McHenry County’s Power Elite as Seen by McHenry County College

Yesterday I ended an article that started out to be about McHenry County’s power elite as see by McHenry County College with the following quote from a really, really long article about local power written by G. William Domhoff, an eminent sociologist:

“…local power structures are land-based growth coalitions. They seek to intensify land use. They are opposed by the neighborhoods they invade or pollute, and by environmentalists.”

I asked,

“Does that sound like what is going on in Crystal Lake’s watershed or what?”

For those who attended the Crystal Lake City Council meeting that nixed McHenry County College’s request for a baseball stadium, did you see parts of the watershed “land-growth coation?”

I did.

The most obvious was McHenry County College.

MCC qualifies as a large landowner that seeks “to intensify (its) land use.”

Then, there was commercial real estate agent Mike Deacon. He must have talked ten minutes about how, of course, the property owners in the watershed should bear the cost of monitoring and maintaining the engineered mitigating actions to be taken to preserve and protect the watershed.

You will not be surprised that he represents more than one of the watershed landowners.

I also saw a Route 14 watershed property owner whom I have not seen at previous meetings concerning the water shed.

Those owning real estate along Route 14 north of Route 176 certainly showed their support for the re-election of Mayor Aaron Shepley last spring.

But, don’t let me get completely side tracked again.

Through a Freedom of Information request I have obtained the college’s baseball stadium “Communications Plan” developed, according to the minutes by the recently-retired Deb Patton. She is the one in this picture leading the three baseball promoters from MCC President Walt Packard’s office to the trustee boardroom for their secret presentation of the baseball deal. This is the meeting that ended everyone laughing loudly.

The communications plan, last updated June 22nd, it appears, goes from January 24, 2007, through the groundbreaking on the baseball stadium complex on September 19, 2007.

Did you catch that?

The college planned to break ground over a month ago!

More on MCC’s Communications Plan tomorrow.


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