Today you see the old National Tea Store during demolition.
It was located at the Northeast corner of Route 14 and McHenry Avenue in Crystal Lake.
After National Tea retreated from the Chicago market, it was an Armanetti’s liquor store with some of the same clerks I bagged groceries for during high school.
In its final use it was a furniture store.
What caught my attention when I took this picture was the ceiling that turned into a curtain during the tear down. Click to enlarge the picture.
June 27th McHenry County Blog ran a story about Chicago State’s University got $40 million from state government to build a new campus on Chicago’s West Side.
It was a travesty then and it still is now that the Chicago Tribune has put it on its front page today.
Here’s the title I put on the story:
The Tribune’s title?
Score a big one for the Illinois Black Caucus.
While all Illinois state universities seem more interested in creating and keeping jobs than in educating students, the 16% six-year graduation rate is just too low to justify spending $40 million more, plus employee salaries to fill the classrooms.
The Tribune reports, unsurprisingly, that Chicago State did not request money for the new campus. Its officials and local politicians had discussed the idea and $10 million was appropriated last year, but not released, the Tribune says.
The university has 700 students on the West Side, the article reports. $40 million divided by 700 equals about $57,000 per student, right? I wonder how much it would work out to be per new job created.
If that kind of money is going to going to be spent on higher education, perhaps a more successful state university could be selected to do the outreach.
Your beer, wine and liquor taxes will be going up tomorrow to help pay for this boondoggle, thanks locally to State Senator Pam Althoff, State Rep. Mark Beaubien and State Rep. Mike Tryon.
The Tribune, of course, was more interested in covering the University of Illinois’ influence peddling student placement story, which cost $400,000 so far.
Now, that the appropriation bill has been signed, I guess it’s safe to run the other story.
In he opening remarks McHenry County Democratic Central Committee Chair Kathy Bergan Schmidt stressed the importance of the 2010 election year by pointing out that it would determine who would reapportion the General Assembly. Of course, congressional districts would also be up for grabs.
Speaker State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) also emphasized that importance of the coming elections.
At one point he said,
“Remap drawing is a very important process.”
Lake in the Hills McHenry County Board member Jim Kennedy asked about county board reapportionment.
“That’s going to affect me because they’re (the Republican county board members are) going to be redrawing the district.”
“The Republicans control the county board,” Lang agreed, suggesting,
“Even the most Neanderthal will recognize that the two-party system is important.”
Democrats now have two seats in county board District 5 and one in District 3.
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State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) is the man in the photograph. The map of McHenry County shows the six county board districts.
When I was in the General Assembly, probably in the 1970’s, there was a very, very conservative state representative from Decatur named Webber Borchers. His other claim to fame was being the second Chief Illiniwek.
Besides being very, very conservative, I shall remember one way he spent his legislative allowance.
He hired a woman to check on nursing homes in his district.
She would go in a nursing home, introduce herself as Rep. Borchers’ Legislative Assistant and ask the administrator if she could look around.
Some told her, “I don’t have to let you in.”
The reply was, “You are correct, but, if you don’t I’ll tell me boss.”
I’ll bet she wasn’t refused more than once.
She had a 10 or 12-point check list that made so much sense. I wish I could find a copy, but here are some of the questions:
Common sense questions. Nothing technical. The same kind of things that you would pick up if you were considering putting a parent in a nursing facility.
Picking up on Webber’s idea, I introduced a bill that would have required a toll free complaint number, plus the number and address of the owner of the nursing home be put on the front door.
The type of nursing home with Webber Borchers’ proxy visitors locally has always been the county nursing home, called Valley Hi.
If county board members walked though the facility and smell urine, you better believe they had the power to do something about it.
If things got bad enough, they could probably get the county home administrator fired.
All of this is preface to writing about the ability of patients and their relatives and friends to make complaints that might mean something under the management agreement being proposed with an outside firm.
State Senator Pam Althoff (R-McHenry) is holding a fund raiser Thursday, Sept. 24th, at the McHenry Country Club.
The Champagne Reception will feature hot and cold hors d’œuvre and “a bountiful dessert table,” according to the flyer you see above.
Republican precinct committeemen get a discount of sorts from the regular $50 ticket.
If they bring a friend, they only have to shell out $60.
McHenry County State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi only charged GOP committeemen $15 for an Italian dinner at the Turnberry Country Club.
While I was on the way to Boy Scout Camp Lowden near Oregon, this car was ahead of us.
Looks like a school of fish.
I’ve never seen this Christian symbol arranged that way.
About a year ago, Lake in the Hills’ Larry Kozak and Lakewood’s Ray Christe planned to canoe the full length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca, MN to New Orleans, LA.
