McHenry County Board Chairman Jack Franks has his people at the County Fair pushing a petition to rebate half of the $40 million sitting in the Valley Hi Nursing Home Fund.
Why only half when the nursing home pretty much breaks even with an annual budget of $10-11 million a year?
Why even have a tax for Valley Hi?
A real “tax fighter” would be arguing for both a rebate higher than $20 million and an abolition of the taxing authority.
But, that’s not Jack Franks’ position.
There was $39,867,490.69 in the Valley Hi accounts this morning, according to County Treasurer Glenda Miller.
I’m starting to see a pattern…
This blog is no longer about news, it’s about being a thorn in the side of Franks.
I reiterate my claim from before: Cal is slowly deteriorating. His attacks becoming ever more sophomoric a-political:
-Aesthetic Critiques on Logos
-Micromanaging Routine Campaign Reimbursements
-Doxing Personal Information on a Mother
-Falsly Asserting Franks Interrupted a Constituent in a Public Forum
-(Updated 8/4) A ‘hit piece’ with typos that was distributed nowhere
-(Updated 8/4) Updates on an employee
-(Updated 8/4) Falsely attribute attacks on Women and Minorities to Franks
-(Updated 8/4) Cal insists on defunding a nursing home
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Notice that Cal does not give attention to the successes of Jack Franks. He is just a petty mudslinger.
Watching Cal is like watching the slow decay of a once honorable man – his sense of self and identity gradually transitioning into a state of both loathing and coveting Franks’ success. His continued antagonistic posts serve to further delegitimize what few, honest critiques on policy he does make, leading to the side show this blog has become. Whereas the Northwest Herald once saw Cal as a threat and sued him, they now probably view him as a joke.
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Mark likes to constantly chime, “If the blog was not having an impact, Moderate would not be here.” Mark might be surprised to learn that he is right. This blog impacts 40 people! In my analysis of his readership, Cal has less than
40 unique hits per page.
This is a fact.
If Cal were a newspaper, he would be out of business. Cal’s presence on social media was so disastrous, he removed the ability for people to “share” directly from the blog. Did Cal remove the feature because it demonstrated how few people read the blog? Was it detrimental to his sponsorships?
So, who are the 40 people that read Cal’s blog? Clearly not the voting public or silent majority. It’s local Tea Partiers!! Cal’s blog is beneficial to Democrats in that he acts as the water cooler for local Republicans, posting sensitive GOP party information constantly. So yes, Cal is beneficial, but to a very narrow subset whose breadth and depth is electorally negligible at best. Look at all the info Democrats WOULDN’T have if Cal didn’t post it!! Typos be damned, Cal posts the GOP playbook. He is a spy who divulges all the secrets to the enemy. He bad for the local GOP.
Don’t believe me? Let’s set the record straight.
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HEY CAL, how many UNIQUE visitors per month do you have?
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My goal is to continue to point out that Cal is a beacon of nonsense. I’m seeing more and more that Cal’s influence is diminishing. His content is stale. Cal’s pattern to post about Jack on cyclically, no matter how trivial, is obvious. That’s not the pattern of a news org, that’s the pattern of vendetta to smear Franks.
half a man …. half an American (Franks, D-Isr) … half-baked schemer
“Moderate” You’re as phoney as a 3 dollar bill …… you work for Jacko!
How much does he pay a shill like you?
People wanna know!!!
No tax fighter is like my tax fighter…tic, tock, tic, tock…
Do not some RINOs consider him a half-assed Democrat?
Barb? Pam? John? Mike? Roger? Randy? Brian? Paul?
I’ve seen a pattern.
Anyone on the dole, hates Cal’s blog.
Those of us forced to pay for all these Public Sector miscreants, love it.
But moderate is right about one thing.
Probably only 40 or so left in the County actually paying for it all. Public Employee’s don’t pay taxes.
Thier just a line item in the Public Sector Ponzi ledger.
I’m starting to see a pattern. Idiots never learn.
How are you going to rebate money to people that paid into the fund if they moved?
If they move from one house to another in the county?
Who ultimately will get the refund?
So if you can’t refund the money who gets it? How much administrative costs will there be trying to get the rebate?
How much will this be on a $200,000 home now compared to when the home value is lower?
What about people that just built homes the past few years.
They get the same as someone that has been paying into the levy for the past 20 yrs?
Give money back but hire a bunch of staff to try and figure this out?
Ultimately probably a nightmare.
Jack wants to do this but has no solution.
Dump it on the County Board and make them the bad people.
Jack the master of no responsibility.
I don’t work for Franks.
As I’m sure Cal and Mark have already done, they’ve scrubbed D2’s for their Moderate culprit and found nothing.
Could it just be that someone so stridently belives that Cal continues to foster a hostile climate for McHenry County pols and some citizens have had it?! Cal is accountable to no one. Cal has no allegiances. Cal probably fancies himself an Oliver Stone type when he’s more James T. Callender.
I seriously doubt that Cal fancies himself an Oliver Stone type.
He’s not a tinfoil hat wearing Marxist.
