The Northwest Herald scooped me Saturday on what happened after the McHenry County College meeting Thursday night, but I think the four-part series that starts here (see also Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) adds significantly to Regan Foster’s story.

I do find it interesting that the paper’s web site does not have this story on its front page.

Why?

It was the lead story in the local section of the paper.

First a disclaimer. I was not the one fuming. The article says that was Iris Bryan, editor of the Town Crier.

I was more amused at the juvenile behavior of the person inside the room who presumably ordered the expulsion of the people paying his salary.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the story:

”College officials said it was a mix of misunderstandings and college policy that led to the ejection, while impacted residents said it was a violation of their right to attend a public meeting.

“If they would have asked me [to leave], I would have told them to go fly a kite,’ said George Lowe, chairman of the college board of trustees. ‘It should have not been done. It’s wrong; I didn’t know about it.’”

Maybe…

But after a security guard threatened to take legal action to charge one with trespassing if one didn’t leave?

Here’s what happened to ex-Chicago Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman when she was arrested for trespassing by hospital security guards.

Consider that the man sitting to Lowe’s left, MCC President Walt Packard, had previously communicated to me through newly hired security guard William Schultz.

I’ll admit it is possible Lowe was ignorant as to what Packard was doing when he used his cell phone.

The extremely new public relations person for the college, Christine Haggerty, simply does not know what she is talking about when she intimates in the NW Herald article that it is standard practice to kick citizens waiting in the hall outside the boardroom door out of the building at 10 o’clock.

Just a month before, no attempt was made to kick anyone out of the building, even through the meeting went beyond 10 o’clock, for example. There were other late meetings as well, but for that one, I jotted down the ending time.

Here’s another post-10 PM meeting where the adjournment date is relatively close to the heading showing the date of the meeting:
In all kindness, I would expect a bit of factual research before such easily refutable statements are made to reporters. There is no reason for Haggerty to lose her credibility so early in the game.

Hint: look at the minutes for January 21st and 28th, November 15th, October 25th. And, that covers only the ones still on the web site.

I see in Haggerty’s statement that the new security officer was not aware of state law allowing people to await the ending of a closed session disingenuous at best. If Schultz had not been given explicit instructions to get rid of us, he had a phone and could have talked to Packard again, given what he was told (which you can read here Wednesday).

I just hope Packard does not try to make Schultz the fall guy for what I suspect was his own decision.

As weekend readers of McHenry County Blog know, I didn’t just try to take pictures through the windows, I did take pictures. Some are shown in Saterday’s article about John McGuire’s presentation on FM and television tower(s) on behalf of what I assume is a firm called BMB. Some private company apparently wants to use public land for its private purposes.

“Our bad” is pretty much what the new MCC PR woman wants readers to take away from the NW Herald article.

It’s worse than that.

And I suspect President Packard knows it.

That’s why he’s not talking to the press.

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In the top photo is MCC Board President George Lowe. Below is a picture focused on MCC President Walt Packard, with Lowe in the background. Packard’s head again appears blocking part of the power point slide at the bottom of the article. All images can be enlarged by clicking on them, but the contents of the slide have been re-typed in this article.