Last September they attended a presentation given by John Lynn who paddled the entire length of the Mississippi River from its headwaters at Lake Itasca, MN to the Gulf of Mexico.
John Lynn’s adventure motivated both paddlers who were somewhat apprehensive of the impending physical effort.
They decided that it would be a good idea to combine Larry’s mechanical engineering knowledge with Ray’s electrical experience and come up with the design of a high-tech canoe equipped with assisted power source.
They wanted to reduce the 800,000 paddle strokes it took John Lynn to do the River!
To be “green,” Christe and Kozak choose to develop a solar-power canoe which will later be commercialized for sporting activities, fishing trips or leisure boating.
The solar assisted trimaran canoe is scheduled to be ready for a test run in the waters of Crystal Lake, IL in the spring of 2010.
If the performance results meet their technical expectations and all the logistics are ready, they will start their journey from Chicago on the Illinois River to New Orleans on the Mississippi River in summer 2010. The journey is expected to take two months.
They named their canoe “CalypSol.”
A web site will allow viewers to follow their journey from signals emitted from the on-board GPS and share some video clips of their scenic journey.
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With Crystal Lake in the background Ray Christe and Larry Kozak show off a model of their solar canoe.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of looking at State Rep. Lou Lang’s view of what really happened in the spring session of the Illinois General Assembly, he talked about how not enough votes could be garnered from Democrats, but that there were sufficient Republicans willing to vote for a (50%, not mentioned by Lang) income tax hike had not Republican Leader Tom Cross intimidated them.
This article continues with the questioning of McHenry County Board member Paula Yensen.
“(I was) just trying to follow it in the newspaper and wonder why people could not be working together.
“The not-for-profits have made cuts for the last ten years. They’re five months, seven months in arrears in getting (state payments). Financial institutions are not lending (so they) can make payroll. I don’t think people fully understand.”
“I think they do understand,” Lang replied, “but when politics rules over common sense, you know where it’s at.
“There are elected officials who don’t give a dame. They’re looking at November 2, 2010.
“When a person gets most of his money from business interests…it won’t matter to that legislator.
“They’ll say it matters, but it doesn’t matter.
“Regular people can’t believe this. People say,
‘These people really care about us.
I heard them say it.’
“But they don’t care.
“The not-for-profit community dropped the ball her,” Lang explained, pointing out that they came to Springfield for demonstrations, but that was not enough.
“But, how many of those thousands of people went to see their own legislator in their own offices?
“None, very few.”
Lang then explained, “The last time Illinois raised income taxes not one single legislator in either chamber or party lost his next election.”
Land did allow that people remember Republican Governor Richard Ogilvie losing to Dan Walker in 1972 after Ogilvie signed the bill imposing the income tax.
“If you explain to (constituents) why your doing what you’re doing, they will (support you).
“But when gutless wonders stroll the Capitol, (it won’t happen).”
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At the Wednesday meeting you see above, from left to right, you see Marti Swanson in the foreground, Ed Riley, who ran for Greenwood Township Supervisor, former District 6 McHenry County Board candidate Robert Ludwig, District 5 McHenry County Board member Paula Yensen, Ed Rotchford, Bob Kaempfe, candidate for state representative against Mike Tryon, Nunda Township Trustee candidate Meredith Reid Sarkees, District 5 McHenry County Board member Jim Kennedy and Mike Bisset.
After ignoring her constituency for the entire congressional recess, except for a telephone town hall meeting to which new folks need not apply, naturally 8th District Congresswoman Melissa Bean did not show up for the Libertyville Town Hall meeting set up by citizens.
Neither did her congressional colleagues U.S. Representative Make Kirk and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. Kirk actually did hold a real live town hall meeting on health care, but Durbin and Bean have refused to allow warm bodies to question him at an open forum.
Above you see the organizers–all women–having some fun with the congressional cutouts (pun intended).
At the end of the line. That’s where I was for parents’ night at Blackhawk Area Council Boy Scout Camp Lowden in mid-July.
It was dinner time.
Fortunately, there was plenty of food.Just in case you’re interested.
In Chicago the media and taxpayers are interested in the Cook County sales tax hike that went into effect the same day as Crystal Lake’s.
Neither anyone on Crystal Lake’s city council nor any Crystal Lake citizen seems interested.
At last Wednesday’s meeting of the McHenry County Democratic Central Committee State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) talked about “what really happened in Springfield.”
Let me skip to what he said Republicans did and didn’t do.
“Twelve brave souls said they would (vote for the income tax increase.) We only needed five of those brave souls.
