McHenry County Blog

Finally got a copy of a mailing supporting Nunda Township Supervisor candidate Bridgett Provenzano.

This is a hit piece on opponent Lee Jennings’ tax votes. And nobody claims authorship.

Chairman of the Nunda Township Electoral Board Tom Palmer advises me that the challenge to Supervisor John Heisler’s petition for re-election has been postponed until 1 PM, Wednesday, December 19th, at the Nunda Township Hall.

“At the electoral board hearing, we approved a standard set of rules, entered documents as official exhibits, and continued the hearing…,” Palmer emailed me.

If Heisler is removed from the Republican primary ballot, three candidates will remain:

• Bridgett Provenzano (current Township Clerk and wife of County Board member Nick Provenzano)
• Kelvin Lee Jennings (current Trustee)
• Kerry Leigh (Oakwood Hills Trustee)

It is unknown whether Heisler would run as a Independent if he were denied the opportunity to run as a Republican. He won his first race in a write-in campaign.

I have given up trying to understand Nunda Township Republican politics.

Township Supervisor John Heisler, a former McHenry County Board member, is being challenged by three people.

Heisler, whose family’s name has been associated with Crystal Lake since his grandfather started a shoe repair shop across from the railroad station in 1908, won his first election in 2001 with a write-in campaign running against Mike Walkup.

So, beating him will be a real challenge.

Usually, the more opponents, the better for the incumbent in a primary election.

Even so, three have lined for the opportunity:

• Bridgett Provenzano (current Township Clerk and wife of County Board member Nick Provenzano)
• Kelvin Lee Jennings (current Trustee)
• Kerry Leigh (Oakwood Hills Trustee)

Running for Highway Commissioner are

• Incumbent Don Kopsell
• Robert Parrish (Crystal Lake, Supervisor, Geske & Sons Asphalt Paving)
• Mike Lesperance (Lakemoor, owner of Iron Mike’s Excavating)

For Assessor, no one is challenging incumbent Dennis Jagla.

Two are running for the Clerk’s position, which Provenzano is vacating to run for Supervisor:

• Angela Koscavage (Community Care Assistant to the Director of Community Care and Equipping with Crystal Lake Willow Creek Community Church)
• Susan Jennings

For Trustee there are only four candidates for the four positions:

• Tom Palmer (Crystal Lake, incumbent)
• Ed Dvorak (Crystal Lake, former Road Commissioner and County Board member)
• Eddie Gil (Holiday Hills, husband of County Board member-elect Mary McClellan, retired trucking company owner, property investor)
• Mike Shorten (Crystal Lake,Vice Chairman of the Nunda Township Republican Party)

Bowing out as Trustees are Joni Smith and Jim Schlader.

In the absence of Nunda Township Road Commissioner Donald Kopsell, Nunda Township Supervisor John Heisler and the Township Board expressed its displeasure with the expenditure of $6,500, plus labor, to install a tall flag pole and what appear to be planters.

Take a look at what I saw when I went back in daylight:

All of the above is behind a chain link fence with barbed wire on top.

Heisler explained that were bills from Eagle Flag and Foxcroft Meadows for construction materials, bricks, limestone and a flag pole with “gold ornament” charged to the General Maintenance line item.

Road District employee Josh Singer was in the audience, but not representing his employer.

Nevertheless, he told the Board that he had worked on the project “a couple of days.”

Two or three of Kopsell’s employees did the work.

A motion to approve the expenditures garnered failed 3-1. Only Trustee Lee Jennings voted in favor.

“The fact remains though,” Heisler observed after the vote, “that Eagle Flag and Foxcroft have provided these goods and services in good faith.

When asked, Township Attorney James Militello, Sr., pointed out the denial “puts you are risk.”

“I don’t think we can not pay the bill,” Jennings commented.

“This Board doesn’t have the ability to tell the Road Commissioner [how he] should or should not be spending his money,” Militello said.

