The first was its Chairman Bryan Javor, who is stepping down this year.

What is your background?

Bryan Javor

I spent the vast majority of my youth in the suburbs near the Fox River.

The summers were filled with friends from a small but close group fishing, biking, learning about nature, playing neighborhood games, playing music and swimming.

The winter time was a period of social and academic development, as I attended a parochial school until 9th grade.  I grew up in a large yet close-knit, Italian catholic family.

My family was the sports crazy family in the neighborhood.  I have an uncle who played semi-professional baseball and another who played semi-professional hockey.

Ironically, sports didn’t interest me to much extent.  Sports merely helped pass the time with friends and family until I could escape to go fishing again.

I was a ‘geek’ until about 13, so I’m proud to say, there’s nothing wrong with being a geek!

I regularly got caught using my dad’s briefcase as a backpack in school.  For some reason I thought it was really really awesome to bring a briefcase to school.

Eventually this streak of coolness subsided and I became very interested in technology.  I spent the better part of my teen years learning how to write business plans, manage, negotiate, and write basic computer programs and web pages.

Bryan Javor at a Young Reublican meeting at 1776.

I worked for a few technology companies and eventually went on to a state university to further my knowledge.

It was during college I met my loving fiancée Angela.  Angela and I have 2 wonderful dogs (Diesel and Bailey) and hope to someday have a beautiful family together in McHenry County.

Why you are involved in MCYR?

In 2005 I was heavily involved in national telecommunications politics and desired to become more locally involved.

It began with one call to the McHenry County Central Committee.

The McHenry County Republican Party was incredibly welcoming and supportive of my desire to become involved and eventually even helped start a YR organization.  The group could not have succeeded without the likes of the original founding members and central committee’s guidance.

I became involved in McHenry County politics as a result of, and in opposition to, Illinois’ looming budget crisis.  Ill advised fiscal policy and atrocious borrowing established my drive for local involvement; however it is our local McHenry County policies and growth which continue to drive me.  I believe we have a wonderful community, with accomplished leaders.

If we, the youth of McHenry County, can learn the tenets of sound ethics and financial management in a bedrock of Republican values, such as McHenry County, we can grow and contribute to the well-being of our entire state.

We will lead with the virtues we learned here, back in McHenry County.

What do you do professionally?

Presently, I own and operate a start-up company called ReachFly, which is a strategic communications corporation and Chair the McHenry County Young Republican group.

What are your hobbies?

Reading, debating, singing, camping, hiking, fishing, canoeing, hunting, swimming, martial arts, shooting, motorcycling, etc

What is your favorite book and movie?

It’s a hard tie between “Gladiator” and “The Patriot” for favorite movie and a hard tie between Sun Tzu “The Art of War” and “First, Break All The Rules”.

Any closing remarks?

I’m honored to serve the McHenry County Young Republicans and the voters of our community.  I hope to serve in many roles for the good of our community for many years to come.  Thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about me.   I look forward to meeting you personally.

Salary hikes and lack thereof were the subject of a major Sunday Chicago-Sum-Times article.

That the question the Chicago Sun-Times asked last Sunday.

The answer?

Huntley School District strikers at the Harmony Road Campus

Teachers and health care workers.

Certainly teachers at Huntley School District 158. 18% on the average the first year of which we are in.

And staff at Huntley School District 158.

True, Superintendent John Burkey followed the example of some other Fox River Valley chief administrators in foregoing a salary hike this year, but he has received a $70,000 increase since he left his old job near Peoria, including $12,000 more this year than last year.

And Comptroller Mark Altmayer just got a $25,000 raise over the $105,000.

Since most health care employees don’t work for public entities, their salaries are not public information.

Eric Zorn's research of Chicago Tribune archives found that ending Saturday deliver was brought up previously in 1962, 1975, 1977, 1981, 1987, 1992, 2001 and 2009.

You might expect that McHenry County Blog would look at things from a political viewpoint.

Politicians love to have third class mail delivered on the Monday before the election. Anna May Miller must have thought she won the lottery when that happened to her county board mailing in Algonquin.

Why?

It results in their getting the message to constituents as close as to the election as possible…unless one has people standing in front of polling places.

If a campaign could take its last mailing to the post office on the Saturday before the election, Monday delivery could be expected. That’s because for the last two or so weeks of a campaign, political mail, properly red tagged, is treated like first class mail.

Call it a citizenship subsidy.

Or you could think of a more pejorative description, I guess.

The problem is that virtually all bulk mail specialist work from Monday through Friday. It’s one of the perks of the job.

Now, the post office is talking about no deliveries on Saturday.

That means campaign mail posted on Friday will be delivered on Monday in most instances, instead of Saturday.