“Their leader Tom Cross said, ‘No.'”
Lang said he was told there were two arguments:
“Once is was June 1st, it made it impossible to pass the income tax,” Lang explained, pointing out that passing a bill took an extraordinary majority of 71 votes and the Democrats only have 70 House members.
“The leader of the Republican Party personally killed the income tax increase,” the House Democratic Party Floor Leader said.
“There was one woman on the Republican side of the aisle that I sat beside in a meeting in the Governor’s office after the vote,” Lang elaborated.
“She’s a person who actually cares about human services.
“She was sitting there crying real tears.
“Do you recall you voted ‘No?'” Lang said he asked.
“This is the kind of hypocrisy that go4s on in Springfield on a daily basis,” he added.
“So, the reason we did not pass the income tax was the Republican Party.”
In the question and answer question, McHenry County Board member Paula Yensen asked Lang to comment on what a not-for-profit lobbyist had told her:
“The reason Republicans wouldn’t cross over was because they wanted a greater say in reapportionment and wanted $2-3 billion more cut.”
“Cross was most interested in getting to June 1st (when an extraordinary majority higher than the number of Democrats in the Illinois House took effect),” Lang said.
“The idea that the Republican Party was protecting the taxpayer is a bunch of bull.
“Mr. Cross was protecting the Republican Party.”
Other articles in the series:
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From left to right, those sitting at the table are Jeff Jenkins, BJ Rendine, Bill Nowaskey, Mark Freund, John Darger and John Farnick. Standing is Carolyn Quinn.
This is article number 6 that McHenry County Blog has published about the people who attended Paul Caprio’s August Family PAC cruise.
In the first, U.S. Senator and Dr. Tom Coburn’s take on the health care debate.
The rest are full of pictures of participants:
Near the end of the cruise 14th congressional district GOP aspirant Jeff Danklefsen approached me. You see him handing me his card. He seeks to replace Democrat Bill Foster, who replaced former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
The boat was docked and emptying out when I saw Dan Sugrue. He is running for the second time in Lake County against Democrat Kathy Ryg. He tells me she voted for Governor Pat Quinn’s 50% income tax hike bill. Since the cruise Ryg has announced that she is taking another job. That certainly to increase his chances of gaining the seat.
GOP gubernatorial nomination seeker Adam Andrzejewski was also downstairs near the end of the cruise. Sugrue’s wife Margo was talking with him.
As I left the boat, GOP gubernatorial aspirant Kirk Dillard was chatting with Family PAC Executive Director Paul Capiro.
Thus endeth the 2009 Family PAC cruise photos. This fundraiser is the one I enjoy the most. You don’t get a view of the Sears, oops, Willis Tower from the South Branch of the Chicago River like this on an expressway.
Join us next year.
Starting at 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon there will be entertainment and games for the kids at the Crystal Lake Park District’s Main Beach.
There will also be music for the adults from 3-11.
Sponsored by the Crystal Lake Park Foundation, the price is $3 apiece or $15 per family.
At twilight, there will be a parade of lighted boats. The theme this year is “Aliens on the Lake.”
I went to the Special Ed town hall meeting with school board members July 14th in Huntley District 158.
There I received this handout which you can see online or just click to enlarge the image above.
It’s on page 3 of the Special Education Revenue and Expenditures – Historical Overview
What struck me was the $14.3 million of special ed expenditures and the $4.7 million of special ed revenue. The document’s purpose was apparently to show how much more the district is spending on special ed than it’s receiving.
But is this true? Of is just the opposite true?
How much would be spent if all of the special ed kids were regular ed kids?
If you said all of the Special Ed kids were regular ed kids then you can take a percentage of total ed fund expenditures to come up with a dollar amount. This would be a proportionate expense.
It looks like $8.64 million.
In Huntley this number is easy to calculate. The proposed Ed fund budget is slightly over $60 million. The total enrollment figure of 9,032 was handed out on August 20th. From this and about 1,300 students with Individualized Education Plans (IEP’s) you can calculate the $8.64 million.
At first superficial glance $14.3 million is more than the proportionate amount of $8.64 million plus the $4.7 million of extra special ed revenue. By slightly less than a million dollars ($960,000).
That is until ………………..
The First Ooopsy:
Upon this being pointed out by a resident, Controller Mark Altmayer, admitted he “forgot” to include $800,000 in the revenue number.
Altmayer put about 800 grand into the expenditures number for the IDEA ARRA money, but forgot to put the same revenue paying for this into the revenue number.
Altmayer is a Certified Public Accountant. I’m not an accountant, but double entry bookkeeping comes to mind.
