McHenry County Blog

A press release from the Crystal Lake Police Department:

On March 25, 2012 at approximately 5 p.m., two (2) unidentified juvenile males were observed damaging headstones in the Mount Thabor Cemetery located at 2700 Mount Thabor Road in Crystal Lake, IL.

A McHenry County Sheriff’s Deputy on patrol was notified by a passerby of the incident and responded to the scene.

Upon arriving, the Deputy observed two male juveniles fleeing the area and initiated a foot pursuit but was unable to apprehend the offenders.

In the days following the incident, an investigation ensued and suspect information was developed during a neighborhood canvass conducted in the Bryn Mawr Sub-Division.

On March 30^th, police spoke with two thirteen year old male juveniles who subsequently admitted to being responsible for the damage. The juveniles, one who is a resident of Crystal Lake and the other, a resident of Woodstock were both charged under the Cemetery Protection Act 765ILCS 835/1(b) Class 2 Felony and 765ILCS 835/1(b-5) Class 4 Felony.

In total, seventeen tombstones had been either knocked over or damaged by the two juveniles causing an estimated $3,300 in damage.

Both juveniles will be referred to McHenry County Court Services and petitioned into Juvenile Court.

According to the offenders, their motivation for committing these acts was “boredom”.

A press release from the McHenry County College Pro-life Students:

McHenry County College Pro-life student organization to hold an event November 9, 2011, to raise awareness on campus and in the community about the frequency of abortions in America

Crystal Lake, IL, November 7, 2011: A Cemetery of the Innocents will be on display at MCC, adjacent to the cafeteria, beginning around 7am.

The event will continue throughout the entire day on November 9, 2011.

This event is being sponsored by the Students Supporting the Right to Life, which is a pro-life student organization at McHenry County College. All community members are welcomed and encouraged to take a few minutes to come and see this display.

Cemetery of the innocents is a display representing the total number of abortions that occur in America each day.

Similar events have been held on college campuses around the country, and this is the second time it will be displayed at MCC.

More than 53 million lives have been lost to abortion in America, since 1973.

This event will serve to make the community more aware of the frequency at which abortions are occurring and help bring the attention of every community member towards the pressing need to take action.

I claim no knowledge that the Crystal Lake City Council might be contemplating another Tax Increment Financing District east of the one altering the “streetscape” between the stone cemetery monuments at Pizza Hut and across the street from Kwik Kopy.

But look at how different Route 14 looks east of Pizza Hit, compared to in the Tax Increment Financing District where there are no above ground power lines and the street lights are now short and black.

Will the Crystal Lake City Council be able to stand  the inconsistency?

Or will they conclude, “What the heck?   TIF money is free.  Let’s form another TIF District and make it look pretty, too?”

What Mayor Aaron Shepley and council members want Crystal Lakers to believe is that Tax Increment Financing money doesn’t cost them anything.

Wrong, as a Chicago Reader reporter has virtually made a career writing about.

When municipalities create these little tax monsters. the result is that all other overlapping tax districts will raise their tax rates in order to capture the lost increase in assessed value stolen to benefit projects in the TIF District.

In the case of the Virginia Street TIF District, we’re talking

• McHenry County
• McHenry County Conservation District
• McHenry County Tuberculosis District
• High School District 155
• Grade School District 47
• Algonquin Township
• Algonquin Township Road & Bridge District
• Crystal Lake Park District
• Crystal Lake Library

Have I missed any tax districts that cover the Virginia Street TIP District?

On, I forgot the rest of Crystal Lake.

Those who pay taxes to all of these tax districts will be the ones who pay for the new street lights, the new sidewalks, the fewer parking spaces, the new planters (complete with sprinklers).

City Council folks want people to believe that TIF improvements are free.

Well, most of us learned a long time ago that there is no free lunch. Or as the invitations come to us older folks for a free dinner, there is an investment pitch one must pay. At Wilderness Territory, we offered a $50 credit card, plus $100 off a restaurant meal if we would listen to a pitch for a condo or a time sharing deal, an offer quickly rejected.

The problem with TIFs is that there is no referendum. There isn’t even widespread understanding of how they raise taxes on people who have no idea that this sneaky tax hike affects them.

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A reader named Mark has left some insightful comments about TIF districts under this article entitled, “Waste”:

The Virginia Street Corridor TIF district is basically between Pizza Hut, 282 Virginia Street (Route 14) and Petco, 230 Virginia Street, in Crystal Lake.

It thus extends northwest from about Coventry (Pizza Hut), past Linn, McHenry, VanBuren, Washington, Pomeroy, King, Florence, Dole, Lakeshore Drive, to Carpenter (Petco).

VIRGINIA STREET CORRIDOR TAX INCREMENT FINANCING REDEVELOPMENT PLAN AND PROGRAM City of Crystal Lake, Illinois, February 2005
http://www.crystallake.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=519

A 50 page document stating:

Total Estimated Project Costs: $9,291,000

2003 Equalized Assessed Valuations: $9,845,120

It is estimated that the incremental increase in property taxes over the term of the TIF District in 2003 dollars will be $12,085,875.

