MCCD Courting Favor of County Board Jan. 30th

Lost Valley Visitors Center is located in Glacial Park between Ringwood and Richmond.

Lost Valley Visitors Center is located in Glacial Park between Ringwood and Richmond.

Want to share goodies being provided to McHenry County Board members by the McHenry County Conservation District?

Then, mark your calendar for January 30th at 8 AM.

That’s a Friday.

Too early for me, but, if you’d like to view the occasion, the event will be a public meeting.

The official notice came on Tuesday.

It will be held at Lost Valley Visitor Center in Glacial Park.  The entrance is located between Ringwood and Richmond.


Comments

MCCD Courting Favor of County Board Jan. 30th — 2 Comments

  1. There’s no agenda or time on the Conservation District website.

    Just this.

    January 30, 2015

    Special Call Meeting – at Lost Valley Visitor Center in Glacial Park, West on Harts Road from Route 31.

    It’s the only Special Call Meeting scheduled all year at this point.

    Last year there were four Special Call Meetings.

    At the January 27, 2014 Special Call Meeting from 6:02PM – 7:20PM at the Brookdale Administrative Offices, 18410 US Highway 14, Woodstock, according to the board minutes, Matthew Ewertowski, President of the MCCD Board, participated remotely via Speakerphone.

    So the MCCD Conservation District, which is a subsididary of the McHenry County Board, allows board members to attend remotely, yet John Hammerand, on the McHenry County Board, was not allowed to participate remotely at a recent McHenry County Board meeting, as the result of a McHenry County Board vote while he was actually participating remotely – he got booted out of the call.

    Note those Board minutes are in Adobe image non searchable format, lousy transparency again by MCCD.

    Also at the January 27, 2014 Special Call Meeting they decided not to purchase a piece of property and talked about the budget.

    May 19, 2014 there was a Special Call Meeting from 5:05PM – 5:10pM at the Prairieview Education Center, 2112 Behand Rd, Crystal Lake.

    Again, the board Adobe pdf minutes on the MCCD website are in non searchable image format, lousy transparency (they actually have to put forth extra effort to make the minutes non searchable).

    At that meeting MCCD awarded a contract to Homefield of Collinsville, IL for electric service at 15 district locations for a cost not to exceed $0.6445 per kilowatt hour.

    No mentioned of the annual cost of electricity at MCCD.

    Next Special Call Meeting was September 8, 2014 from 5:08PM – 8:32PM at Lost Valley Visitor Center, Rt 31 & Harts Rd, Ringwood.

    The Strategic Planning and FY 2016 Budget Workshop took place.

    Again the board minutes are in non searchable image Adobe pdf format.

    MCCD does not want to make it easy for the public to do keywords searches in their board minutes.

    November 5, 2014 from 8:33AM – 9:03AM there was a Special Call Meeting at the Brookdale Administrative Offices, 18410 US Highway 14, Woodstock.

    Brandon Thomas, a member of the Board of Trustees, who also holds the position of Board Secretary, participated remotely via Speakerphone.

    Here’s what the board minutes say about that.

    A motion was made by Trustee Barrett, seconded by Treasurer Heinsohn, to allow Secretary Thomas to participate remotely in the Special Call Meeting of the Board of Trustees through electronic participation in accordance with the Open Meetings Act and per Administrative Policy #200.03.02. A voice vote resulted in all ayes.

    Seems to me McHenry County Board member John Hammerand should be calling the Better Government Association and / or Citizens Advocacy Center in Elmhurst for assistance in what is possible legally for Boards to allow Board members to attend board meetings remotely.

    In addition to the Attorney General.

    Maybe those organizations have encountered similar situations of boards not allowing board members to participate remotely.

    Because some boards do allow board members to participate remotely.

    So if McHenry County Board wants to shut him out fine, as long as everyone knows they don’t have to, and if they have a policy prohibiting it they could change the policy.

    Seems the McHenry County Board is confused or doing so for political reasons.

    Anyways at the meeting Robert Lewis of PMA presented his analysis of the outstanding bonds of the district.

    Whomever the watchdog is should FOIA that presentation.

    This is the meeting where the refunding of bonds was approved and the bond premium was approved.

    At that meeting the MCCD Board chose their Financial Adviser (RObert Lewis of PMA), Bond and Disclosure Counsel (Lynda Given of Chapman & Cutler), underwiter (James Rachlin of BMO Capital Markets).

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