Jim, thanks for including your email address. Next time...please include your first and last name along with your email address.

You bring up an interesting point and that's something the council is debating right now. We are between a rock and a hard place. Residents (at every Ward Meeting!) are asking of how we plan on dealing with flooding here in Des Plaines. Our engineers tell us that we need a multi-pronged approach where we deal with the large flooding crises (Stormwater Master Plan) and the neighborhood issues (street and backyard drainage programs). On the other hand, we are cognizant that any new tax is bad for business.

I want to tackle flooding head-on, but I also introduced (or supported...it's always a team effort) a sunset clause for this tax. In three years, any increase we pass will be automatically removed from the budget. It would be easy for the City to come to rely on this revenue stream, but it's good public policy to challenge the elected officials to rethink these issue-specific funding sources. With any luck, we will have Casino revenue to replace this gas tax.

I supported the increase because I want to fix flooding. It's that simple. Thanks for your thoughts.