“If [there are] questions, you have to go by what the Road Commissioner is requesting.”

Then, Heisler brought the possibility of a motion to reconsider.

In the re-vote, approval of the bills passed 4-0.

“I think the process we just went through is a message-sending process.

There was also discussion about paying legal bills.  One from Road Commissioner attorney Jim Kelly was paid and one wasn’t.  The one that wasn’t had no itemization.

Militello pointed out that when there is litigation, it is not unusual for legal bills to exclude detail, but that there should be some idea what type of services were provided.

Kopsell has filed suit against the Town Fund part of township government headed by Heisler.

A $13,500 bill for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 from Kopsell was discussed at length, with Heisler stating there was never a written or verbal contract.

This year, after Kopsell said that he wanted to be paid for mowing the township’s lawn outside his complex, Heisler asked for bids.  The cheapest was $250 a cut.

Heisler said he hired his son at $100 a cut.

Trustee Tom Palmer did not attend the meeting.

It’s not just Algonquin Township Democrats who are feeling their oats after having seen a Democratic Party candidate carry McHenry County for the first time since the formation of the Republican Party.

Two candidates are running for Nunda Township trustee.

With only two on the ballot, the Nunda Dems cannot take control of the township board as the Algonquin ones can.

They two are endorsing the township open space referendum today. Besides the press release below, they are promoting it on their web site.

CRYSTAL LAKE—Patrick Murfin and Meredith Reid Sarkees, candidates for Nunda Township Trustee, announced their endorsement of the Nunda Open Space Referendum on Tuesday.

Democrats Murfin and Sarkees are running together as the “Change for Nunda” ticket and are opposed by four Republican “Team Nunda” candidates.

Both Sarkees and Murfin supported the last Open Space Referenda in which the authorization to establish the program was passed, but the funding mechanism was narrowly defeated. Both, however, wanted to take a careful look at the new proposal.

“One of our main campaign issues,” Murfin said, “has been ‘how can we best preserve our threatened ground water resources and preserve open space as citizens buffeted by the economy while tax revenues stagnate or fall?’”

He said a close examination of the referendum question in its present form convinced the candidates that it was the best option for preserving ground water and maintaining open and undeveloped land in a responsible and affordable manner.

Responding to critics of the referendum Murfin noted that intense development with its roads and rooftops really is a demonsratable threat to scarce ground water recourses. Land purchases under the program will insure that more rain water and snow melt will recharge the aquifer.

The program, which will save smaller and isolated parcels, does not in anyway duplicate or compete with the McHenry County Conservation District’s land acquisition program, which the MCCD itself has acknowledged.

The total bonding authority being requested has been reduced to 15 million dollars from the measure as it last appeared on the ballot. Yet currently falling land prices means that the same amount—or even more—land will be able to be acquired for preservation.

The twenty year level tax rate to repay the bonds means that costs to individual homeowners are reasonable and predictable—they will not rise. An average 250,000 home, for example, would see only a $44 yearly cost. “And open space is proven to enhance property values in the long run,” Murfin said, “many homeowners could find their costs offset by the rise in the value of their property.”

Murfin and Sarkees join elected officials from both parties in supporting the referendum including Nunda Township Supervisor John Heisler, State Senator Pam Althoff, and County Board District 3 members Kathy Bergan Schmidt and Barb Wheeler.

The measure is also endorsed by virtually every environmental organization in the county including the McHenry County Conservation Foundation, the Land Conservancy, Boone Creek Watershed Alliance, USDA Natural Resources Conservation District, The Sierra Club, McHenry County Audubon Society, Friends of the Fox, Environmental Defenders of McHenry County, and the McHenry County Soil and Water Conservation District Open Lands Project.

Agricultural and land owning interests including the McHenry County Farm Bureau and the Bull Valley Association are also on board.

“We feel we are in good company joining this broad support for the public good,” Murfin said.