McHenry County Blog

I’ve shown you the campaign literature from the top two finishers in the Nunda Township Road Commissioner’s race. (Don Kopsell, who ran third, did not share them with McHenry County Blog.)

Here is one of the campaign pieces in the Belvidere township Republican primary election.  It’s from Ken McBee and takes on Richard Lee’s residency.

Just thought some might be interested in what others did. I found this on Boone County Watchdog in this article.

Of potential interest to McHenry County readers with a good memory of the last Sheriff’s race is the issue of a candidate’s Homestead Exemption address is raised.

Lee beat McBee 737 to 512 with perhaps a couple of absentee ballots that might arrive after election day outstanding.

Bill Pysson

Former McHenry County resident Bill Pysson won a seat on the Boone County Board Tuesday as a Democrat.

Publisher of the Boone County Watchdog, Pysson won in the district just to the west of the McHenry-Boone County line.

With four to be elected in each district, Pysson placed fourth, edging out a Republican by 152 votes.

Pysson has locked horns with the local school district over various matters, even running for the school board unsuccessfully once.

Former State Rep. Ron Wait, who represented McHenry County in the 1980′s, also won election to the County Board from another district.

Boone County Courthouse

Springfield’s State Journal-Register is running a story about the Circuit Courts in Winnebago Counties allowing cameras in their courtrooms.

Winnebago County Courthouse

Think Belvidere.

Think Rockford.

The order will be issued on Monday.

Associated Press reports that Boone and Winnebago will make 13 counties where local judges allow photo taking and videoing.

The Tax Foundation has some remarkable work comparing property tax burdens across the United States.

Want to know what part of the country to look at for retirement, if cutting your property taxes is one of your goals?

Take a look at this map:

The Tax Foundation map comparing property taxes.

I did my best to extract the information for the top Illinois counties from one of The Tax Foundation’s searchable data bases.

The information below is from here.

Click to enlarge.

= = = = =

Photoshopping by one Heck of a Guy blogster Allan Showalter.

The Chicago Tribune reports that gasoline prices are up because the storms that raked the South temporarily shut down seven refineries.

May 3, 2011, the Chicago Tribune had a short story about metropolitan area gasoline prices being higher than ever before.

$4.35 during last week.

It was $4.30 a gallon during July 7, 2006.

As things would have it, I again drove to Belvidere on Monday.

Citgo was charging $4.45 per gallon in Crystal Lake on May 1, 2011.

The price at the Citgo station where the little McDonald’s is located at the northwest corner of Route 14 and Route 176 bore a price of $4.45 per gallon for regular gas.

In Belvider the price was thirty cents per gallon cheaper than in Crystal Lake on Monday.

In Belvidere, the price was 30 cents a gallon cheaper at the Road Ranger station.

As one reader noted last week, Crystal Lake’s gasoline may now be have the EPA-required summer formula to burn cleaner, while Rockford’s does not.

Also a factor is the one percent

• Crystal Lake now-1% Home Rule sales tax,
• McHenry County’s four cent a gallon Motor Fuel Tax and
• the now-0.75% RTA gas tax.

Boone County taxpayers are not stuck with paying those.

Ten years ago respected Republican State Senator Carl Hawkinson from the Peoria area narrowly lost a bid for the Illinois Supreme Court to a trial lawyer named Thomas Kilbride.

It gave complete control of the highest level of the state’s judicial branch to the Democrats.

The victory was orchestrated by House Speaker Mike Madigan, who was also Chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party.

Now Kilbride has to run against his record.

3rd Judicial District

No opposition candidate will be on the ballot in the 3rd Judicial District.

But, there’s a hitch.

He has to get a 60% favorable vote to be retained in office.

Only rarely does a judge, a pretty low-profile office, get kicked out of office.

Back in the early 1980′s Republicans in Boone County got mad at Judge (David, I think) Babb. Nice enough guy.

Babb had been elected to the circuit court as a Republican, but decided to run for the appellate court as a Democrat.

Needless to say, Boone County Republicans were less than pleased.

In this Republican appellate district, he was not elected.

When he came up for retention, I noticed “Dump Babb” yard signs on the road I took while teaching a course in state and local government at Rockford College.

One could not drive through Boone County without seeing the signs.

He failed to received the required 60% vote for retention and was dumped.

Now Republican political strategist Jon Zahm is running an anti-Kilbride web site. It’s called “Do Not Retain Judge Kilbride.” Or “Vote NO Kilbride” for short.

Ed Murnane’s Civil Justice League‘s JustPAC links to liberal rulings of the West Central Illinois judge.

Most irritating was the one ruling monetary ceilings on medical malpractice awards are completely unacceptable.

The Illinois Supreme Court has given the Illinois trial lawyers everything they want, just as national Dems did when the health care reform bill was barely passed with Melissa Bean’s vote.

Liberals are decrying the role of money may take in Kilbride’s election.

I didn’t hear them complaining ten years ago when Madigan and the trial lawyers put so much in the race to defeat Hawkinson.

Here's Wayne White, the man who is saving the ash tree that shades half of our Lakewood home.

The Rockford Register-Star reported Emerald Ash Borers in Boone County, just to the west of Marengo and Harvard.

The paper points out that the little green bugs leave a D-shaped hole when it bores out of the tree.

Infected trees have to be cut down and Paul Deizman from the Illinois Department of Agriculture is assuming that all ash trees in Boone, not just the ones found infected in Belvidere have their devastating presence.