Even knowing this mistake, the handout for the next evening wasn’t corrected or footnoted.
After the first Ooopsy, it looks like a wash.
The $8.64 million that would be spent on the 1,300 Special Ed students, plus the $4.7 million in state money for Special Ed comes close to the amount Altmayer says is being spent on Special Ed.
That is until I looked at Huntley’s detailed line item budget.
The Big Ooopsy:
For the life of me I couldn’t add up to $14.3 million dollars in the budget for Special Ed items.
How can one get that high using only what is spent on real Special Ed expenditures?
The only way you can come up with such a high number is to include large expenditures that are for regular ed students and label all of them “Special Ed. “
What could be those expenditures be?
Not all of social worker services and salaries and benefits for example are consumed by special ed students.
Every school administrator knows this.
Just a fraction of social worker services go to Special Ed students.
Is their inclusion one way the Special Ed number got so high?
Same goes for psychologists and for preschool expenses. Kids having trouble adjusting don’t have to be Special Ed students. And, not all preschool expenditures are for Special Ed students. Plenty of testing and screening goes on for all students.
There has to be upwards of a million dollars of expenditures budgeted in the $14.3 million that isn’t really going to Special Ed students.
I have FOIA’d the line item detail. We will see what I get in the breakdown provided.
When you take out the exaggerated budgeting that isn’t really Special Ed, it looks as if Special Ed students are subsidizing expenditures for regular education students.
That is, when you add the $8.6 million that would be spent on the 1,300 students, if they didn’t have IEP’s, to the $4.7 million that is specifically earmarked for Special Ed, the total being spent on Special Ed seems less than $13.3 million.
And, if this is the case and if it has been for a number of years, how can the administration and school board argue that half of the Federal stimulus money the district is getting for Special Ed should be diverted to non-Special Ed uses–even if that is legal?
There may be a lot behind why a well-respected Special Ed Director and two Assistant Directors left Huntley all at the same time.
Neither of the two daily newspapers did exit interviews when they jumped ship earlier this year.
If services weren’t being provided, as mandated by law because other administrators wanted Special Ed to subsidize regular education, that might explain why they left. Maybe they really cared for the Special Ed kids and didn’t want to work in a district where they were being short-changed.
Special Ed expenditures were brought up at the Financial Advisory Committee by Mrs. Lucinda Nelson on August 25th. Nelson is a former school administrator with expertise in Special Ed.
Unfortunately the advisory committee decided not to review the Special Ed budget in any detail this year in spite of the discrepancies and concerns that Mrs. Nelson expressed.
The majority of the committee had no interest in looking at the detail.
A comment was made by one committee member that even if they did ask questions it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Wouldn’t have an impact” is what one committee member said.
Were these members saying the administration and board members wouldn’t listen, so why bother?
What chance do the Special Ed parents have when a district’s own Financial Advisory Committee complains publicly that “they” (administrators and board members) wouldn’t listen, even if the committee said something?
What if it turns out the $14.3 million Special Ed expenditures number was indeed exaggerated, as it looks like it was.
There is no legal requirement I’m aware for school officials to report such numbers truthfully.
Official oversight provided by having a C.P.A. and two M.B.A.’s on Huntley’s school board of education can’t protect against inaccurate numbers being reported to them.
Data processing folks used to talk about GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.
When government employees are not fairly dealing with Special Education parents at the local level in person at local meetings what do you think will happen within a vast government-run bureaucracy for health care? How will those less fortunate, but needing more than average cost care be treated by the bureaucracy?
Waiting for the state legislature to levy monetary or criminal penalties for school officials who don’t report numbers accurately is about like expecting there will be no fraud in the Federal health care program now being debated.
Not likely.
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The close-up is of Huntley School District 158’s new Comptroller, Mark Altmayer. The second photo shows School Board President Shawn Green addressing the Special Education parents at the first meeting in mid-July. Two others show various parts of the audience. Between are most of the board members and administrators at the July 14, 2008, meeting.
McHenry County has three legislators who deserve to be remembered this weekend as you go to the liquor or grocery store to stock up on wine, liquor and beer.
They are State Senator Pam Althoff and State Representative Mark Beaubien and Mike Tryon.
All three voted to hike liquor taxes:
As you go shopping this weekend, keep them in mind.
The proceeds, they will remind you will go to good things. Roads, schools, you name it.
State Senator Dan Duffy and State Rep. Jack Franks voted against the tax hikes.
The American flag in front of the Administrative Building of Huntley School District 158 is flying at half mast in honor of United States Senator Ted Kennedy.
This is the sixth article McHenry County Blog has published about Paul Caprio’s August Family PAC cruise.
