Mirage wrote:
This story isn't going away! There are more accounts to tell!! How can we be a desirable community and attract better citizens while retaining the ones we have while these types of crimes are made such a low priority?
Most rational people would answer: "you can't."
Hammond, however, is blessed with leadership (and their obligate boot-lickers) that feel the way to attract better citizens is to focus energy on covering every spare open space with baseball diamonds, funding the display of a Wisconsin Dells-like Statue of Liberty replica, building a water park (seems to me that the other water parks in the region have fallen short of expectations--yet this one will somehow be different), and concentrating on attracting all the low-paying, low-skill employers they can.
The illusion of a lower tax levy is nice, but the financial legerdermain by which this was achieved (increased home assessments while housing prices are tanking, shifting costs from one department to another, etc.) doesn't fool the type of resident the city is trying to attract. Getting a smiley-face approval of the city's financial status from any authority in Lake County is not even worth the paper on which it is printed.
As others have posted, attention to boring fundamentals like police protection doesn't have the sizzle of a ribbon-cutting at a new Wal-Mart or a photo opportunity at a little-league park (thousands and thousands of kids influenced!!!!).
Hammond should just write off the return of better-educated individuals who earn higher incomes for the foreseeable future. Stick with what the city does best: warehousing residents that Mayor Daley doesn't want.