Two District 6 County Board members are using their joint campaign to educate their constituents.

It reminds me of campaigns that my father and I have run in times past.

And, there’s another similarity. Both my father and Ersel Schuster used their offset printing presses to produce the information-filled pieces.

I haven’t read the February 20th newsletter, so let’s take a look at it together below. You can click on the images to enlarge them to make them easier to read.

Here’s the flip side:

Actually, I found the piece rather interesting.

Take, for example, the following little article about how growth costs us all:

Unintended Consequences of Growth / Development

Little do most of us realize that as the population of the county grows so do costs to local taxpayers. In their zeal to promote development, public officials conveniently claim the development is “needed.”

As the county’s population grows so too grows the mandate that we house & pay for more new judges. With each new judge comes the need for a court room, waiting room, holding room…etc, etc. Total
cost for a new set of court rooms can be a million dollars. Added to that, we must pay all the salaries and benefits of the personnel assigned to these judges.

To date, every corner of the court house is built out. Little do public officials and promoters of development know or care that the next huge cost to every resident in the county is a new court building.

I know that there is talk of a branch court being opened in the densely-populated Southeast corner of McHenry County. Cost estimates have increased as discussions have continued.

I noted that there are roll calls for the incumbents in District 6 that reference the six issues discussed on page one of the newsletter. It shows that Evertsen and Schuster votes against all of the initiatives, which the newsletter indicates will increase county spending, while incumbent Mary McCann voted in favor of them all. (Randy Donley, who is retiring, voted against 5 of the 6 issues.)

An issue-oriented campaign.

Imagine that.

It will be interesting to see if what most people say they want will be enough to propel the two to re-election, that is, re-nomination, since voters will determine this fall who gets to sit on the McHenry County Board.

Here’s another issue discussed, getting County government into the real estate business:

County Housing Dept.

What began as a “need” to meet an unfulfilled part (a hook) of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, has now morphed into a whole new department of county government.

Adding to the fact that we were required to meet the CDBG guidelines requiring us to set in motion the Home Division is the fact that the majority of your county board members chose to accept an additional $3,000,000 HOME Grant for the program.

Bottom line, McHenry County is now in the business of buying distressed homes.

We were only to have been the conduit to enable federal tax dollars to be funneled through to the villages and municipalities.

They were not able to apply for these grant funds individually but they wanted the ability to deal with distressed and vacant properties.

Once the program was established, we’ve not seen participation from those entities.

The county now buys, rehabs, markets, sells and rents these vacant and distressed homes. The staff even had to take over contracting for rehab services. Ultimately, government is competing with
the private sector, with tax dollars, undermining and helping to prolong the housing recovery process.

To date, the county has bought 15 homes… those that have sold were sold for amounts below the cost of purchase, rehab, and marketing. Further, these properties will need to be monitored for
years as they can only be sold to those who “qualify” to own them. The county will be responsible for that oversight.

There is more good information about

• a County PACE bus service
• the County Watershed Ordinance
• How intergovernmental agreements can shift costs from village government taxpayers to county taxpayers
• Controlling garbage collection

The web site for the two is here.
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I have requested campaign literature from all candidates in District 6 I could locate and will be pleased to post any sent to the email address on the left hand side of the page.

The same goes for candidates in any other district.