The Cycle Brookfield Criterium is back for its second year.
Brookfield’s village board signed off on the deal recently and Cycle Brookfield, a local nonprofit, is happily back as the lead in organizing the quite massive one-day event.
Based on last year’s success, Brookfield was invited to again be part of the Intelligentsia Cup, a 10-day series of bike races held across the Chicago area.
Chris Valadez and the board agreed to keep the race course the same as last year. That decision was based on the input Valadez received from last year’s bikers, specifically the professional riders, who praised the route as “fast and amazing.”
Inevitably, there will be Year 2 tweaks to the plan aimed at involving more local businesses and upping their visibility on race day. Cycle Brookfield and the police department have made modest changes to improve safety and reduce the amount of police overtime required.
Brookfield welcomes and deserves the attention it garners when it opens its doors to new audiences such as the biking community. There’s a lot to love and a lot to be proud of in Brookfield. Showing off our virtues is a positive plan.
Back under the rock
Just because the perpetrators are pathetic doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. And as Brookfield police investigate the antisemitic hate flyers left on cars along residential streets in town last week, we’d urge them on as every effort to hold back a rising tide of hate speech has value.
Donald Trump, right wing media and social media have lifted the rock and
given permission for all sorts of societal scum to believe they have a voice worth hearing. Starting in small towns like Brookfield we need unity around community values that make plain free speech is welcome and guaranteed while hate speech is a scourge and prosecutable.
Brookfield police are working the case and reviewing a lot of grainy Ring doorbell video. Not surprisingly, it is hard to identify the weasels skulking around town in the dead of night with their message of division and fear.
But the condemnation should be round and the investigation should continue.
About those fees
Every so often, every town does a survey of its neighbors and comparable communities and realizes there is room to raise fees.
And so in Riverside the village board is ready to act on March 7 to hike the costs on building permits and ambulance fees – and the board has even targeted the holdouts who have so far declined to have their water meters upgraded.
Fundamentally, these fees should not be seen as a profit center in and of themselves. But actions to more fully reflect village costs on reviewing building plans, or removing stop work orders make sense. The substantial hike on ambulance fees seems mainly like Riverside’s piece of the great American health care system botch. Raise the fees as high as the insurance company will pay. Cynical but logical.