Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
Voters overwhelmingly approved choosing the three-member board of the Warrenville Fire Protection District. With all 24 precincts reporting, unofficial vote totals early Wednesday showed that 89 percent of the district’s voters supported the measure, with just 11 percent casting ballots in favor of the status quo.
The DuPage County Board chairman currently nominates district trustees, who are then confirmed by the County Board. Recently, a group of Warrenville-area residents circulated petitions and collected enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot. Backers of the referendum noted that voters in a dozen or so DuPage County fire districts choose their trustees. Just three districts, including Warrenville, have appointed board members.
Warrenville’s fire district serves almost the entire city, along with a swath of unincorporated areas in Wheaton and Naperville and small pieces of unincorporated Naperville.
During the past several years, DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin has pushed DuPage’s many fire districts to either consolidate or share services to be more efficient. The effort has been part of Cronin’s broader ACT initiative, which seeks accountability, transparency and consolidation from local governments.
Cronin asked Warrenville’s fire district to join the West Suburban Fire/Rescue Alliance to share services and shorten response times. He also encouraged the district to adopt the county’s ethics ordinance and sign an intergovernmental agreement subjecting it to enforcement measures.
Supporters also disputed some of Cronin’s initiatives, noting they would prefer to work with nearby Naperville. Other DuPage fire districts, they said, are just too far away geographically. And they pointed out that the Warrenville fire district has its own ethics ordinance and questioned a county ethics ordinance that would require the district to pay it for any investigations.
