What Heralds Say About MCC Baseball Stadium Zoning Turn Down

All the newspapers that ever cover Crystal Lake affairs showed up Wednesday night for the MCC baseball stadium zoning meeting.

The Daily Herald’s headline writer put this over Jameel Naqvi’s article:

Crystal Lake rejects MCC plan to expand

Planners cite traffic, flooding concerns

The story emphasizes the objections about traffic and flooding that surfaced.

When college officials asked the zoning commissioners to trust the engineering, the article reports a skeptical Chairman Tom Hayden said,

“There’s a lot of people that took a ride on the Titanic or the shuttle Challenger, and they didn’t think anything was going to happen, either.”

Almost all the commissioners said they supported expansion of McHenry County College, but…

Here’s a quote the Daily Herald reported in the story after Commissioner Jeff Greenman pointed to the lack of an updated comprehensive plan for the watershed area now that new watershed building rules were about to be adopted by the city council:

“What we’ve got before us is putting the cart before the horse.”

Jim Butts’ Northwest Herald’s story was headlined,

Strike 1 for stadium plan

Butts’ first focused on the traffic complaints, citing this Jim Batastini’s quote:

“I think McHenry County is seventh worst in the nation in traffic; I’m worried this is going to move us [up] that list.”

Commissioner James Jouron took on both traffic and flooding, saying he though there was a need to solve downstream capacity problems before more water was pushed into Crystal Lake quicker by watershed development.

His conclusion, cited in the Northwest Herald:

“This is going to be a real burden to the city of Crystal Lake.”

Indicating the desire of Mayor Aaron Shepley and city officials to approve the project in the shortest possible time, the Herald notes that a city council vote may come as early as October 2nd or 16th.

That’s what MCC President Walt Packard apparently said.

Sound like the vote is merely a formality and the decision has already been made?


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