Stranczek's tax rebates spiked Crestwood's cancer rate

 

Legendary former Crestwood mayor Chester Stranczek died Saturday at 85. Stranczek was a phenomenon, ruling Crestwood for 38 years while making millions with his trucking company he started in 1959. Stranczek was Crestwood and vice versa.
A work colleague of mine lived in Crestwood and never tired of extolling how Stranczek governed Crestwood so well he had three quarters of his small village tax rebated to him each year.... What my colleague didn't mention, because he didn't know, was that for the two decades Stranczek was pumping out those tax rebates, he was funding them, in part, by pumping contaminated drinking water into the 11,000 residents. Back in 1986, the EPA ordered Stranczek to fix the village well contaminated with vinyl chloride from a dry cleaning business. Stranczek balked at the $385,000 price tag and simply fudged the fix up, all the while ordering aides to keep the bad stuff flowing. It wasn't till 2010 that state agencies determined not only Stranczek's skullduggery, but that Stranczek's 'vinyl chloride Perrier' likely spiked Crestwood's cancer rate. By that time Stranczek had already retired as mayor, turning the gig over to son Robert. When it came time for Chester to walk the legal plank, his lawyer pleased senility allowing him to skate. But two aides who did the literal dirty work for Stranczek so he could play Sana Claus at tax time, were convicted in the scheme.

Stranczek was also a conservative iconoclast who became notorious for displaying political taunts on the Crestwood water tower. While they were all nuts, a valid one could have read:
TAX REBATES FOR EVERYONE; CANCER FOR SOME