McHenry County Conservation District Trustee Vern Scucci tolk tim eto memorialize the events of the twenty days leading up to Monday’s special board meeting.

Since one so rarely is previledged to get a behind the scenes view of local politics, I asked if Scucci if he would be willing to share his observations beyond those attending his Board’s meeting.

You can read them below:

My recollection how events over the past 20 days.

I was in support of the levy increase and thought is would be in the district best interest.

It was apparent that this board and I did not understand what the County Board’s expectations were back in November when we passed an increase in our levy.

As things have played out over the past 20 days, we have been on a roller coaster of what was going to happen at the Finance Committee on May 9^th.

Nine days earlier the Board was assured that the vote to have our budget heard and approved was going to be an 8 to 0 or a 7-to1 vote.

On Sunday April 28^th, I had conversations with both Elizabeth and Dave.

Dave asked if I had contacted any Board members to get support for them hearing our budget.

After calling various board members that day and having conversation with them, they were in support of having our budget heard at finance, but they were not assuring me that they would vote for it.

During this time John Henning and I agreed that a special call meeting of this Board (as we are having today) be called for Wednesday May 1^st to discuss the situation and develop an alternate strategy.

Dave felt that he had a quorum and John and I were the minority and no need to bring the Board together.

Dave also told me of the conversation he had with the Chairman.

The Chairman wanted to have a phone conversation with Dave on the 28^th to discuss this situation.

Dave wanted a face-to-face meeting on May 1st with a group of people from both sides.

No phone call or meeting was held to the best of my knowledge.

As we approached May 9^th, I was getting feedback from county board members that they did not think our budget was going to pass.

I reached out to both Elizabeth and Dave on May 7th & 8th, asking them to consider pulling our budget from the finance committee, allowing us more time to resolve this issue.

Once again I was told that the Board had a majority and was moving forward.

As we now know our budget was rejected by a 4 to 2.

I asked Dave after the finance meeting if we could have a special call meeting the following week and he said he had the 8 county board members who would bring it to a special call meeting and our board would not meet