Upon the completion of anticipated redevelopment projects it is estimated that the equalized assessed valuation of real property within the Project Area will be in excess of $26,080,000.

This represents an approximate 165% increase in the total equalized assessed valuation.

The following taxing districts cover the proposed Project Area:

Algonquin Township, Algonquin Township Road and Bridge, City of Crystal Lake Fire, Crystal Lake Park District, City of Crystal Lake, College District #528, Crystal Lake Library, McHenry County, McHenry County Conservation District, School District #47, and School District #155.

Mark also provides information on the Main Street TIF district:

CRYSTAL LAKE AVENUE AND MAIN STREET TAX INCREMENT FINANCING REDEVELOPMENT PLAN AND PROGRAM, August 2005
http://www.crystallake.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=518

Total Estimated Project Costs $35,000,000

The total 2004 equalized assessed valuation of the Project Area is $3,284,169.

The following 14 taxing districts cover the proposed redevelopment project area:

Algonquin Township, Algonquin Township Road and Bridge, Nunda Township, Nunda Township Road and Bridge, Nunda Township Cemetery, City of Crystal Lake Fire District, Crystal Lake Library District, Crystal Lake Park District, College District #528, McHenry County, McHenry County Conservation District, School District #47, School District #155, and City of Crystal Lake.

The principal source of funds will be the incremental increase in real property taxes attributable to the increase in the equalized assessed value of each taxable lot, block, tract or parcel of real property in the project area over the initial equalized assessed value of each such lot, block, tract or parcel.

Finally, Mark left this about the Vulcan Lakes TIF project:

VULCAN LAKES TAX INCREMENT FINANCING REDEVELOPMENT PLAN AND PROGRAM, August 2005

http://www.crystallake.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=516

Total Estimated Project Costs $30,000,000

The total 2004 equalized assessed valuation of the Project Area is $4,786,053.

The following 11 taxing districts cover the proposed redevelopment project area:

Algonquin Township, Algonquin Township Road and Bridge, City of Crystal Lake Fire District, Crystal Lake Library District, Crystal Lake Park District, College District #528, McHenry County, McHenry County Conservation District, School District #47, School District #155, City of Crystal Lake.

Yesterday, I pointed out what can happen when a local government has money for which no one can be held accountable.

Tax Increment Financing District money.

TIF money.

Everyone in McHenry County will pay to make Route 14 look better.

That’s because TIF Districts allow city officials to take money that otherwise would go to schools, park districts, county government, etc.

You’ve been reading how beneficiaries of Chicago TIF money miraculously concluded that they should give large donations to Mayor Richard Daley’s wife’s after school charity.

Locally, I have no reason something like that is happening, but there is definitely a tax shift to homeowners and businesses outside the TIF districts.

So, enjoy the new, “improved” streetscape as you drive through town.

Yesterday, I pointed out that perfectly serviceable street lights on Route 14 were about to be replaced with ones that I guess someone (maybe all) on the Crystal Lake City Council thought looked prettier.

They match the expensive ones that the City Council is forcing private property owners to put on properties they improve within sight of Route 14.  But, not to worry.   The City Council subsidized the purchase of those lights on private parking lots.

Today we look at another wasteful expenditure by the City Council.

It’s a monument near Pizza Hut.

It’s not exactly a pyramid.

More like a cemetery monument.

You see it above.

And it’s for Crystal Lake.

Maybe there’s more than one.

I, as everyone else who can do so, avoid Route 14 as much as possible.

Two counties, Talbot and Kent County, are almost next to each other, separated by Queen Anne’s County, the one into which the Chesapeake Bay Bridge has its eastern terminus.

They took different paths in implementing the Supreme Court’s desegregation order.

While Talbot did one grade at a time, starting with the first grade, Kent County did not.

Sometime in the early 1960′s when when I was visiting my grandparents, James Clayland and Helen Roe Stevens, in Church Hill, we had just finished playing bridge with my maiden Aunt Louise, a commercial teacher at the all-white Chestertown High School.

She told of how that day they had had an all county high school teacher meeting at which the superintendent had talked about how a new high school was to be built to which all students, white and black (she probably said, “Negro” or “colored”) would go.

She seemed OK with that, although did mention that she didn’t know whether the teachers from the other school would be as qualified as those at her school.

My grandfather’s ancestors had owned a couple of slaves at the multi-generational relatively small 180-acre family farm near Barclay,   (My grandfather played a mean game of checkers around the wood stove in Barclay on winter days.)

The closest high school to the family farm was in Sudlersville, where both my mother and father attended high school,

But, back to the early 1960′s.

My grandfather shook his head and said something to the effect that that would be up to the next generation.   That night he had a stroke from which he did not recover.

Since I’m talking about the slave holding times of the maternal side of my family, I should mention that the slaves were buried in the family burial ground and, at least one stayed on the farm as a hired hand after he was freed.

Ironically, my father’s oncologist at Georgetown University Hospital in the late 1980′s was a black woman named Stevens.  She was from Minnesota, so I think the odds of her having any connection with the Eastern Shore of Maryland was remote.

More tomorrow.