It's time to stop being so hard on our politicians about real estate taxes. By my calculation, over the last eight years, Oak Park has spent over $150 million on new public building projects. The voters approved most of that new spending.

I am doing this from memory, so bear with me if I misplace a few million. The two middle school buildings approved by referendum in the late '90s? The number $76 million in construction costs sticks in my mind.

Then voters approved the new library. That was around $32 million. But the library (and village) spent millions more rehabbing the two smaller libraries in town. Let's call that $4 million, to get a subtotal of $112 million.

Next up, we approved $15 million to upgrade park district facilities. This does not include several million spent redoing both pools a few years ago. I'll toss in $3 million for that, leaving us with a subtotal of $130 million.

What am I leaving out? Although there was no public vote, there is currently a big hole in the ground on South Boulevard where a state-of-the-art municipal garage is under construction. That is $15 million, which gets me to $145 million.

I know we spent more than $3 million in new parking garages, and while we're at it, why not include another $7-10 million that many village trustees hope to throw at the Colt building? Voila. We have exceeded our $150 million goal.

Various village boards borrowed money to build most, but not all, these projects. That money will be paid back with interest over 30 years as tax bills come due.

I will take another wild stab in the dark and say the cost of borrowing this money adds $100 million to the total. It is probably more, but I want to be conservative.

So our $150 million spent on bricks and mortar on public projects will end up costing closer to $250 million. And remember that is $250 million in new obligations for new public buildings just in the last eight years.

There are roughly 24,000 households in Oak Park. If we divide $250 million by the number of households, we the voters have supported adding more than $10,000 in new tax expenses on every house in Oak Park.

So when we get red-faced after opening our tax bills, we should look in the mirror and remember that we, the body politic, with strong support from local newspapers and civic organizations, agreed to a big chunk of the increases.

When we walk around town and hear laments that middle-income people and retirees are being squeezed out, we should thump our chests and say, "I played my part."

Next time we are inclined to blame developers for driving up the cost of housing in Oak Park, we should buy the developer a cup of coffee and say, "Me too."

And if poor people are no longer found on our streets, we should remind them, "that's the price of having first class school and library buildings."

It was not Springfield. It was not even our trustees. It was us.