Coerced Charity in Grafton Township


I’m trying to figure out why a township where Township Supervisor John Rossi distributed less than $17,000 in General Assistance last year needs to borrow $3.5 million to construct a new office building.

Grafton Township is the one in question and it is the only one in McHenry County where the township supervisor is being challenged in the February 24th Republican primary election. (The largest five townships are having primary elections.)

The primary election decides who runs Grafton Township because the Democrats have not candidates on the ballot for the April 7th election. Neither are there independent candidates.

Linda Moore is running against Rossi for supervisor, saying that he has put something akin to a second mortgage on residents’ homes by borrowing $3.5 million to build a new township hall in Lake in the Hills.

The need for most of the new space seems to rest upon providing a private not-for-profit charity, a food pantry seemingly controlled by Rossi, to be specific, with more space.

Providing space for a food pantry, if one has extra, is a decent thing to do. The Salvation Army did that for a number of years until its leadership decided it needed the space for some other mission.

But Crystal Lake already has a food pantry in a building that was purchased with private donations. It’s the old Helping Paws building across near the Crystal Lake Chamber of Commerce building in the middle of a public park and St. Thomas the Apostle School.

It cost $500,000 to buy, renovate and bank the cost of three years’ utilities.

Not in the millions.

Mainly volunteers did the work.

The Crystal Lake Food Pantry did not coerce local taxpayers to pay for it. It successfully solicited money from private donors. You can see Ken Grubb making a pitch to the First United Methodist Chruch’s Methodist Men in December 2006.

Rossi seems intent upon forcing Grafton Township taxpayers to contribute for new food pantry facilities whether they want to or not.

And, he didn’t even let them vote for whether to put something akin to a second mortgage on their homes.

No referendum for Rossi’s constituents.

No chance to say, “Wait a minute. I’d rather voluntarily give my money to Habitat for Humanity.”

Trying to figure out how far the proposed Grafton Township food pantry location is from Crystal Lake’s, I typed both locations into Google’s mapping function. I asked for directions and got a route no sane person would take. While the two are about four miles apart, Google took me by a circuitous 8 mile route.

That’s about 4 miles as the crow flies, but our part of Illinois isn’t very good with diagonal roads.

Mapquest says the two locations are about 6 miles apart. 13 minutes to get from one to the other, but I couldn’t figure out how to produce a new map with its new program.

If you go past our home on Lake Avenue in Lakewood, you might find a shorter route.

Don’t worry. You won’t add much to the 6,500 Grafton Township residents’ cars a day that drive past each day.

Looking at the map I realized how close to the Algonquin Township border the new township offices will be.

Look at the map on top. Almost half of Grafton Township is west of Route 47.

Not very good long-term planning.

Find me someone who doesn’t think that Grafton Township will be filled chock-a-block with homes eventually.

Then, the proposed township hall will be close to Lake in the Hills, Crystal Lake and Lakewood residents, but inconveniently location for those who will live in the western part of Grafton Township.


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