On Monday Mayor George Pradel gave his annual state of the city address, calling Naperville a "world-class city" and a wonderful place to live. Of course, his speech emphasized the positive -- he's the mayor! Now, here with a rebuttal, is [YOUR NAME HERE].
So tell us, bloggers, what's the REAL state of the city in Naperville? Do you agree with the mayor's view, that advancements in technology and public works and financial planning and business development are signs that all is well in town? Or are there any other areas where Naperville could show improvement? On a scale of 1 to 100 with 1 being the lowest, what score would you give to describe the current state of the city in Naperville?
My favorite part of the speech was when all of the technical advances were touted.
Wow! Naperville is so high tech, even out mayor uses a Blackberry! George Pradel is a true American Hero!Riddle me this, if Naperville is so futuristic, why is our infrastructure still completely dependent on a century old copper wire system? Is there a single home in Naperville with fiber running to it? The residents of Naperville are stuck between a rock and a hard place by being forced to choose between expensive cable internet providers who laugh in the face of net neutrality and slow DSL providers. There is nothing high tech about Naperville, not even the laughably insecure hopelessly slow municipal WiFi. I wonder how many more years it will take before the leaders of government realize that good internet connectivity is quickly becoming just as important as electricity, natural gas and water.
Eli, you're a dork.
Naperville IS a great place to live. However, Eli has some very good points.
I will add the following:
We have grown--and grown---and grown. yet we still have the same antiquated system of city government we had when we were 35,000 people.
We have, as every city has, our own governmental corruption and incompetencies. The issues with paying a city manager who quit on us, and the Fursteneau=Gate thing, are just recent examples of this.
We also have rampant conflicts of interest throughout the City governmental structure (council, school board, park board, etc.) See the surreptitious funding of theoretically citizens' groups that are nothing more than extensions of sme of these government groups for proof.
We have serious traffic issues in certain areas (not just flow, but dangers, too). Our in frastructure for communications, A Eli says, is woefully inadequate. Our taxes in all areas have been risng dramatically lately, yet these issues persist.
Having been here since 1979, I can sum up my views with the following philosophical statement:
Naperville has lost it's soul. It grew out of it's old one, and hasn't created a new one.
I love it here, but I think it can be better!
Bob, how can you say we have the same antiquated system of city government?! They just updated the web site!! ;)
Something interesting in regards to the current state of telecommunications in our country (Poor 'net access is not just limied to Naperville.) is that around 1993 the Clinton administration attempted to lay some groundwork for a nationwide fiber optic network universally connecting 86 million homes capable of bidirectional 45 megabits per second of data and over 500 television channels by 2006. This is not Verizon's FiOS or Covad's copper pair DSL. This was supposed to be an entirely new network to replace the ancient copper wires linking the country together.
The Bell companies were given over $200 billion total in different tax credits and incentives to assist in the rollout of this new high speed network. Most of this fiasco took place before the maturity of the internet, so information about this massive boondoggle can be difficult to find. It's almost been entirely swept under the rug. http://www.teletruth.org/ is a good place to start to learn about the internet connection you paid for but never received.
Eli,
Go look up the XIWT and the companies its members represented.
That will get you going in a good direction for more information.
Eli,
I'm not sure but I THINK you are referring to the bandwidth auction/give aways that occurred under the Clinton admin. It was designed to ensure a broad spectrum (no pun intended) of owners of bandwidth in the new era of communications.
After the fact, many of the winning bidders quickly went bankrupt, caput, etc., and the entire project waned. As I recall, several big companies came in and then bid for the newly-opened bandwidths at prices very depressed to their worth. I think that is the $200 bil boondoggle you refer to.
In short, it was designed and handles like crap, so the big boys with $$$ came in to "save the day".
Eli,
I think you've got a point. The issue why Naperville doesn't have fiber quit in December. Peter Burchard was against it. Unclear what the new City Manager will do. I believe we even lobbied in Springfield AGAINST AT&T's deal that it seems almost no one else in the state has an issue with.
Again, another good subject for the Sun to cover in more depth. Naperville was one of the last cities to actually get high speed of any kind, let alone of the 100 Mb sort.
AT&T would LOVE to put fiber into Naperville. Naperville won't let them.
We also seem to have crumbing infrastructure, and having seen first hand Aurora's ward system with aldermen / persons, frankly I'm a fan of it now. If you've got a problem with the city, who do you call ? The council at large ? I know at least the emails I have sent to them on issues have been unanswered. It's great to have an alderman that represents the specific interests of your neighborhood, and is responsible to the neighborhoods they represent.