Not sure if you are aware of this, but there was a little boy hit by a car at this intersection adjacent to Mann School this morning during the normal "walk to school" period (7:50 AM or so).
 
Many of us parents of Mann students in the neighborhood have requested that the village engineer do something to make this very dangerous intersection safer, and nothing has been done thusfar.
 
Would appreciate anything you could do to bring attention to this issue.
 
Thanks much!
 
--
Scott McMillan

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NEAR FATAL ACCIDENT AT WOODBINE AND DIVISION RESULTS FROM POOR DESIGN AT FIELD PARK BY OAK PARK PARK DISTRICT


Oak Park residents can blame Gary Balling, Michael Grandy, Kovilic Construction, Wayne Gardner the foreman, and Josephine Bellalta and John MacManus of Altamanu landscape architects for this near death on May 21, 2010, at the corner of Woodbine and Berkshire.  Putting a stop light or sign won't prevent it from happening again.  For more than 60 years that intersection was safe, with nearly twice the number of students in the pre-junior high and pre-middle school era and a 65,000 population.

It was safe, without an accident, until Gary Balling decided to turn the Field playground into an athletic field.  To prevent the soccer players from running into the street after a ball, the bunch of them decided:  1.  to remove the crosswalk into Field on the east side of Woodbine, 2. to jog the entryway on the west side of Woodbine into Field to prevent the balls from entering Division.

This was an abysmal design.  The sidewalk on the east side literally stops at Division.  Someone running, like a 4-year old, or being pushed in a wheelchair, like the elderly person I saw in the summer of 2008, would abruptly find themselves against an impassable curb, leading to an impassable fence.  You simply CANNOT get into Field walking directly north from the east sidewalk as you could from 1900 until 2007.  The sidewalk along the south side of Division is literally, believe it or not, INSIDE the fence.  Finally, the double dog-leg, zig-zag entry slows down foot traffic into the park.

On the other hand, the traffic on the west side sidewalk would double.  With baby carriages, bikes, school kids, au peres, and normal pedestrians, there would be a problem of visibility.

Dr. Les Golden brought the problem to the public fore in 2008 when he witnessed a woman pushing another woman in a wheelchair eastward from Woodbine to Kenilworth along the north side of Division.  He reports driving around the block and inquired and they told him that the design (by Josephine Bellalta and John MacManus of Altamanu landscape architects) of the entryway was too narrow to get the wheelchair in and when they tried to recross Division the traffic was too heavy.  So without the ability to get back on the sidewalk, the east sidewalk no longer existing and the sidewalk along Division placed, to repeat, believe it or not, INSIDE the fence, their only recourse was to push the wheelchair along Division. 

A Resident, who lives on Division across the street from Field, had also noted the access was too narrow to wheel his twins' baby carriage.  Neighborhood kids were seen having great difficulty getting their bikes through the access.  In short, the design by Josephine Bellalta and John MacManus was in violation of the federal American Disabilities Act.  Why didn't Michael Grandy, the head of buildings and grounds for the Oak Park Park District, catch that?  Why didn't Wayne Gardner of Kovilic construction catch that?  What about Gary Balling, the executive director of Oak Park Park District?  Why didn't he catch that?  Why didn't the park board member who lives on Woodbine literally less than one block from the entrance at Woodbine and Division catch that?  Didn't that board member notice something strange on entering the playground? Doesn't that park board member ever ENTER Field?  What are the criteria that board president Mark Gartland uses to bring his yes-men onto the board?  Knowledge about design, trees, buildings, safety, or just a go-along don't-rock-the-boat mentality?

Golden, one of our leading environmentalists and citizen advocates, immediately reported the obvious ADA violation to the press and the resulting article was posted online.  Josephine Bellalta and Gary Balling responded by saying they were quite aware of the problem and had planned on fixing it.  That was another total lie by Gary Balling.  Professor Golden had documented over 25 "make-work" projects that had been performed in Field since it was opened in the spring of 2008.   That included turning a water fountain around (you had to walk into the shrubbery to get a drink), sawing off a leg from the bench south of the fieldhosue so it would be level (no one was sitting there because of a 15 degree slant), cutting down the now dead "hide and go seek" cottonwood tree south of the fieldhouse that Michael Grandy said would survive its roots being utterly destroyed during construction because "cottonwoods are hardy trees," putting different color plastic fencing around the fieldhouse, putting a "push here" plastic sign on the water spout, etc. etc.  Twenty-five projects which Professor Golden had compiled into a list are available for viewing.  Either Gary Balling and Josephine Bellalta thought that remediating an ADA violation was less important than turning a water fountain around and putting up different color fencing or they didn't have a clue that the design was faulty. 

Despite Gary Balling's stating words to the effect that "we take American Disability Act violations seriously," they were oblivious to it.  That is compounded, to repeat, by one of board president Mark Gartland's gopher boys, who he got to run for the park board to do his bidding, literally living that less than one block from that entrance on Woodbine!

The next day, after Professor Golden's report to the press hit the internet, Josephine Bellalta went to the Oak Park police station as well as calling the beat officer and angrily demanded that he be arrested for "trespassing, telephone harassment, and stalking."  "Hey throw the book at Golden!!  How dare he report an ADA violation!  What a jerk, making me look bad for violating federal law and putting peoples' lives at risk!"

