Gov. Rauner’s way of getting the state in the black is to get rid of Forest Park’s police dispatchers. Why? Because we don’t have enough residents? So we small towns don’t count — literally? How disrespectful. WESCOM is fine; they do a good job. Oak Park, River Forest and Forest Park work together well. But damn it when I call 911 or the non-emergency number I want to know who I’m talking to!
Twenty years in Oak Park, I never felt comfortable calling the Oak Park police, but here in Forest Park with Craig, Mary, Maureen, Mike, Katie, Linda or Dora, I am calling friends who know me and my town. They are the best!
Change should make things better, but how is pink slipping our dispatchers, slower response time, and overtasking WESCOM more than they are now, better? Will we be like the city’s 311-good-luck-if-they-dispatch deal?
Bigger isn’t always better — sometimes it just makes a bigger mess. It’s wrong that the city of Chicago wants to syphon money from school districts like Oak Park so is taking away our dispatchers just to save a few bucks.
What happened to the “small town charm” allure? Too bad we can’t count the 500,000+ people in our cemeteries.
Please leave our dispatchers where they belong, here!
Karen Stuart
Forest Park
