When one of my friends lived in Covered Bridge Trails, he took me to see what he called the dump between his part of the subdivision and Walkup Road, a.k.a, the McHenry Blacktop.

It was a mess.

The McHenry County State’s Attorney got a court order demanding clean-up and somehow the county gained the power to hire someone to clean it up.

Bids were let and Monday they were opened.

All promised to clean up the mess by August 20th, three weeks from now, except Langos Corporation, which wanted 45 days. The most expensive, Omega Demolition of Elgin, said it would finish in 9 days.

Low bidder at just $1 was Anchor Solutions, part of the Avant-Garde group of companies created to help Veterans re-enter the workforce.

Next lowest was $1,000 from Paul Iverson. He is probably the owner of the property about which this Northwest Herald article and editorial were written.

McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Dave Stone told me that is the case.

“He’s disqualified,” Stone said.

“He was court ordered to do the clean-up in 30 days and he didn’t do it.”

I asked if Stone had “any idea when will it be let?”

“I hope tomorrow,” he replied.

The next highest bidder was NASA Education at $4,999. It is related to Anchor, with John Blanchard being its driving force. It sponsors the Homeless Veteran Stand-Downs at Camp Algonquin that I wrote about on October 4th of last year and March 7th.

The National Association of Systems Administrators, Blanchard’s main company bid $8,999. Another Avant-Garde firm Liberating Solutions said it would do the work for $14,900.

Omega Demolition of Elgin bid $22,000, while Langos Corporation of Barrington Hills came in at $48,000. Highest bidder was Excavating Concepts of Woodstock at $98,525.

The Avant-Garde companies were created to help homeless, disabled, disadvantaged and displaced veterans re-enter the workforce as productive citizens.

Liberating Solutions just won a $270,000 contract Thursday from the Bureau of Public Debt for loading and delivering 150 desktop computers.

Vet-Teks, another of the Avant-Garde companies received news that it had won a $3,800 contract with Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy to remove trees from five acres of property in Joliet, which Ft. McCoy uses for an artillery range.

John Blanchard is president of the National Association of System Administrators, a company that maintains computer hardware to numerous government and private institutions, such as, Northern Illinois, Western Illinois, Eastern Illinois and Illinois State Universities, as well as mortgage company Sallie Mae and the Department of the Navy’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, among other places.

He also runs NASA Corp., which designs case management software for Veterans organizations and Veterans Assistance Commission. The program is installed in McHenry County. The firm also has designed and sells software to keep track of court cases. The Ho-Chunk Nation and 21 counties in Indiana utilize the program.

All of Blanchard’s firms are housed at 3305 South Route 31.

When contacted, Catherine Link, McHenry County’s purchasing person, told McHenry County Blog,“

I can’t reveal any information when a bid is pending.”

Having worked for the Illinois Department of Central Management Services, the state’s purchasing agency, I find the secrecy strange. Once bids are opened, people have a right to know who bid what…at least they used to in state government.