I watched a very important village board meeting Tuesday, Dec. 27, regarding the dire financial situation the Westin hotel is in. During the meeting trustee Laura Fitzpatrick admitted that she didn’t even know who represented Lombard on the Lombard Public Facilities Corp. I think it’s very sad that someone elected to represent Lombard and make financial decisions does not even know who the LPFC board members are. How can that be?

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Hello Lombard. Merry Christmas and maybe a happy new year for someone. What I mean is this. I was just going through the unclaimed prizes list on the Illinois Lottery Web site. I noticed that someone has not claimed a $200,000 prize with a ticket purchased right here in Lombard at the Clark station on Roosevelt Road. You have until Jan. 15 or else your $200,000 will go to who knows where. Good Luck.

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The risk taken by the village on Westin bonds is unacceptable. There will be long-term costs and ramifications from this debacle. The three persons responsible for selling this “bill of goods”need to resign or be fired. Then, current Village President Bill Mueller, former village manager and current LPFC member Bill Lichter and then Community Development Director and current Village Manager Dave Hulseberg need to be held accountable. That is up to the present village board to handle this.

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Lombard calling regarding the debt service shortfall. Mr. Hulseberg is recommending the village not pay the shortfall. Why don’t the egos in village hall who wanted that hotel built in the first place, just to satisfy their own self-interests, pay for it themselves? If I could earmark where my tax dollars go, it would stipulate that none of my money is to go to that debt service. When will we, as Lombardians, do something about these people who continually spend our money irresponsibly? If I handled my personal finances as poorly as the village seems to, I’d lose my house, my car, everything. The Occupy Wall Street movement was inspired by how poorly financial institutions handled money, bringing this country to the brink of another Great Depression. And why? Because there’s no accountability. The elected village officials and those they hired should be held accountable for the failure of the Westin, not the taxpayers. To paraphrase: Their egos have written checks that they expect the taxpayers to cash. Enough.

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Lombard calling. I’m looking at the place they’re clearing to put that crazy bridge to nowhere over the Union Pacific tracks. It would seem to me that that would be a great place to re-route St. Charles Road instead of having an overpass there. Why couldn’t they move St. Charles Road to cross the tracks there instead of Grace and St. Charles? It would go over the tracks and would eliminate all those streets meeting in the one spot and the bottleneck that’s there that backs up for blocks and blocks during rush hour. Just my two cents’ worth.

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Hi. This is to the person who decided to be snarky about cars parking and everything else at the cleaners on Wednesday, Dec. 28; keep it to yourself. No one wants to hear it. No one at all. And plenty of other cars were doing the same thing I did. I didn’t notice you yelling at them.

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A water tower on the corner of 16th Street and Meyers is an unsafe, hazardous and questionable engineering plan. There are other locations in the area that are more suitable and safer than the current plan. Certainly the state, county and local governments should have input regarding the current flawed plan, especially environmental impact implications.

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If you saw the weatherman who said in September and October that this was going to be the worst winter ever in the Midwest, slash Illinois. Gee, it’s almost the end of the year and I’ve gotten almost no snow in my area, which is Aurora. Woo-hoo—thank God I went and got all those supplies that would let me live beyond a blizzard.

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Democrats and character. We know there are some. HBO’s Bill Maher, did he really get on Tim Tebow badly and it happened to be on Christmas Eve. Amazing what these seemingly anti-God liberals will do. Yes, that is a large proportion of them. It is so sacrilegious, so ridiculous. Bill Maher is a proud atheist who supports same-sex marriages, legalizing pot, and he’s a big Obama fan. He’s right in that heap of great liberals like Charlie Sheen and other great liberals of Hollywood.

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Happy New Year to Greg Gron, chairman of the finance committee, and to Trustee Peter Breen, chairman of the economic and community development committee. Happy New Year to your committee members also. Between the two of you, the future of the Tax Increment Financing expenditures lie. Please use your fiduciary responsibilities as if you were one of us property owners in your districts. Please work together to get the most for our TIF dollars and make Lombard businesses happen. Our future is in your hands. Thank you for the good job you both have done.

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USA Today reports that federal employees continue to outpace private sector salaries. Recent statistics show that the average federal employee gets $72,296 for salary and in addition, $28,323 in medical, pension and other benefits—a total of $103,619. What do you, common citizen, make a year? The time is now to stop this outrage.

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The village can’t afford to develop the DuPage Theatre site because of the code restrictions they themselves have passed over the past few years. The village doesn’t have to pay taxes on the property they own like the rest of us. The village manager gets paid no matter what happens. Ask yourself: How can we change the big picture? Is the new year going to be any different?

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I have a solution for two major situations in Lombard. One is the flooding in the Terrace View Pond area and the other is the vacant lot where the DuPage Theatre was. The village could trade the vacant lot to the park district for the water rights of the pond. The park district could develop the lot and bring people downtown. The public works department could dig out the pond to accommodate flood control and sell the dirt to a company that deals in garden soil. Why make it so complicated?

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The village has denied the payment to the LPFC for the Westin complex. This starts the road to using up the reserve funds. This cannot be good for any entity involved, including the village. What happens next? Who has the answers and who is responsible?

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I just don't get it. I'm watching the news and I'm seeing all these traffic accidents in the city, some of the suburbs and on the tollways. All we've had is a dusting of snow from that water that froze over to ice. It seems to be becoming more and more frequent. Do people think things have changed in the last five to 10 years to increase these accident rates? Stay off your cell phone, pay attention to what's in front of you on the road and slow down and maybe all these accidents won't happen. I just don't get it. They seem to be expanding exponentially because people think their commute's going to be absolutely perfect. Slow it down.

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Talking about the vehicle stickers for seniors, I seem to remember back around 2000 or so the village was talking about eliminating vehicle stickers in exchange for raising the village sales tax. I can’t be sure, but that seems to stick in my head. Where did that ever go? We did get an increase in our sales tax for something—restaurants, entertainment, I am not sure, but we still have vehicle stickers. People, you voted these trustees in. Were you expecting hope and change? Since it seems our trustees aren’t listening to their constituents, let’s make our voices heard by attending or watching board meetings and speaking out. Also, make your voice heard when it comes time to vote. Let’s get some truly committed people to run for public office and lay the groundwork for a new village board that is fully in tune with the residents they serve.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that public school teachers earn on average $56 per hour, which includes wages and benefits, and that’s the average, which means that approximately half earn more than that. To read the report, Google BLS news release Dec. 7, 2011. Do you earn that much? Probably not, because the average worker in the private sector earns half that. That’s not bad for a job in which you don’t have to do any heavy lifting, you never have to work out in the bitter cold or blazing heat, you never have to fire anybody, you get a day off if it snows a few inches, you’re not responsible for earning a profit, you never get called in in the middle of the night or on the weekend for an emergency, and you get lots of time off, including almost three months over the summer. So as you’re trying to figure out how to put food on the table, or keep your house out of foreclosure, just remember that the teachers were settling in for a nice two-week vacation over the holidays.