The public had caught Altamanu in another major design flaw and she wanted revenge...just like Gary Balling wanted revenge when Professor Golden caught the park district having filed an "incomplete" application to the Ill. Department of Natural Resources, "inadvertently" forgetting to mention that 30 old-growth mature trees were to be destroyed.   This, recall, was to get $400,000 from the Ill. agency in charge of conservation!

Sen. Don Harmon, who had shepherded the grant through Springfield but had failed in his fiduciary role to follow the cash, quickly went into damage control to save face, and told the DNR to put a hold on their $400,000 grant "pending further review."  So Gary Balling had the DNR and Harmon on his back.  Major articles for weeks in both local papers.  Coverage by Fox and Channel 2.  Two articles in the Chicago Tribune.  Hey, revenge is sweet, right Mr. Gary Balling?  Let's get Professor Golden.

At the time Professor Golden noticed the ADA violation, he reported that they had not planned for pedestrian paint stripes to be placed on the street advising pedestrians that only the west sidewalk had access into Field.  Unreal.   Professor Golden suggested that a sign noting "Cross Here" be placed.  It finally was, but only after Professor Golden's suggestion.  Hey, what does he know?  He's not a landscape architect.

Gary Balling even minimize the problem.  He was quoted in the papers as saying it was a minor job and would only take "a couple hours" to fix.  It took Kovilic construction FOUR DAYS.   This was no "underestimate" of the job.  Gary Balling has been involved in construction work for decades.  He knew that putting up restraining fencing, removing the old concrete and fence, bringing in new fence, pouring hundreds of gallons of additional concrete, redoing the curb, replacing the sod, and other chores was not a job of "a couple hours."  It was just a lie.  Lying seems to be endemic in the Oak Park Park District of Gary Balling.

On the first day of remediation of the ADA violation, Professor Golden walked over to watch.  Gary Balling approached.  Gary Balling told him to get out of the park or he'd have Professor Golden arrested.  Yet the construction trucks had not yet even arrived! 

Good guy, Gary Balling.  What a man!  Gary Balling thinks the Oak Park police, to quote the actual words of an Oak Park police officer, is his "personal Gestapo" to keep Les Golden from discovering and bringing to the media park district incompetence.

But the basic problem with that intersection, as Professor Golden has pointed out numerous times over the last three years, remains:  The lack of a crossing into the Field from the east sidewalk which just stops at Division (ever visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California?).   It is only a matter of time until another accident occurs.  That the village and District 97 allowed Gary Balling to put in this murderous crossing - a major entryway for the K-5 tots into Mann School! - shows that there is plenty of ignorance in this village to go around.  The District 97 head at that time was the terminally incompetent Candice Collins.  Too busy sending out resumes, I guess.

This reminds this newspaper of course of the Kuner Expressway.  When the former village manager Carl Swenson wanted his child to attend Mann instead of his neighborhood school, Kuner followed his directive and made Berkshire between Forest and Kenilworth one-way.  The "public input" process was a sham.  Swenson thought it would add safety and he wanted it done.  Kuner went along.  End of story. 

Golden, who has two engineering degrees from Cornell University as well as two degrees, including the Ph.D in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, fought this as insanity, providing engineering flow diagrams to a comatose traffic commission to prove that it would lead to accidents. 

Professor Golden was shown to be absolutely correct.  The logjams led to numerous accidents in the entire flow pattern, Forest and Berkshire, Greenfield and Kenilworth, Greenfield and Woodbine, etc.  Two horrific high-speed crashes at Forest and Berkshire led to all involved vehicles being totaled.  In one of them, kids playing on a corner lawn barely escaped being plowed down.  As soon as Swenson's kid was graduated from Mann, Berkshire was made two-way again.  There hasn't been an accident since, just as there hadn't been an accident before the Kuner Expressway was put in place.

Lot of stupidity, and wielding of influence and power, to go around in this village.

The whole construction at Field was and remains a disaster.  Professor Golden had also predicted the bocce ball court would be the biggest waste of taxpayer money in Oak Park history.  Nothing to date has proven him wrong.  The first couple months in 2008 on a Friday night you could hear the clicking of the balls as young dads were trying to bond with their 8-year olds.  That was it.  A "league" was announced in the park district booklet in 2009, but never formed due to lack of interest. 

Neighhbors of Field haven't heard the clicking of bocce balls since July of 2008. The lack of any consistent use is easily documented by the large number of twigs and branches that have built up on the court. 

Even the soccer coaches, whose teams use it less than half the time scheduled because of soggy fields, are among those who are disappointed.  Of course, the park district should sue Kovilic construction, but they won't because they got the foreman on the job, Wayne Gardner, to commit perjury in court (as the judge said, "Mr. Gardner was 'somewhat' impeached."  That we find to be interesting.  It's like being "somewhat dead.")

That's your park district, folks.  Keep on electing the same feckless idiots hand-picked by Mark Gartland and Gary Balling for their unwillingness to dissent and bring common sense.  Keep letting Gary Balling give no-bid contracts to his social pals Josephine Bellalta and John MacManus of Altamanu.   Another accident will occur at that intersection and Gary Balling will always be able to point to a speeding driver from Austin as the culprit.

Golden warned people that there would be accidents at Woodbine and Division.  And he has been proven correct.  Unfortunately, because of the negligence and incompetence of the Oak Park Park District's Gary Balling, Michael Grandy, their architect friends Josephine Bellalta and John MacManus, and Kovilic construction, he'll be right again because there will be more.