John Coonen Continues Fight for Government Consolidation

Earlier this spring I picked up on a comment to the Northwest Herald in which political and fund raising consultant John Coonen suggested folding the Crystal Lake Park District into the City of Crystal Lake.

Coonen continues his campaign to consolidate McHenry County local governments with a comment on McHenry County Blog to my story “Crystal Lake and the McHenry County Conservation District.”

In it, I lamented how the Crystal Lake area (as defined by Crystal Lake Grade School District 47) has been used as a source of revenue for the Conservation District’s open space purchases elsewhere in the county.

If you are less parochial than I, you might be interested in reading what land was purchased with the last $68.5 million bond issue.

I thought more people might be interested in reading his logic below:

Thank you for continuing to point this out, Cal.

If state statute would allow (or change), I’d favor rolling up this grand local experiment called “MCCD” under the County auspices where it now belongs, and streamline the process. Phase OUT MCCD. It has done some good, but it has now crossed over into “fat-and-happy” status–not what’s best for the taxpayers footing the bill for another police force, pensions, administration, etc.

A better alternative is to re-engineer this to empower our local County Board Members to represent us and fight for us. They need to earn their incomes, their pensions and darn-good health insurance too. Let local municipalities fight for us too. That’s their job – to REPRESENT US, in unfettered and buck-stops-here fashion. With sub-governmental tentacles like commissions and districts, voters have all but forgotten who to turn to when they need legitimate solutions that only government can deliver.

The saturated-fat consuming we allow in our governmental system has converted our own system into diabetic state–undisciplined, and hungry for more of your tax dollars to spend in places that are not fair, and rarely in your best interest.

For the rest of John Coonen’s commentary, click here.


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