Conflicted

The election of a new Village President in April of 2013 gave many Barrington Hills residents hope that cooperation, civility and balance would return to our Village governance.  In our editorial, “It’s morning again,” The Observer shared expectations that the practice of divisiveness and favoritism, a hallmark of the previous administration, would be set aside by members of the Board of Trustees loyal to the outgoing president.

But more than one year later, a broad shadow of old times still looms large.  Coordinated partisanship appears to still be at work, primarily through the associations of board and committee members with the Riding Club of Barrington Hills (RCBH) and the Barrington Hills Polo Club.

There is no doubt that the issue of commercial horse boarding needs to be addressed in our village.  But efforts currently at work threaten to undermine any progress that benefits and seeks input from the village as a whole, and raise issues about either actual or apparent conflicts of interest.

Despite having a small percentage of residents counted as members, four members of the current Board of Trustees (BOT) are members of the Riding Club (Trustees Messer, Meroni, Selman and Gohl).

Four appointed Zoning Board members (five before the Attorney General’s recent decision) are also RCBH members.  Specifically:

• Kurt Anderson is a member of the Riding Club.
• Clark Benkendorf is a member of the Riding Club and husband of the current RCBH membership chair.
• Karen Rosene is a member of the Riding Club and the wife of the president of the Barrington Hills Polo Club, which relies on Oakwood Farm in part for seasonal practices, matches and the annual LeCompte Kalaway Cup fundraiser.
• Chairman Judith Freeman is a longstanding member of the Riding Club and a District Commissioner for the Fox River Valley Pony Club, an organization that relies primarily on Oakwood Farm for hundreds of spectator and participant’s parking needs for at least two major events each year.

The fact that four Zoning Board members belong to the Riding Club is clearly an issue.  The club derives a substantial amount of dues from people boarding horses.

What is more alarming, however, is a potential conflict of interest recently revealed at ZBA meetings.

Some time ago, the Riding Club retained a private attorney to create recommended code amendments that have been submitted to the ZBA, both in writing and orally, at the June 16 ZBA meeting.  Therefore, membership dues presumably paid by these four ZBA members have been used to draft language that they are actively considering.

The fact that these ZBA members will be deliberating on code language that their own attorney specifically drafted, ostensibly with their own interests in mind, raises questions about their ability to address that and other text amendments objectively.  It raises either an actual conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict, which should cause them to refrain from participating in discussion and recuse themselves from any consideration of that proposed text amendment.

The fact that the Riding Club has engaged counsel to draft a text amendment, which presumably would be acted upon by the Riding Club members of the ZBA (and potentially the Village Board members), also raises questions about compliance with the Open Meetings Act.

As residents, we are entitled to have deliberations and considerations of changes in law addressed exclusively at open meetings, where issues can be vetted transparently and with input from the public generally.  Changes in law that affect the village at large should not be first planned and orchestrated within the confines of the Riding Club, and then trotted out for a stamp of approval by Riding Club members on the ZBA and our board.

For these reasons, and many others, we have to reiterate our recommendation for the formation of an independent “Blue Ribbon” panel made up of a cross section of residents as outlined in “Here We Go Again. . . . Commercial Horse Boarding Drama Returns.”

Again, there is no doubt that the issue of commercial boarding of horse has to be addressed.  There are many substantive ways to address the issue.

What we should not do, however, is allow a biased and potentially conflicted procedure to get in the way of the ultimate resolution of this long-standing issue in our village.

–     The Observer