There has been turbulence on the McHenry County College Board over the last couple of years.
First there was the proposal to put the taxpayers on the hook for $25 million in bonds in order to benefit a minor league baseball team. Minor league baseball teams, it turns out, go under about every five years and the proposed non-referendum bonds were for at least for twenty years.
The public flipping of position by Donna Kurtz and Scott Summers right before the Crystal Lake City Council was to vote on the stadium and classrooms zoning in the watershed, which, needing a supermajority, failed by one vote, even led to the censuring of the two dissidents.
Then there was the proposal to sell the southeast corner of the college property to a broadcast tower company.
It would have been the tallest such tower in Illinois and, in my opinion, a blight on the horizon.
Now, we have something that looks a lot like the $25 million baseball stadium idea, that is, a private entity will throw off enough money to finance the health sciences classrooms, except the non-referendum bond amount being discussed is up to $41 million.
And the public has the biting analysis of local resident, but, more importantly, professional bond analyst Steve Willson.
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Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
A shorter version is here.
A critique of the massive, 40-year expansion plan is here.
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In any event, here are the three candidates who have filed so far:
- Carol Larson, Harvard
- Mike Smith, Lakewood
- Arne Waltmire, McHenry
Mike Smith
Carol Larson
Arne Waltmire
Larson is a long-time incumbent.
Smith is President of the Friends of McHenry County College Foundation.
Waltmire is the Illinois Education Association (IEA) Region 23 Chair. He teaches industrial technology at South High School in Crystal Lake.
Filing is open until the close of business on December 26th. Those thinking about running need to file a Statement of Economic Interest with the County Clerk and attach it with a staple to one’s petitions and Statement of Candidacy. And, be sure to number the pages.
Actually you have to file the RECEIPT for the Statement of Economic Interests.
Also a Statement of Candidacy.
Make sure your name on that matches your petitions and the date of the election is correct.
Make sure you have enough signatures of REGISTERED voters, whose names are WRITTEN not PRINTED. (People routinely tell you they are registered when they are not).
Check your list against the county records and/or have at least double the number of signatures required.
All petition sheets have to be stapled.
Better yet, have a lawyer check it over before you file.
As an IEA Region 23 Chair, Arne Waltmire is also on the IEA Board of Directors.
http://www.ieanea.org/about/board-of-directors
As the IEA Region 23 Chair, Arne Waltimire is the head person in Region 23.
Region 23 includes 16 locals with 2,000 members in Pre-K – 12 school districts and McHenry County College in eastern McHenry County.
One would assume Arne will attempt to muster as many of them as possible for campaign contributions, votes, and electioneering.
http://www.ieanea.org/region/23
So a union labor leader wants a seat on a Community College board that negotiates labor contracts.
I would assume he’ll assume himself from the negotiations and voting on the union labor collective bargaining agreements.
But obviously many issues on a community college board involve community college union labor.
Let’s look at Arne’s pay increases in Crystal Lake High School District 155 which could give an indication as to what type of pay increases he might believe is fair at McHenry County College.
2011 – 113,873
2010 – 107,323
2009 – 100,679
2008 – 095,603
2007 – 090,243
2006 – 086,370
2005 – 078,519
2004 – 071,454
2003 – 066,445
2002 – 060,197
2001 – 055,115
2000 – 057,370
1999 – 037,727
Source of data is familytaxpayers.org.
In 1999 Arne worked for Pekin High School District 303.
Pekin is near Peoria, about 3 hours from Crystal Lake.
In 2000 Arne moved to Crystal Lake High School District 155.
Arne’s 2012 pay was $120,538 for his 27th year of service according to the ISBE website.
25 years in state, and 2 years out of state.
After his 35th year of service he’s entitled to full retirement which is 75% of the average of the last 4 years.
Just to get an idea how that works and how generous TRS pensions can be, if Arne had accumulated 35 years of service at the end of 2012, which he did not, his last 4 years of pay would be $100,679 + $107,323 + $113,873 + $120,538 = $442,413 / 4 = $110,603 x .75 = $82,952 starting pension, which would increase 3% per year in retirement with 3% Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).
Arne’s pension will be larger.
Because he’s not retired yet.
Unless it changes, teachers have been receiving taxpayer financed healthcare insurance in retirement also.
That program is called Teachers Retirement Insurance Plan (TRIP).
Many teachers exchange 2 years of accumulated sick leave for 2 years of service to retire after 33 working years which would be 35 years of service.
Working years is thus often different than years of service.
Not sure if the TRS pension plan counts the 2 years out of state service towards the 35 years of service requirement.
Familytaxpayers.org receives their data from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).
It’s not uncommon for teachers and administrators to claim familytaxpayers.org data contains mistakes.
While familytaxpayers.org may have made some errors in downloading the data from the ISBE website, I’ve yet to hear of any.
Rather, I’ve heard of school districts reporting erroneous data to ISBE.
Feel free to look up the salary data yourself on the ISBE website.
You can download to a spreadsheet the same data that familytaxpayers.org downloads.
The URL:
http://www.isbe.state.il.us/research/htmls/teacher_service_record.htm
The Path:
http://www.isbe.state.il.us > Division & Program Areas > Data Analysis & Accountability > Illinois Teacher Service Record
ISBE has teacher and administrator pay from 2002 – 2012.
FamilyTaxpayers has teacher and administrator pay from 1999 – 2011.
I compared ISBE to FamilyTaxpayers for Arne’s 2002 – 2011 pay and it matches up.