This past year the only way to make sure your message got delivered on Monday was to put an insert in the Northwest Herald. (Any of you remember when Mark Sweetwood went ballistic when a political insert was delivered in the Cary area under his reign? He vowed it would never be done again. Current management seems to have reversed that revenue-deriving practice.)

If the post office ends Saturday delivery, there will be competition for the NW Herald. I suspect it will be more expensive than the price to insert, but mail certainly would reach more of the target audience.
= = = = =

In Eric Zorn’s column above, he notes that twice a day delivery ended in 1950.  I’m old enough to remember the postman coming twice a day to our home at 212 South Aurora Street in Easton, Maryland.  I’m not old enough to remember when the seven-day delivery schedule ended in 1912.

Marcus Sessom's page on the Illinois Department of Corrections web site.

September 25, 2009, McHenry County Blog ran the press release from McHenry County State’s Attorney about Marcus Sessom.

Although the sentence could have been from 2-10 years, according to the release, Sessom is already back on the street.

Thanks to an alert reader for alerting me by putting a comment under the article.

I asked State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi for details and he wrote me,

“Marcus Sesson has been released.  As to the charge of Intimidation, for which he was convicted, our office refused to negotiate with the defense, went to trial and Judge (Sharon) Prather sentenced him to 2 ½ years to the Department of Corrections.

“Based upon the statutory good time, etc. (which I believe was passed to ease jail crowding) he only had to serve 9 months.

“He was given credit for time served since he was arrested on May 14, 2009 to November 9, 2009.”

It took months to find out.

It seemed to me reasonable to ask whether Huntley School Superintendent John Burkey was “working” on the taxpayers’ dime for his junket (for which the district paid only registration) or on an officially recognized vacation, that is, using up some of his 20 days of vacation.

I wrote this story in early September.

John Burkey

When I first asked, this was the result:

“Information on how specific days by District employees are accounted for is exempt from disclosure per 5ILCS 140, Section 7(b), “information that, if disclosed would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy…(emphasis added)”

So, I asked again:

That reply, I admit was infuriating:

In response to the number of vacation days taken each month in FY09 and FY10:

“Information on how specific days by District employees are accounted for is exempt from disclosure per 5ILCS 140, Section 7(b, “information, that, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy…(emphasis added)”

Let me offer a reason why vacation days might be relevant. What if you were a House Republican staff member and had been told to go help a state representative under challenge by “outsider?”

If someone called up the campaign office of the incumbent on the Friday before the election and the House GOP staffer answered the phone, should you—or I, in this quite real example—as a taxpayer have the right to know whether said staffer was being paid by taxpayers or the campaign?

(I never found out, despite the so-called Ethics bill that former Governor Rod Blagojevich bragged about signing, which, supposedly significantly, required legislative staffers to fill out time sheets for every 15-minute part of the day. I sued, along with Christina Tobin, and a loophole in the law—surprise, surprise—prevented us from getting copies of the time sheets.  That’s what a Cook C0unty circuit court judge ruled.)

In a new January Freedom of Information Act request filed after the new amendments went into effect, I asked again and, guess what, Huntley School District finally coughed up the information about Burkey’s China vacation.

Burkey did use vacation days.

June vacation time sheet (click to enlarge)

June-July vacation time sheet (click to enlarge)

Does that make you wonder why Burkey didn’t want to answer the question the first time I asked it?

And, now that we know the Supt. was on vacation, the next question is why the school district paid $900 for his registration fee?

“A total of $900.00 for the registration fee was paid using District 158 funds for Dr. Burkey’s trip to China. A copy of the registration invoice and board approval is enclosed.”

Real trouble, according to the Chicago Tribune this morning.

AMCORE's white elephant on the corner of Routes 31 and 62.

The most visible indication of the problem is at the northeast corner of Routes 31 and 62.

The unfinished condo building seen from the east side of the Fox River.

I’m told it is supposed to be finished in brick, but from across the river, white looks fine. Its image reflects from the Fox River when it isn’t frozen.

AMCORE is a Rockford-based bank that has bought up a number of community banks in McHenry County, including the First National Bank of Woodstock, where I started banking thirty-some years ago.

It was heavily invested in real estate and, when the bubble burst, it financial stability started leaking as well.

Several people I know have been laid off as a result of its downturn in fortunes.

Announcement about excluding the non-voting public from the Grafton Township Annual Meeting, as of 12:45 PM on Friday, March 12th. Click to enlarge.

“Only registered voters may attend (and press), you will need to show some form of ID and your name will be matched to our County voters registration roles.”  (Emphasis added.)

Ancel Glick attorney Robert Bush

Guess whoever made the decision to put that up on the web site didn’t have an adequate understanding of the requirements of the Open Meetings Act.

