By Ben Joravsky
But Arendovich says it’s a selective enforcement–intended to send a message to anyone who dares to oppose the I-355 extension. The tollway is a $610 million pork-barrel project that could have severe economic ramifications for Chicago, and south-suburban officials seem to be willing to go to great lengths to quash opposition to the extension.
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“Most of us moved here for cleaner air, but this will make the air dirtier,” says Arendovich. “It opens the area for more development, which means increasing taxes to build new schools and find new sources of water. The trees that are here will be knocked over. It’s going to be all cement, which they’ll salt in the winter, causing runoffs into creeks.”
All in all, Arendovich was up against some mighty big players when he, his sons, and some like-minded neighbors set out on December 2 asking residents to attend an upcoming meeting of SCAT, an association of south-suburban residents who oppose the tollway. “I tried to talk to people face-to-face,” he says. “If they weren’t there, I left the flier.”
“So I gave him [Huckaba] a call, and he told me he had a complaint from a town official whose name he would not reveal,” says Arendovich. “I realized he was between a rock and a hard place, and I almost felt sorry for him, because he had this unnamed official breathing down on him. I said, ‘Where did you get the 3,494? We only printed 300.’ He didn’t have an answer for that. He said he was charging me because the room where we had our meeting was rented in my name. That’s when I realized that whoever was behind this was serious enough to conduct a little investigation.”
“Correct,” he said.
Linda Pudlo wasn’t surprised that federal prosecutors allowed a slimy little snitch to illegally dump mounds of garbage on the west side. By their indignant refusal to pay cleanup costs, it’s clear the feds think garbage mounds are a small price to pay for catching a crooked alderman–a curious leap of logic until you consider that none of the prosecutors running Operation Silver Shovel, the latest city hall undercover sting, are paying the price. Few, if any, live near illegal dumps.
