There’s something missing from the stables at Oakwood Farm in Barrington Hills: horses. On a recent morning, most stalls were empty. The horses that had boarded here were gone, banished following a court order.
The feud between neighbors that led to the shutdown of Oakwood Farm’s boarding operations has simmered for years. Now it’s boiling over into a communitywide controversy that has angry residents of Barrington Hills arguing over the very nature of their community.
Following years of litigation, the Illinois Appellate Court has ruled that horse boarding at the farm does not comply with the village code. That has raised alarms at other boarding stables that they may be in danger of getting shut down, and led to heated public debates over whether to limit or protect horse boarding.
Read more of the Chicago Tribune story here.
Barrington Hills was once a highly desirable community to move to before 2005. Then the political winds shifted and through whisper rumer campaigns and a lot of backstabbing of residents willing to run for elected positions to serve the interests of the entire community, a small faction of the radical equestrians gained seats in office.
Today five of seven on our village Board of Trustees back that faction’s political agenda. Yet the reality is a 2013 resident survey indicated only thirteen percent of residents moved to Barrington Hills to be able to keep horses.
Rosene stating “Being equestrian has a cache which increases property values” in the article is laughable and to use his term, ironic, since property values here have never been lower due to this and other overly publicized nonsense like cell towers, draconian lighting proposals, and now horse boarding.
For those not familiar with this “issue” in a community that was labeled “equestrian” coincidentally in 2005, this is the THIRD time we’ve been through this debate.
Since there are about fifteen or so larger scale boarding facilities in place now we need to grandfather them with the exception of this contentious facility and create new codes for any proposed new large scale boarding facilities to protect neighbors who moved here for privacy and open spaces.
The only way for us to reverse this adversarial and minority partisan environment that continues to plague us is to elect three new members to our Board of Trustees next April who volunteer to represent the interests of entire village.
Biased commercial horse boarding funded politicians backing expansion need not apply thank you. We don’t need to endure any more black eyes like this one.
Here – Here – Long-time Resident
You see, regarding the 11th hour “Anderson Text Amendment” on Commercial Horse Boarding, “they” (Anderson, Beckendorf, Freeman and Rosene) had to pass it before “we” (Chambers, Stieper and Wolfgram) and the public could see what was in it.
Putting aside the fact that 3 BOT members (Messer, Meroni and Selman) have a material “conflict of interest” arising from allegations of wrongdoing in the pending lawsuit between Oakwood Farm and its neighbors, the above action by a majority of the ZBA says it all about the present construct of the VBH ZBA and provides one more reason why the issue of large scale commercial horse boarding needs to be “stayed” until at least after the April 2015 election and more cautiously for the protection of VBH taxpayers until the civil lawsuit involving Oakwood Farm is completely adjudicated.
Who could have any confidence in a ZBA Board [majority] which conducts itself in this fashion.
David Stieper, ZBA member
This story is on the front page of today’s Chicago Tribune with continuation on page two. Isn’t that interesting placement for such a small village? I wonder which large boarding operation used their clout to get this done.
Also noticed in the online version there are seven photos none of which portray what this boarding operation looks like from neighbor’s perspectives that live on Deepwood Rd. Wouldn’t that be relevant to the basis of the legal dispute? Nah, that doesn’t matter. Just rich folk problems if you’re a city reporter with crowded dirty alleys around your condo building…