In the first, U.S. Senator and Dr. Tom Coburn’s take on the health care debate. Coburn was on the Senate committee considering the proposal.
The rest are full of pictures of participants:
I passed David, Abbly and Grafton Township (Huntley, Lake in the Hills, Lakewood) Township Supervisor Linda Moore. Moore ran on a platform that the Republican township board had made a big mistake putting the taxpayers in debt by over $5 million to build a new township hall without a referendum. She won the GOP township primary election by 30 votes. Since then, with a taxpayer suit pushing them the GOP-controlled township board has agreed with Moore to cancel the loan.
Downstairs I found Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica talking with Chris Robling. Peraica told me earlier that all he was running for this year was his county board seat.
Next, I bumped into Bob Kjellander, who was talking to State Rep. Bob Biggins (on the left). Will Jamison, who helped out at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota and has recently moved to Chicago, is seen in the middle. Obviously, something really tickled the former GOP National Committeeman’s funny bone.
I don’t follow Cook County politics, so I was surprised to find a second candidate for the suburban seat on the Cook County Board of (Tax) Review. He is Dan Patlak. You see him here chatting with Vernon Township Republican Party Chairman Don Castella. Patlak is Palatine Township Assessor.
I ran into a second candidate who wants to replace Bob Biggins in the General Assembly. His name is Chris Nybo. He is currently an alderman in Elmhurst. Here is his web site. I don’t know to whom he is talking, but if someone will tell me in a comment, I’ll add it.
Tomorrow, Part 6.
The Chicago Sun-Times ran write-up of Chicago’s Inspector General David Hoffman’s candidacy for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate to replace Roland Burris.
At the bottom, was another article, next to which was a list of “THE FIELD.”
Take a look.
At the bottom are the Republicans.
At the bottom is the name of “blogger Andy Martin.”
Above his name were
Martin, who used to be known as Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, ran in the GOP primary for governor in 2006 using the simpler version of his name. He got 6,095 votes.
When he ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008, however, he received 240,548 votes. Steve Sauerberg won the race. Sauerberg didn’t spend a lot of money, so I figure Martin has a pretty good ballot name.
The Chicago Tribune trashed Martin on its front page. It wasn’t a real professional article. In any event, the article and lack of respect from and coverage by mainstream media show in the disdain that they have for his running for public office.
My guess is that Martin could afford to spend some money on a campaign, but evidence of his spending much has not been seen.
He is quite good at doing things Pat Quinn got lots of publicity for when he was seeking office.
For example, last week when the Illinois State Republican Central Committee refused to allow him to campaign in the Ag Director’s lawn, where the big doings were at the State Fair’s Republican Day, he went to Sangamon Court and forced his way in.
Martin has a law degree from the University of Illinois, but was denied a license to practice by the Illinois Supreme Court shorting after the Roy Sophisberg–Ray Klingbeil Civic Center Bank scandal. He has said he worked with Chicago Daily News reporter Charles Nicodemus on the story and not being granted a law license was pay back.
But Andy Martin is the name that you will see rarely mentioned in coverage of the U.S. Senate.
He has run for office many times in Illinois, Connecticut, Florida.
Recently “discharge hearings” have been in the news. Lawrence Hucksteadt is one. Here’s another reference,this time to Willie Terry.
Some who have committed heinous crimes are judged by Illinois mental health system (officially now called Illinois Department of Human Resources) to be incapable of standing trial, but OK to be released from custody…if they continue to take their meds.
I asked Nicole Owens, head of the Criminal Division of the McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office to explain what a discharge hearing is. Her reply follows:
“By statute, a discharge hearing may be held when a criminal defendant is found to be unfit to stand trial and is unlikely to be restored to fitness within a one year time period.
“At the discharge hearing, the State must prove each element of the criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt; however, the rules of evidence are relaxed. For example, hearsay or affidavit evidence on some matters is admissible.
“The defendant does not have a right to a jury trial – the hearing is conducted in the form of a bench trial.
“If the defendant is found not guilty, he is released and then the only option the State is left with is the civil commitment avenue.
“If the defendant is found guilty, he is remanded to the Department of Human Services for treatment and will be returned to court for periodic reviews.
“If he is restored to fitness during the course of treatment, the State may proceed with trial. The maximum period of treatment is 5 years.
“After 5 years, if the defendant is still unfit, the State may pursue civil commitment. At that point, however, the commitment decision is up to the court rather than the Department of Human Services.
“If the court finds that the defendant is a threat to the public, the defendant will be involuntarily civilly committed for an indefinite time period.”
