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Letter: No attack on library
Elmwood Park Elm Leaves
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Please send your Letters to the Editor to News Producer Chris LaFortune at clafortune@pioneerlocal.com or by mail to Elm Leaves, 1010 Lake St., Suite 104, Oak Park, IL 60301. Please keep letters to 250 words or fewer. Elm Leaves reserves the right to edit letters for length, clarity and content. All letters must be signed to be published.
Updated: December 2, 2012 6:45AM
Unlike Mr. Zivojnovic, Elvis Hernandez and I spent the entire day at the village’s budget workshop this year. Prior to Mr. Zivojnovic’s appointment to the Library Board last year, the library hadn’t raised our taxes in the five previous years.
After an impressive presentation to the board, Shawn Strecker of the library asked for a small budget increase to add programs and to improve the library’s outreach program to the community. The administration agreed to half of her request.
At the Oct. 15 board meeting, Elvis Hernandez did not “erroneously state that the village ‘cut’ funding,” but asked why the village only gave the library half its request when additional funding could have been used for additional youth programs – something desperately needed in town and discussed at length at many board meetings and last month’s COPS meeting.
Furthermore, Elvis Hernandez never once mentioned that the library lacked adequate funding, as was contrived in the essay. I was there and it’s on video; no such discussion took place. Instead, Elvis Hernandez alluded to the reasonable question as to why the administration denied half of the library’s request for additional funding, which would have helped the community and our youth, but “found” enough money in the budget this year to add public relations firms, another year of salary increases at Village Hall, and an onslaught of new pet projects and self-promoting construction signs after years of no activity and crying poor while raising our property taxes and water bills.
Elvis Hernandez never attacked the library. His family and four children love it, as do my wife, our two young children, and I. That Elvis Hernandez and Mr. Zivojnovic are running for village trustee against each other in April is not a reason to manufacture falsehoods for political gain. Instead, let’s focus on the issues and each party’s solutions; leave the dirty politics to the career politicians.
Joe Ponzio, Elmwood Park
