SPEAK OUT
• Keep calling about noise: To the Speak Out caller of "Controlled noise from houses." Don't give up, keep calling the police. You have the right to peace and quiet. I know a situation where the police were called to the house for loud music or actually, more like loud bass about 65 times in a two-year period. Finally, the sergeant stepped in, citations were written, the people moved away, and the house is now vacant and quiet.

SPEAK OUT
• Criminals get guns anyway: I see Jeff Ward wrote another intelligent commentary. You know, I agree that the whole nonsense about the thing they are trying to get the counties to pass is a little stupid, but his remark about how nobody needs a handgun or handguns need more control -- when are you ever going to get it through your head? Criminals don't care what the law is, and they get guns anyway. The rest of us are law abiding citizens. Get it through your thick head. Oh, and how long will it take the cops to get to my house? Seven miles out of town? I don't know, maybe you can tell me.

VALLEY VIEWS | SIGI PSIMENOS
The state budget meltdown must be resolved with a substantial increase in revenues or the proposed budget cuts will be unconscionably cruel to hundreds of our vulnerable neighbors and relatives.

SPEAK OUT
• Leave for work earlier: This is in regard to the thing in the paper about the speed limit. This gentleman thinks that lowering it is fine, which I agree with, but I see no reason why an employer should have to compensate you for being late. Did these people ever think of leaving 5 or 10 minutes earlier?

We're all vulnerable when a home sits empty
The words "neighborhood watch" have a connotation many take to suggest residents should be on the lookout for signs of crime -- from drug sales to prostitution to gang influence. But the phrase is taking on new meaning as foreclosures take their toll on communities throughout the nation.

Though jobs scarce, teens need to be productive
It was beginning to feel like summer was never going to arrive, but not only did the summer solstice arrive as planned, so did the warm, steamy, humid weather that the Fox Valley expects.

SPEAK OUT
• Elgin Township services great: In Speak Out, a person called in to applaud city workers who live on Beckman Trail. If you live on Beckman Trail, you do not have Elgin city services, you have the Elgin Township. And those people are the best people around. Since 1973, since I have been living on Beckman Trail and Catatoga, their services have been above and beyond anything I have ever experienced. These guys do a great job. They are not city workers, they are Elgin Township employees who take care of Beckman Trail and anything outside of Elgin that lies in Elgin Township. You applauded the wrong people, Elgin Township has the best services around.

Speak Outs
• Home buying incentive needed: It seems like the intelligent people who run the village of Hampshire ought to offer some kind of incentive to buy a used property, a foreclosed property, a blighted property. Why on earth would they offer $3,500 to place an order for a new home? Oh wait, I just got a hint here. That wouldn't have anything to do with wanting to help out the big subdivision builders, would it? Oh, I am sorry.

Ethics reform must be signed into law now
This spring's legislative session was unlike any other our great state has faced in years past. We went to Springfield in January ready to make a change in the current system because our last governor had abused his power. We knew that Illinois had to change its ethics laws so that future governors and elected officials would work for the people who they are supposed to represent and not to line their own pocket.

No time to cut back on police protection
If you go to the Fox Rover and head east on Route 19, also known as Chicago Street in Elgin, you are in Streamwood and then Hanover Park in no time. This drive is not that remarkable as far as drives go, but the recent four murders in Hanover Park make that drive a little less safe these days. Not only that, but on the evening of June 11, Elgin had two shootings; one suspected to be gang-motivated and the other self-inflicted.

End Springfield's political charade
Many of our local social service agencies, including the Community Crisis Center, Association for Individual Development and Senior Services Associates, will have to eliminate some services and lay off employees on July 1 when the state of Illinois reduces its payments to those agencies by 50 percent.

SPEAK OUT
• Create parking in Elgin: Here is a suggestion for the Elgin City Council: Instead of this even/ odd program, why not buy up the worst-looking house in the neighborhood and make it a parking lot? It could be as many stories high as needed, leaving the streets for moving vehicles, leaving the front of homes safer and safer for pedestrians walking or crossing the streets.

Speak Outs
• Sales tax for festival: Isn't it amazing that the mayor and board in Hampshire are all for the idea of $10,000 or $15,000 for the Coon Creek Committee, but heaven forbid that you dare bring up the possibility of trying to bring up sales tax on all the alcohol they sell over there. Gosh. That would be too much like you treat any other business around where you have to collect sales tax, wouldn't it?

South Elgin doing well on historic preservation
The city of Elgin has three historic districts. They truly are lovely places to live if you like this sort of thing. Elgin is full of history and has made it a point to keep this a part of its charm and attract families to live in its city limits. Recently, at the New West Neighbors Association Thursday night meeting a group of local residents expressed their objections to having yet a fourth historic district added to the Elgin landscape.

Make Elgin parking seasonal
When carmakers decided to make the automobile affordable to the masses back in the early 20th Century -- and their marketers made sure the public knew how convenient it is to have your own personal car -- the matter of where to put them when they weren't in use wasn't foremost in their minds.

SPEAK OUT 847-888-7700
• All about the money: Hampshire -- it's all about revenue, cheap tickets equal ca-ching.

SPEAK OUT 847-888-7700
• New Elgin councilmen: How many citizens of Elgin think that the new members in the Elgin City Council are going to make a difference in the decisions made by the council?

SPEAK OUT
• No fireworks this year: We have heard of the fireworks this year, not having it for the Fourth of July. I wonder if the mayor and the city fathers are going to be that cheap. If I can't have it for Independence Day, I don't want to hear it every week when the Bandits play baseball.

SPEAK OUT
• Traffic light blocks traffic: Just like I called in a couple weeks ago and complained about the new traffic light at Sundown and McLean in South Elgin, it has come true. The light is on (and) it turns red when not a single car is waiting to come out, so McLean is backed up for no reason. I know someone answered my call saying they needed a light there. They absolutely do not need a light there -- it is asinine.

School bus drivers do fine job for Valley pupils
With the Fox Valley being flooded by the graduation season, it really is a time to not only congratulate our graduates, but also to say thank you to the people who do not get much credit for the work that they have done for our young people. After watching the media reports of a disgruntled bus driver who hijacked a school bus in South Holland and was later shot and killed by police, it really is a time to thank all of our local bus drivers and bus attendants who drive our Fox Valley students safely to school each day.

The news never stops -- so let's be partners for another 135 years
It's not often that we toot our own horn on this page, But The Courier-News is 135 years old this year, and how many businesses in the area, state or even the nation can say that?