In that white paper written by John Rosene—yes, husband of Karen Rosene on the ZBA, who voted to expand horse boarding businesses— he urged his fellow Clubbers to take “aggressive” action under a “new strategy to ensure and enhance its future.” The strategy was political. As Rosene wrote: “With the election of Bob Abboud to the presidency of the Village Board, along with supportive trustees who include Fritz Gohl” and others, the Clubbers would have important political allies.
Having political allies works. It was the “supportive” Trustee Fritz Gohl who, with some help, scheduled a special board meeting last month where the Anderson-LeCompte abomination was passed. And it was a very “special” meeting indeed, conducted with minimal public notice when President McLaughlin could not attend, and with public comment relegated to the end of the meeting, after a vote had occurred.
And, of course, the other trustees who voted for the Anderson-LeCompte Amendment included the three (Messer, Meroni, and Selman) who accepted and then affirmatively concealed campaign contributions from LeCompte, the primary beneficiary of the new law.
Back to the white paper. The Clubbers’ spokesman Rosene told members in 2005 that those who did not share equestrian interests were not really neighbors, but rather were the enemy. What was the mission? Read it in the white paper: “I believe our mission is to ensure that all new residents of Barrington Hills are, in fact, equestrians.”
And how to accomplish that mission? Here was Rosene’s violent recommendation:
One approach is to ally ourselves with another “special interest group,” the National Rifle Association, and simply shoot in-coming non-equestrians as they arrive with their moving vans. This is probably the most cost-effective way to go.
Or we can convert the “heathens.”
We can only hope these remarks were the product of bad judgment in using sarcasm to make a point. We can be sure, however, that these comments reflect the level of compulsion that those who would make such statements, and publish them, have about the perpetuation of an equestrian lifestyle, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. “Heathens.”
We may not have been the victims of the physical assault advocated in the Rosene white paper, but our Village was surely “Clubbed” into submission through the passage of the Anderson-LeCompte Amendment, with help from “supportive” Trustee Gohl and the LeCompte-financed Trustees Messer, Selman and Meroni.
Fortunately, we have a timely opportunity to make the Clubbing only temporary with a Trustee Election in April. We believe it’s time to elect new, unencumbered trustees to restore balance to Barrington Hills governance.
– The Observer