Kudos to Wiaduck for taking lead in rail proposal

Congratulation to Jack Wiaduck, president Riverside Village Board. In his letter printed in the Landmark July 16, he extolled the virtues of rerouting the rail traffic which could occur if Canadian National Railway’s purchase of the EJ&E is approved. He cited the benefits that this would bring to the more than 60 communities that are affected by the rail traffic on the Burlington railway. If the transaction is approved, these communities would experience over a 50-percent decline in rail traffic.

The rail traffic up and down the tracks that bisect these communities has had a marked increase over the years. Anyone that has had to travel from north to south vice versa and cross the tracks will in most cases have to deal with a train. Since the cost of fuel for trucks has gone up, this will result in more rail traffic. In addition to President Wiaduck’s list of benefits, there are other results which would be very beneficial to the communities.

Less train noise and whistle blowing for the residents, less stopping of police and fire vehicles on their way to emergencies, less inconvenience to residents needing to cross the tracks for various needs, and most importantly, there would be a major reduction in the tank cars that go through all these communities on a daily basis that contain extremely volatile chemicals.

These tank cars are a disaster waiting to happen-liquid chlorine, liquefied petroleum gas, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and more traverse these cities, villages and towns virtually every day. I urge more municipal leaders to follow President Wiaduck’s example and encourage their communities to contact the Surface Transportation Board to express their support of the proposed transaction.

Wilfred Brennan

Don’t punish Udelsons for village missteps

I just finished reading the piece by the Udelsons as well as some details of the variance request posted on their Web site, and I felt compelled to write-if only as a sign of support for the Udelsons.  Assuming the events unfolded as described, there is no excuse for the variance not being granted.  Clearly, the Udelsons had-and continue to have-the genuine and sincere intention to comply with all the rules, and they should not be punished for mistakes made by the village. 

To his credit, the building inspector acknowledged that he did approve the various stages of construction of the Udelsons’ garage.  What is important now is that the “mistake” gets resolved in the most reasonable and fair manner. 

Jennifer Hepker Royer

Motherhood and apple pie

For over 40 years, the Frederick Law Olmsted Society has endeavored to keep Olmsted’s vision of Riverside a living reality. In that vein, we most recently have assisted the Riverside Public Library with a $5,000 contribution to their landscape and contributed at a cost of over $5,000 in professional services in the re-landscaping of the business district. But not every form of assistance has to involve money. Earlier this summer we brought forth a draft of “Green Initiatives” that can be used as a starting point for what is an overdue discussion and an opportunity for making our Village a leading model of conservation and green practices.

Included in the list are:

  • Regularly adopt most up-to-date code standards with regard to energy and ventilation codes as well as water conservation
  • Evaluate buying energy generated by renewable sources like wind power or through energy certificates
  • Allow and incentivize installation of photovoltaic solar panels and geothermal systems
  • Incentivize ecologically effective planning and construction based on LEED standards by offering permit fee discounts.
  • Evaluate rainwater recovery systems for use by municipality and residents in maintenance of Village and private landscape
  • Analyze public building stock and capital improvement plan for sustainability opportunities. Village government to lead by example
  • Analyze ecological improvements potential for Public Works Department with regard to use of herbicides, pesticides, and mowing equipment
  • Evaluate municipal composting program for use in landscape maintenance
  • Advocate usage of transportation as well as bicycles, walking

Most all of these initiatives would come at no cost to the taxpayer. Sustainable solutions that do involve cost can be offset by instituting higher fees for those that do not.

The recent adoption by the Board of Trustees of a broadly formulated advisory referendum question with regard to “Adoption of Green Policies” for the November 4 election as reported by the local press linked the Olmsted Society’s well intentioned initiative to the passage of the upcoming tax increase referendum.

