No one’s going to out-flag Riverside. Armed with 100 new 3-by-5-foot presentation flags and new direction from village trustees, Riverside public works crews should be draping the downtown business area in red, white and blue some time before the Fourth of July.
On June 1, the village board re-adopted a 1996 policy stating that the village would fly the American flag in the central business district from Memorial Day through the Fourth of July. That new policy supersedes a decision by the village board in 2007 to fly the flag separately around Memorial Day and July 4.
“I don’t see why we would not have the flags up from the week before Memorial Day to after July 4,” said Trustee John Scully, a retired U.S. Army general who made the motion to revert to the former policy. “The question in my mind is that, when one becomes damaged, then the public works director has to say, ‘We need a donation or need to replace it.’
“It’ll look festive in town and it’s just an appropriate thing to do.”
Finding replacement flags should not be hard to do. On Thursday, Dr. Bob Novak, longtime Riverside physician and director of the Our Town Project, donated 100 of the 3-by-5-foot flags to the village.
Novak said he worked out a deal with Menard’s to get 100 flag kits (including flags, pole and hardware) for $6 apiece. In addition, he supplied a dozen extra flags as replacements.
Even flying them for over a month each year, Novak figures the flags will last several years before they need to be replaced.
“It’s a bunch of B.S.,” Novak said about the issue regarding deterioration of flags. “This is like mythology.”
Novak was the driving force behind the 1996 policy and was dismayed when, in time, the village began ignoring it. For a few years, the flags disappeared all together. In recent years, the public works department displayed much smaller flags on lampposts in the central business district.
In addition to looking festive, the flags will also be up in the village during Flag Day, which is June 14. That date is also the birthday of the U.S. Army, a fact Scully didn’t fail to note.
While the flags have been delivered, exactly how many will be displayed and where hasn’t been ironed out yet, said Public Works Director Greg Koch. But the plan will be worked out prior to the Fourth of July.
“The intent is to replace the old flags with the new flags and maybe add locations,” Koch said on Friday. “We just don’t know the extent yet.”
Koch said he would be meeting with public works staff Monday to discuss the matter and determine what kind of brackets would be needed to display the new, larger flags.
Per village tradition, public works will also hang bunting on the Riverside train station just prior to the Fourth of July.