I met Paul, a 14th District resident, on New Year's Day 2010 at a gathering for a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly from the Palatine area. Paul is a very knowledgeable engineer by profession, and he told me how he was trying to do some repairs on his home plumbing system.
But Cook County was getting in the way.
I could not imagine a better way to begin this Election Year than with an enlightening conversation from one of my future constituents that helps me to understand how to make Cook County work better for its residents.
Paul's home is in an "unincorporated" area of Cook County, which means it is in an area not affiliated with any city, village, or town. There are many such areas throughout the county, often isolated from each other by great distances.
And because they are not affiliated with any village, they are directly served and governed only by Cook County government.
I have been supportive throughout my campaign of a proposal by some county and state leaders that would create a process that would intentionally, someday, do away with all unincorporated areas of Cook County.
The rationale is this:
It will save time in an emergency.
It will save a lot of money.
It will help keep services more efficient, more accessible, and more responsive to local needs.
It will keep standards more consistent.
It will better retain roads and infrastructure.
Instead of city or village police, residents of unincorporated areas currently have to wait for a Cook County Sheriff, even though they literally might live across the street from a village that could have local police responding in minutes.
Our sheriffs are dedicated public servants who do a great deal for us. But the distance they have to travel between these isolated and small pockets of unincorporated areas is formidable. To have them provide basic law enforcement protection to these areas close to other municipalities makes no sense geographically, economically, when it comes to public safety.
Over the years, Chicago and other villages and towns in Cook County have incorporated the most desirable areas, snatching them up here and there. Therefore, unincorporated areas often don't have sidewalks and other infrastructure improvements. They don't get services that neighbors close by receive. And they have different building codes and standards.
Many of the decisions to incorporate parts of Cook County as it has grown have been made in a very piecemeal fashion over the years, with no real plan that makes long term/big picture sense. We are left with a patchwork of rules and services in a county that now clearly has become largely urban and suburban.
It's a mess, it ridiculously complicates taxes and other matters, and it is costing residents time, money, and headaches.
Of course, some people like the detachment that living in a non-municipal area brings them. This may actually surprise many Chicago residents, but we not only have sprawling almost rural-like suburbs in Cook County, we also have farms. We must never lose the character and benefits of those diverse parts of our county. I am committed to preserving and maintaining the rural character of our county that contributes so much to the quality of life in the 14th District, even as we work to address the problems of unincorporated areas.
Many of the Cook County farms and agricultural areas are in the 14th District that I am seeking to better represent. Farms and open spaces need strong representation on the Cook County Board. Read this wonderful story about one family in the 14th District from the Cook County Farm Bureau website:
http://www.cookcountyfarmbureau.org/special_feature.htm.
If county and state leaders develop a process to ultimately annex unincorporated areas into nearby villages for better services and more efficient county government, I will support and assist them. But I will absolutely insist that we work with the Cook County Farm Bureau and other experts to make sure that process would protect the interests of those working in the remaining agricultural areas, as has been effectively done in many parts of the country already.
This is especially vital given our likely future. The trend is higher and higher energy and transportation costs. Therefore, the trend also has to be more and more locally grown food.
My family owns a farm south of Bloomington that I visit often. My cousin is not only an organic farmer and expert on conservation techniques, he is a sought-out leader and educator regarding important trends in farming. He tells me that it is very likely that in the future, much of the food we consume will have to be local.
I believe that he is right, especially because of our changing economy and our energy situation. We must not let Cook County make the mistakes that other urban areas of the East Coast have made in destroying all local farm land. As Commissioner for the 14th District, I will be a strong voice to protect all the beauty and diversity of our suburban communities.
In the meantime, Paul made one of the best cases I have ever heard for this proposal to address the problems caused in unincorporated areas in Cook County.
His plumbing repair bill is going to cost him as much as $10,000 more than his neighbors' bills because Cook County's building codes are different from the codes in the village across the street from his home. In the village across from his home, building codes reference the National Code standards. Cook County does not.
In fact, according to its web site, Cook County's Building Codes are not based on industry standard "model codes". Cook County's Codes are not available for viewing online. Cook County's code was last updated in 1997. Cook County's code books may only be bought through the publisher.
Paul explained that if he just lived across the street, he could use some form of industrial plastic pipe such as PVC that does the same good job for less money. Cook County's Building Code requires metal pipes, such as steel or copper.
Installing ten feet of PVC would be affordable for Paul. Installing ten feet of metal pipe, a much more complex and expensive process, would cost $10,000 or more.
What's worse, Paul had to drive to downtown Chicago to speak with county building inspectors who only work on the far away unincorporated areas of the county. Given the number of county facilities scattered throughout the county, that hardly seems efficient.
Why aren't the county standards tied to national models? Why aren't they available online, as many of the village codes are?
Good questions, Paul. These standards should be.
So now, with the way things are, Paul won't be hiring licensed contractors to install his new pipe because he cannot afford to do the repair at all. This is a lost opportunity for skilled workers and local suppliers because the work is simply too expensive. Another danger is that some property owners may bypass the expense by doing it themselves without regard to safety, thus creating a potentially dangerous situation.
He did make me laugh with this story: When he did talk to the employees at the Cook County Building and Zoning office, Paul asked why the code required metal pipes. They told him that the metal pipes won't melt if the house were to catch on fire. Paul asked the Cook County employee: "And pipes melting to release their water in a raging house fire would be a bad thing . . . how?"
Only in Cook County.
On November 2, vote for Jennifer Bishop Jenkins to bring Better Ideas for Better Government to Cook County.
