A few facts can solve a drip, a leak or a gush

Somewhere Winston Churchill and Mark Twain are laughing.

Or rolling their eyes.

Or both.

Both knew, and pontificated, about the spread of information – or let’s make that misinformation.

And this was before – long before –social media.  They were, actually eluding to the spread if information as the result of the printing press.

In speaking about the printing press, Twain noted that “It found truth astir on earth and gave it wings; but untruth was also abroad, and it was supplied with a double pair of wings.”

Churchill, years later, noted that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

Had they attended the Dec. 5 Village Board meeting, they would have seen a bunch of naked wings.

But it is an annual rite of passage.

Budget hearings.

And much as the swallows return to Capistrano and the buzzards to Hinckley, do the faultfinders flock to Village Hall. On one hand, it’s encouraging to see residents show some interest in civic matters.  On the other hand, it’s disheartening to see an attempt at civic engagement mired in a web of inaccurate accusations – or naked wings.

There’s no hiding the fact that village tax bills will increase.  And while there is plenty of room for debate about some expenditures, there is more than enough room for things to be accurately presented.

It seems, however, that some folks would rather take the opportunity to grandstand rather than, as a mayor covered decades ago would say, “do their homework.”

Faucet in hand, Craig Horowitz addresses the Village Board
during its Dec. 5 meeting.

Take for example resident Craig Horowitz.  Who arrives on the scene each November to begin his assault on the budget preparation work done by the village.

This year was no different with the exception that the word got around via incessant postings on social media that the village was raising taxes beyond belief.

Ah, yes, the joys of social media. Realizing that there are some folks in the village who may not live and die by what they see on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and other outlets, they took to putting flyers on mailboxes.  No problem, except when you do it at midnight, you raise suspicions of residents who, according to police reports, called the police.

And while civic engagement is an admirable thing, it generally works better when the engagement is based on fact, rather than emotion.

You would think that Horowitz would know that. The keyword here is would.

But that did not appear to be the case. Horowitz began his 10 minutes of Board fame by sophomorically displaying a faucet with dollar bills taped to it in an effort to claim that the village thinks it can just turn on a faucet to get money from taxpayers.

And the show went from there.  Facts? It seemed as though they only got in the way of the evening’s dog and pony. Horowitz tried to prove his point by making a number of assertions which missed the mark. 

For example:

• The increase in the tax bill is all due to the village.  Fortunately, Trustee Joanne Johnson pointed out that in actuality, the village accounts for less than 10 percent of the tax bill. She was close. Very close. The village portion of the tax bill is 9 percent.  The park district, school districts and other taxing bodies account for the other 91 percent.

• Horowitz said he was appalled by a huge increase in salaries for the Community Development Department.  At face value he would be right.  But a quick email or phone call to the village finance czars would have yielded some important information.  According to village officials, “the position of Village Planner was moved out of the Office of Village Manager to Community Development. Just a reclassification of salary, no additional dollars.”  Details, details, details.

• In what may have seemed like a tribute to the late Al Piemonte, Horowitz challenged plans for replacement of some village vehicles based on how many miles they had over what appeared to be a relatively short amount of time.  Again, he forgot some details.  Unlike vehicles used by consumers, municipal vehicles may run nonstop for hours each day, so a vehicle with 25,000 miles on it may have a service stress of 50,000 or more miles.  According to village sources, “The fleet manager assigns a service life to all equipment. The life is based on expected mileage and/or clock hours on the equipment. The service life sets the reserve funding targets so that when a vehicle reaches the end of its service life the replacement funds are available. That does not mean that the equipment is automatically replaced when those years have lapsed. The decision to replace a vehicle is based on safety, reliability, expected maintenance costs, obsolescence and resale/salvage value.”  Horowitz said he checked with other municipalities and their vehicle replacement program is not as aggressive as Buffalo Grove’s.  That information was, however, based on what Horowitz told them.

            The budget was posted on the village's web site (VBG Budget Information) for a month so residents could review it.  As of Dec. 8 the budget had 152 hits, which is not a lot for a municipality the size of Buffalo Grove. And remember, those are the number of hits, not the number of people accessing it.  So one person could access the site multiple times, which would skew the perceived interest in the budget. Is the budget perfect?  No budget or tax bill is perfect.  But with a little time and effort, it can be explained.  Residents, such as Horowitz, don’t have to accept the explanation, but hopefully they’ll understand it.

            Which is important because statistics can be squirrely things.  Without full details, information becomes misinformation. As we saw Dec. 5.

            Churchill and Twain may still be laughing.