“Plan for the death of your tree,” he advises.

The Boone County strategy, as I read what County Board member
Marshall Newhouse is saying, is to identify the ash trees on public rights-of-way and prepare to cut them down. There are no plans to try to save any ash trees in Boone County.

Such pessimism.

Elsewhere, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, for instance, every tree is being treated. That’s what Wayne White, seen above next to his yard sign with its toll-free number (877-SAVE ASH).   I expect Cedarburg will advertise itself as one of the few towns in the Midwest where people can see ash trees.  Maybe it will change its name to “Ashville.”

The Ag Dept employee talks of possible treatment, but is ever so pessimistic.

“It’s like chemotherapy,” he said. “There’s a risk that the treatment will fail.”

The ash trees in the top photo were treated by Wayne White; the ones below, which are just across the street, were not.

Well, duh.

Sometimes it succeeds.

Certified Master Arborist Wayne White’s experience is that five years of treatment will save a tree.  That’s how long he had treated the ash trees you see at the Detroit area airport entrance road.  The ash trees that are dead are across the street.  They were not treated.

The Illinois ash borer experts says the treatment is costly. You can find pricing in this article.

And, there’s the possibility that the treatment might succeed, as has the treatment by itinerant Certified Arborist Wayne White on the ash tree towering above our home in McHenry County. Here’s his email address:  Save the Ash.

The northernmost route has been selected by Governor Pat Quinn. It runs through Huntley, Union and Marengo on the way to Belvidere. Probably because of the Chrysler train traffic, the track is welded to Belvidere, making faster trains possible than through the unwelded Genoa route Amtrak recommended when it was talking about putting up some money.

I had this great idea for a follow-up story to my Saturday article about Amtrak’s coming to southern McHenry County.

What if the Illinois Railroad Museum offered its station to serve Amtrak passengers on the line that Governor Pat Quinn just designated to run through Belvidere?

So, I called the Museum’s Executive Director Nick Kallas, who was in California, to ask him,

“What if…?”

“Our station is actually ADA,” he told me, but he wasn’t as enthusiastic about the idea as I was. “But, it’s wooden.”

“Our station is in Union,” he said. “That’s not exactly the population center of McHenry County.”

He talked of the time rail service connected Galena to Chicago:

“When they used to run the Galena train, it was into Chicago in the morning and back to Galena in the evening.”

Kallas pointed out that today, “Once you get to Galena, you don’t have a car. That’s fine for a day trip”

Right across the levy from the Galena Train Station is the Galena Winery.

The “but” was what do you do after you walk around Downtown Galena.

Eagle Ridge Resort guest rooms. Note the magnolia tree is in bloom. Its flowers popped last week while we were staying there.

I didn’t mention the shuttle that Eagle Ridge Resort runs to town. Now it takes people who arrive by car, but it could just as well take train passengers to the resort. Amtrak passengers wouldn’t be limited to a day trip.

Amtrak train moves slowly through Downtown Springfield, Illinois.

Kallas looked at the bigger picture:

“Once Amtrak starts running the route, that might stimulate Metra to come out. It might accelerate Metra service to Huntley and Marengo.

“Huntley has already sited a station,” he observed.

The Illinois Railway Museum was part of the coalition that helped convince Governor Quinn to select the McHenry County route.

“We’re actually a part of that Blackhawk initiative. We actually gathered 35 pages of petition signatures (for the Belvidere route.)

When Amtrak dropped the funding of the track, it became strictly a state initiation.

The Metra track and Union Pacific track to Belvidere is all welded track. The old route (through DeKalb County’s Genoa) is not. (I don’t see that difference in this DeKalb Chronicle article, which has lots of negative comments about Quinn’s decision.)

“The real thing is that there’s more population,” Kallas said.

“And the North side of Union Station is underutilized compared to the South side (from which the DeKalb County route would have run).

“So, it has many advantages,” he continued.

“This route makes more sense from the standpoint of the population served and we’re hoping that it will help to accelerate the efforts to bring Metra to Huntley and Marengo.”

Found this little item on “Boone County Watchdog.”

How would you like to be a Boone County resident and read in a county management letter accompanying the annual audit:

“We noted the Collector held over $1 million in savings as of January 2009, which was after the final distribution related to the 2007 tax levy.

“At that point in time, Collector’s accounts should be minimal as distributions have been made for the prior levy and amounts are not being collected on the upcoming levy.

“We suggest the Collector why these large balances exist and determine who this money belongs to, whether it is the County, other taxing bodies, or the state as unclaimed property.”

That’s from the management letter to the Boone County Board. It was dated July 14, 2009.

It was brought to my attention by former Cary resident Bill Pysson ‘s
Boone County Watchdog

This article stimulated my interest.

I don’t cover too much of what is going on, but the man who was elected to the Illinois House when I decided to run for State Comptroller in 1982, Ron Wait, is being challenged for the second time by the former Winnebago County Democratic Party Chairman Greg Tuite.

It’s a TV market, so costly.

When I was running for state rep. in 1983 before I got recruited by Governor Jim Thompson to run for State Comptroller against Roland Burris, the district stretched all the way from Woodstock to Rockford.

In addition to the cash, it appears that two staffers have been assigned to the race–Garret Hill and GM Anderson, not to mention TV ad production money, polling and advocacy calling.