The last word hasn’t been written on several key stories we followed during 2009. In some cases, these stories reach back even further, but seem to be perpetually on the radar. Here are ones we’re sure to be keeping up on in 2010:
Brookfield/Riverside finances: For years Riverside officials had been warning residents that revenues were being outpaced by expenditures and that the day was coming when the well would run dry.
While Riverside still has money in the bank, 2009 was a collective wake-up call as revenues dropped precipitously as the national and regional economies spiraled downward.
Brookfield, which sounded the warning a bit late, was hit harder. Without reserves on hand, the village made cuts in services, laid people off and warned of more to come in 2010.
We’re guessing that 2010 will, indeed, bring more of the same and local leaders will be wrestling with how to maintain services while holding down costs.
Key developments: In Riverside and Brookfield a handful of real estate developments languished in 2009. Several of them – the Arcade Building and the Herbert/Burlington townhomes in Riverside as well as the Forest Creek condominium project in Brookfield ended up in the courts.
Hopefully, those developments have seen their darkest days and will show signs of becoming contributors to the local commercial and residential real estate landscape.
The biggest development of them all, the Village Center, has managed to hang on without serious litigation. But 2009 ends with just a handful of the condominium units sold and occupied and little in the way of prospects for the vacant ground-floor retail spaces.
Can the Village Center weather another year like 2009? We’re about to find out.
New directions at RB: Things were anything but smooth sailing at Riverside-Brookfield High School in 2009. The leadership of District 208 changed dramatically, and now the school board has begun a search for a new principal.
Once that’s completed, the board will launch its search for a new superintendent, who should be announced just in time for another school board election in 2011. With an uncertain financial outlook to boot, RB High School will be high on our list of institutions to keep an eye on in 2010.
Odd neighbors: Riverside residents were likely shaking their heads in disbelief when cops descended on an East Burlington Street home in April and found 30 kilos of cocaine and $20,000 in cash. Police said that 36-year-old Javier Villa-Orozco had direct ties to a Mexican drug cartel.
The drugs, some hidden in the walls of the home, had a street value of over $1 million, police said. Not an active site for dealing, the home was reportedly used as a safe house for the drugs.
In August, Riverside was tied to a wide-ranging federal investigation of another Mexican drug cartel working throughout the Chicago area. Feds named Francisco Espinoza, 27, who formerly lived in the 3200 block of Harlem Avenue, as a bag man for the cartel.
The revelations went to show that quiet, upscale, leafy Riverside isn’t immune (it may actually be attractive) to drug and gang-related operations and how important it is for local police to be part of multijurisdictional task forces that expand their investigative reach.