Based on statements made by Trustee Sells in the July 29 Suburban Life article titled ‘Voters to decide on green initiative’, a direct link has been made between the Property Tax Referendum question and the Green Initiative Advisory Referendum “Sells said he suspects the green referendum will pass; however, unless the revenue referendum passes, it is unlikely residents will see any improvement or efforts to ‘go green.'” The linking of these two issues by Trustee Sells is a calculated attempt to join what should be two different issues. It is extremely unfortunate that this important issue is being used as a political tool with which to persuade the electorate into approving a request for more tax dollars.

When the Frederick Law Olmsted Society added the protection of the environment to its mission last year, we did so with the firm belief that an objective of such complexity could only be achieved by working together. We envision collaborating with local organizations like s.e.e.d.s. (Supporting Eco-friendly Every Day Solutions), Village staff, commissions, and interested residents to evaluate opportunities and explore initiatives related to sustainability. We now have an opportunity before us to discuss our aspirations, ideas, and priorities as they relate to the future of this beautiful Village. Any attempt at over-simplifying the hard questions at hand and looking at our challenges as either black or white while not seizing on the low-hanging fruit that are the free-of-charge initiatives improving the Village is not in the best interest of Riverside. We can and must do better.

Jim Reynolds
President, Frederick Law Olmsted Society
Lonnie Sacchi
Board member, Frederick Law Olmsted Society

‘Go Green’ in garage saga

The front-page story on July 30 (“Advisory referendum asks Riverside to go green”) indicated that the village will ask residents if Riverside should “initiate and promote” a slew of “environmental best practices and procedures.”

We applaud the village of Riverside’s seeming interest in taking a lead in environmental stewardship.

To quote from a portion of the story:

Village Manager Kathleen Rush said that implementing a green policy for the village could take any number of forms.

For example, the village could revise its building code to adopt standards related to energy efficiency in new construction. The village could choose to purchase wind energy, provide incentives for the use of solar panels and geothermal power or lead by example and follow green building standards when constructing village facilities.

“It goes right along with Riverside’s character in my mind,” Rush said. “It’s got a lot of positive benefits.”

As residents who built our new home with a geothermal system as its environmental centerpiece, we couldn’t agree more.

We would also suggest that the village can begin showing leadership on this issue much earlier than the November 4 ballot. On Aug. 18, at the village board meeting, trustees can vote “yes” to our request for a garage variance.

In our letter, also in the June 30 issue (“Fighting Riverside’s $100,000 mistake-and how it affects you”), we shared the history of the debacle that has become our garage construction.

We outlined the village’s poor fiscal stewardship in spending thousands of dollars on consultants to fight our variance request. And we detailed the village’s failure, so far, to take responsibility for their own mistake in approving our garage, and then reversing field at the 11th hour when the garage was four-fifths built.

Now, on top of those concerns, we would add that saying “no” to our request is also saying “no” to environmental stewardship.

Here are a few obvious reasons why:

Striving to keep Riverside’s essential character in mind, we designed and built our new home with an expensive geothermal heating and air conditioning system. This investment makes our home much more energy-efficient, the whole year round.

Ms. Rush speaks of providing incentives. Letting us keep our garage is not only the right thing to do, on so many levels, but it also would be a fitting reward for our going green.

Tearing out the garage, concrete and associated structures will be wasteful and an unnecessary use of resources, further straining landfills that would be required to dispose of those materials. The process could also damage our geothermal system, requiring even more resources to be expended to provide repairs.

Demolition would result in additional fuel for the machinery used for the removal of materials, as well as for lugging new materials to our property. And there’s also the issue of additional noise that our neighbors would have to contend with.

Clearly, approving our variance request would be consistent with the Village of Riverside’s contention that it has a vision of “Going Green.”

And it would have the added benefit of reassuring a sizable portion of Riverside taxpayers who are already seeing red over the village’s mishandling of our situation.

We also wanted to thank the many Riverside residents-some of whom we’ve never met before-for their expressions of support, both in person and at our website, www.100kmistake.info.

Jerry and Michelle Udelson