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Letter to Waukegan News Sun EditorWaukegan held hostage By requiring annual building inspections before giving apartment owners permission to rent their units, and by seeking information from the Waukegan Unit School District regarding the number of registered students at a particular address, the city of Waukegan is taking two important and appropriate steps toward getting substandard housing and overcrowding under control. The opposition to both measures is designed strictly to protect the interests of those who do not want to live and operate by the rules. The Lake County Apartment Owners Association is claiming through its legal mouthpiece that its constitutional right against illegal search and seizure will be violated and that the city of Waukegan should be required to obtain search warrants where and when apartment owners refuse to consent to the inspections. Although the association may have found some remote basis in law for its opposition, as a practical matter it is about nothing more than dodging accountability and trying to increase the margin of profit. If the association prevails, nobody but the apartment owners will benefit and substandard housing will continue to fester in Waukegan. Equally troubling is the opposition to the Building Department's right to know how many students at a particular address are enrolled in a public school. Margaret Carrasco reportedly says that it's a privacy issue and not about documentation or overcrowding. Does she and other like-minded community big mouths really think that the Building Department wants that information just for grins? As I understand it, the Building Department wants nothing more than a head count in order to help it make informed and objective decisions about overcrowding. Opponents have long argued that Waukegan city codes concerning occupancy were subjective and that enforcement was driven by discrimination and prejudice. Now that the Building Department is seeking to incorporate objective and numerical data into its formula for identifying overcrowding, the same people are again crying foul. This time, however, they claim that their right to privacy is under attack. They want nothing more than to obstruct the legitimate and appropriate efforts being made to get overcrowding in Waukegan under control, and I sincerely hope that the city officials involved in this effort do not roll over because some self-promoting individuals whine about it. Waukegan has been held hostage by this nonsense for long enough and I hope that it is coming to an end sooner rather than later. Mark E. Pleasant Waukegan 12/10/02 |
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