Last night at the regular Grafton Township Board meeting, Ancel Glick partner Rob Bush disabused the trustees of any notion that they might be able to keep the non-registered public out:

“It is a public meeting so anyone who wants to come can come.”

Guess it’s time to change the web site.

Maybe it will be changed by the time you read this.

My research was incomplete.

Since then, I have found that Chicago’s Public Broadcasting Station is similarly math impaired.

Take a look for yourself at the headline below:

Click to enlarge.

I’ll pay a 1% increase; they can pay the 33%.
Call it a penalty for not learning junior high school math.

Cheryl Kalkirtz

The headline is from the third sentence of a January 7th letter of recommendation written by Terry Awrey.

He was Cheryl Kalkirtz’ boss while she was employed at Huntley District 158.

The entire letter is below.

On January 11th, Kalkirtz submitted a letter of resignation offering to end her employment on June 30th at the end of her employment contract.

On February 1st, Kalkirtz departed Huntley under circumstances one could describe as

• “unusual,”
• “mysterious” or
• “unexplained by the district,”

your choice of words or phrases.

Could it be a majority on the board of education and likely Supt. John Burkey didn’t think having “a proven professional” who “has earned the respect of the Administrative Team” was reason enough to keep Kalkirtz employed through the first year of her contract?

Or was something else at work?

What other on-the-job-performance-related qualities did Kalkirtz boss praise her for?

If you read the letter below (click to enlarge), you will see Associate Superintendent Awrey writing:

“I find her to be highly intelligent, motivated and committed
to the educational success of each and every child.”

This hardly seems like a list of reasons for Kalkirtz to be no longer employed.

Did Awrey have any reservations about Kalkirtz?

It certainly doesn’t seem so from what he wrote:

“I recommend Mrs. Kalkirtz without reservation.”

Of course, getting praised by the number two guy in an organization does have its limitations.  The basic  one is that one is not in charge.

So who decided that Kalkirtz needed to no longer be employed as a proven, well respected Huntley professional who is highly intelligent, motivated and committed to the educational success of each and every child?

Huntley principals and other administrators may take note how you, too, could be highly praised one day and be thought of apparently very differently soon thereafter.

The phrase “we would never do something like this” takes on a different meaning when you look at in the context of Cheryl Kalkirtz employment.

So far, no good-reason explanation has been advanced for why board members and Supt. Burkey didn’t allow Kalkirtz to finish her contract, which ended until June 30th.

Huntley has done so in the past for other next step higher up administrators.

What happened can probably be found filed in a locked file cabinet in the office of Lauren Smith, Director of Human Resources under “Employee Morale – Bad.”

How can you have so many fair-minded, public-spirited, caring, well-meaning individuals as top administrators and board members and have this happen?

Maybe someone can answer that question.

Join Huntley School District 158–where you can be exceptional administrator or employee one week and no-longer-employed a few weeks later.

Remember.

It’s all for the children.

Joe Walsh

The following press release has been received from Republican congressional candidate Joe Walsh:

Bean Set to Vote Interests of Trial Lawyers Over Interest of Constituents

(LAKE ZURICH, IL)– With the Obamacare legislation nearing a vote, Rep. Melissa Bean (D-8) remains intent on representing the special interests that control her political party as opposed to voting the interests of 8th district families.

Bean, who received more than $31,000 in campaign contributions from trial lawyers during her 2008 re-election campaign, is set to vote for a federal government takeover of health care that, among other things, fails to meaningfully address increasing health care costs directly attributable to frivolous lawsuits and excessive jury awards.

“True health care reform requires tort reform,” said Joe Walsh, Bean’s Republican challenger.

“Unfortunately, Melissa Bean is in the pocket of trial lawyers.  She has put the interests of her large campaign donors ahead of supporting simple reforms such as caps on non-economic damages that would make health care coverage more affordable for 8th district families.”

Walsh cited a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services report that concluded excessive damage awards from medical malpractice lawsuits add between $70 and $126 billion to the cost of health care borne by Americans each year.

Experts say national tort reform is estimated to save $92 to $207 billion dollars per year on health care costs.  Yet, the trillion dollar Obamacare legislation provides only $25 million to ‘projects’ and ’studies’ looking at tort reform.

“The time for ’studies’ is over,” said Walsh.  “We need action on tort reform.  This problem of lawsuit abuse is particularly acute in Illinois where medical malpractice insurance premiums in Cook County, for example, are more than twice as expensive as rates in Indiana,” said Walsh.

“The failure of the Obamacare legislation to address tort reform and Melissa Bean’s failure to embrace common sense reforms that address the problem of lawsuit abuse highlight once again why we cannot afford Obamacare and we cannot afford to have Melissa Bean in Congress.”