all you people who worship Obama and can’t find any fault in his administration, please find a different forum because we want to find out about our towns, not your political views.

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I attended the Memorial Day service and was surprised when the high school student spoke out. I was also very impressed as I thought he hit the nail on the head. Many people in our generation have the wrong attitude about this next generation, believing they are spoiled and irresponsible. His words made me see young people in a different way; they are preparing even now to carry on when the time comes. I applaud them and have done my best to tell my friends their attitude is changing a bit. I hope we have faith in them and they will never fail.

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Hi, this is Lombard calling in regard to everybody talking about the teachers and their salaries, and how high they are; but I’m going to let you know something. I have a couple of friends who are teachers and do you know how much they spend out of pocket because of the district’s cutback on supplies? Or not being able to get their hands on exactly what they want to do in class to motivate their students or to make class interesting? They spend a lot of money; thousands of dollars sometimes, through the year to try to enhance their classrooms with a better learning experience. So I think we all need to just back off and let them do their job and take care of the future of our country.

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This is Lombard calling. I live on West Morris Avenue and I would like to thank the forestry department of the village who cleaned up the tree that got knocked down from the July 11 storm. They did a nice job. They don’t get enough thanks or credit, so thank you guys for cleaning up the debris and mess. You did a nice job. Thank you.

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I figured out how a teacher should be paid: Pay the teacher like I would when they get a report card. An A is $10, a B is $8, a C is $5, a D is $1 and if they get an F, they owe me $3 plus a good explanation. If our teachers could be paid like that, maybe they would work harder and stop complaining.

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I was just listening to NPR—I know, you’re saying, why would anyone listen to that droll radio station. Perhaps every once in awhile I just feel the need to suffer so I sit through the painful monotone voices they all have on NPR, but they were talking about climate change again as if it was real. Folks, does anyone but the people at NPR still believe in this? We know all the numbers were cooked by the United Nations people, their climate change committee and Al Gore. It’s a big lie. It was a P.T. Barnum and Bailey scam, but NPR still talks about it like it’s real, and my tax dollars go to that. Maybe the next time I feel the need to suffer, maybe I’ll do something different, but does anybody really believe in climate change anymore?

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Gov. Quinn is invoking former President Harry S. Truman’s "The buck stops here" slogan as a wake-up call throughout the state of Illinois. The practice of giving contract raises when the monies were not appropriated in the state budget by the legislators is history. We have to support Gov. Quinn’s fiscal responsibility. Taxpayers of Illinois are just making ends meet and the worst is yet to come. Foreclosures continue to set historic records throughout the state; DuPage County has the second highest rate of foreclosure in the state of Illinois. Many school districts in Illinois have frozen teacher salaries and passed the cost of health care and other benefits on to the teachers. This practice is long overdue and necessary; receiving six-figure salaries for teaching a 180-day school year is no longer possible.

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Why is it there isn’t enough money to pay cost of living allowances or Medicare but we can spend all kinds of money on the president taking vacations and his political trips, his wife taking vacations and spending all those dollars on those wasted trips? The needs of this country are more important than those two having fun. We’ve got to cut back on military spending. We’ve got to cut back on subsidizing these huge corporations getting preferential treatment. And the other thing is, why are we spending so much money on foreign aid? Why are we supporting Egypt, Israel and all these other countries? Let’s take care of our own people first. Cut that foreign aid out. Stop that. There will be plenty of money for ourselves.

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Hello, I was wondering if the Village of Lombard has an ordinance department. It seems this year you see large trailers parked on people’s lawns on grass over a foot high. My neighbor and several other neighbors in my area have home-based businesses and their yards look awful. If there is an ordinance department, they’re certainly not doing their job. If they don’t have one, they should get one because you could make a lot of money by charging fines to people who are not keeping up their property.

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Nicor and the villages of Lombard and Glen Ellyn, as neighbors on Finley Road, we do not appreciate Nicor's new building in our neighborhood. As a result of the construction and lack of consideration, you are depreciating our property values in a market which is already depressed. Adding increased truck traffic and ruining the aesthetics of our neighborhood, you have destroyed our trees and are building a monolithic big box-style building in our neighborhood. As a corporate citizen, we would have expected better from Nicor.