Some cheese with that whine, Moderate ?
I have already outed (many moons ago)Moderate as Rosa K, someone with a fierce vendetta against Cal.
Where’s susan?
Hey susan, when we spoke, did I sound like a female?
????
I would not reveal without permission, but it is my firm personal belief Moderate is a male.
Thank you
Continuing drivel from a poster who posts the same stuff, word for word, on many issues on this blog.
Such as: “My goal is to continue to point out that Cal is a beacon of nonsense.”
Maybe this lady or guy, who continually bashes Cal, can start his own left wing blog.
Nah.
Probably would fail just as did the left wing radio program by the unfunny comedian turned Democrat politician Senator in Minn.
Oh, that is the State that elected a wrestler to be governor.
Susan? Are you sure you talked to the real Moderate? A man doesnt write the way she writes and call petty names like she does. May I remind you of the pond scum? No man would ever call a woman that over and over. Maybe you spoke with Mr. Z!
“Continuing drivel from a poster who posts the same stuff, word for word, on many issues on this blog.” A tribute to our compulsive obsessive prodigious researcher…tic, tock, tic, tock…
I repeat, I’m quite certain Moderate is male.
Cal gives the “round mound” too much credit: “Half a Tax Fighter”
Any politician whose political existence is dependent on union / welfare / uneducated voter support is no where close to being a “Tax fighter”.
Susan Handelsman is a a “tax fighter”.
Ersel Schuster is a “tax fighter”.
Chuck Wheeler is a “tax fighter”.
Steve Verr is a “tax fighter”.
Andrew Gasser is a “tax fighter”.
Diane Evertsen is a “tax fighter”.
Cal Skinner is a “tax fighter”.
Kelly Liebmann is a “tax fighter”.
Relatively new to the scene but holds promise as a “tax fighter” is Orv Brettman.
The “round mound” could not hold a candle next to any of them!
The problem we have in McHenry County is too many voters (both donkeys and elephants) who believe you can burn the tax dollar candle at both ends.
Who voted against maintaining ANY TAX dollars for Valley Hi?
I am equally certain that something is quite fishy.
Walkup reported $41.7 M this same time last year.
Does Glenda have our money in some negative interest, idiot account for McHenry Taxpayers?
So at $39.7 M, $2 M plus interest was siphoned off somewhere?
Better hurry with that rebate before these nitwits figure out ways to squander it.
Where’s our bond guy Steve, when you need him?
Give him that cash and I’d bet he’d make it grow.
Watch out!!! An illness-bearing Llavona infestation brought all manner of bioterror to Parma, Ohio in 2011.
http://www.fearof.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Fear-of-Bugs-and-Insects-Phobia-Entomophobia-Acarophobia.jpg
So part of the Jack Franks cut 10 initiative is to rebate $20M from the Valley Hi account?
Has Jack Franks asked the unions to re-open their contracts to participate in cutting county costs?
Jack Franks waited to start cut 10 with the county until after one of the union contracts was negotiated.
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Moderate is the biggest Jack Franks supporter on the blog.
Moderate attempts discredit the blog, to agitate, and repeatedly posts on the blog he says hardly anyone reads.
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Another Democrat Jack Franks supporter is Jeffrey Lichte, who ran as a Republican in the same 63rd District State Representative primary last year in which Jack Franks was unopposed.
Then Jack Franks decided to run for County Board Chair, and Jack Franks promised if elected, he would reveal on his first day in office his plan to cut property taxes 10% in every property taxing district in the county.
That was another broken Jack Franks promise.
As was pointed out above, there is no practical way to do a rebate.
You can’t give money back to people who are no longer here and giving it to people who just moved in would be a windfall for them.
What happened here is that the original levy was calculated based on the assumption that VH would be mostly Medicaid beds.
If that is the case, it loses a ton of money every year.
Subsequently, the County Board decided that they should start taking Medicare and private pay and those now comprise the majority of the beds.
These tend to pay for themselves so only the Medicaid beds are losing money.
This means there is a relatively small shortfall each year, about 500K to One Million Dollars, assuming the state keeps reimbursing.
However, due to the tax cap legislation, once the county lowers the levy, they can’t take it back if they need the money later because the state stops paying and/or there are changes in the marketplace so VH can’t get the Medicare adn private pay in competition with private facitilities.
There needs to be state legislation, which Franks never pursued when he was legislator, to allow the county to tax up to the amount approved in the original referendum as the voters had already said that they were willing to be taxed this amount.
This should apply only to situations where a specific amount was approved by voters in a referendum so that very few local governments would be able to use it.
In our county it would apply to things like the Conservation District, the Mental Health Board, and the Senior Serivces Grant Commission in addition to Valley Hi.
This would then allow the county to zero out the levy and start drawing down the surplus over time while still allowing for the possibility of a short fall due to state spending and/or changes in the market place.
The county could increase the rate at which this happens by increasing the Medicaid bed percentaage as well.
Thus you are giving tax relief propectively and not retroactively, and have no administrative costs involved.