Tutty's been looking over the City of Freeport's Strategic Vision and Goals 2020-2022. This document was approved a few months back by the Freeport City Council. You can peruse what's often called the "strategic plan" by copying and pasting the web address that follows:
https://cityoffreeport.org/city-documents/documents/2019/StrategicPlan2020_2022.pdf
The page Tutty's looking at today is page five with the heading "Diverse and Engaged Citizens" partially pictured below.
Let's agree that Freeport is a fairly diverse community but much beyond that the rest of this paragraph seems to be little more than make believe. The opening sentence, written in the first person, purports that "We are an inclusive, diverse and growing community comprised of engaged citizens."
In the next two sentences the author switches to third person and states "Freeport is a community where everyone can participate. Citizens are well informed of positive momentum and challenges facing the community, empowered as part of the solution."
Just those three sentences are too much for Tutty to take without stopping and elaborating.
While Freeport is diverse, and Tutty has always appreciated that attribute, we are not a "growing community" nor is city government "inclusive" by nearly any measure. In Tutty's opinion there is little hope of finding a "strategic" solution when the foundation is being built on fiction.
Citizens of Freeport are engaged, but not in the happenings of local government and their taxes and municipal debt. Freeporters are too engaged in trying to carve out a living or support their addictions. All those gambling machines don't feed themselves.
Some are trying to pay all the fees on the water bills. Tutty digresses but can any city council member explain why someone that does not have a car, lives on an undersized lot without off street parking, pay the same amount in the "Road Improvements" fee as someone that has four cars and a garage too large to fit on the first person's undersized lot?
Will any city council member, the mayor, or city manager explain how this is equitable?
Where does the Freeport City Council get the idea that "Freeport is a community where everyone can participate"?
For the past 30-years the city council has been using home rule powers to exclude the public from the decision making process every time they can. There has not been one binding referendum on a tax or spend issue in the last 40-years despite a plethora of local taxes and a mountain of public debt in Freeport. The Freeport City Council has even used home rule to get around formal notice (publishing) and public hearing requirements required of non-home rule units regarding taking on debt. They borrow from us, and don't even tell us. How is that engaging the public Freeport City Council?
If the Freeport City Council really wants public engagement they would want to eliminate the largest block to public engagement these past several decades
How do citizens become well informed in a town and county that has virtually no credible media, unless, of course, it's high school sports. Who covers what the Stephenson County Board, the Freeport City Council and other units of local government are actually doing on our alleged behalf. The Journal-Standard and local radio are little more than a bad joke foisted upon Freeporters by media businesses more interested in collecting advertising fees than increasing public enlightenment.
Five Freeport City Council members will be up for reelection one year from now. However, prior to that, the home rule question will be on the November general election ballot. Let's pay attention to which city council members really want a "community where everyone can participate" or remain a home rule city where only a handful of elected officials make all the tax and spend issues and while only leaving the public with the bills for their decisions/
As always, yours in honesty, Tutty Baker tutty.baker@gmail.com
