Tuesday, April 4th marks yet another turning point in the history of the village of Barrington Hills. Residents will go to the polls again faced with a choice of continuing to advance the positive trends of the last four years, or backsliding into the mired legacy of the last administration. Three trustee positions and the office of village president are being contested.
The achievements of President Martin McLaughlin and Trustee Colleen Konicek Hannigan over their first term have been nothing short of amazing, even more so, when you consider that for their first two years they had to work with a five person opposition bloc on the Board who were blindly loyal to the old regime, and who fought against change on nearly every front. We won’t waste space here again repeating all of Marty and Colleen’s fulfilled campaign promises here, but instead refer you to the words of the Daily Herald Editorial Board when it said, “Barrington Hills has recorded some notable accomplishments and is on a constructive course for maintaining the town’s prosperity and rural charm, led by a village board whose members are dedicated and independent”, in endorsing both McLaughlin and Hannigan. We concur with their very enthusiastic endorsement.
Six candidates are vying for the two other open trustee positions. The two individuals running under the “Your Barrington Hills” (YBH) banner, along with former trustee Elaine Ramesh, despite rather desperate attempts to minimize and criticize the notable achievements of the last four years, are nothing more than “Save 5 Acres” version 3.0.
The YBH campaign has been marked by negative mailings flooding our mailboxes, attempting to create crises where none exist. Not only do they fail to acknowledge the positive accomplishments of the McLaughlin administration, they ridiculously try to imply that the village has not been prudently managed and that services have suffered. Even the specter of the phantom developer has been raised again.
As detailed in Meet the Candidates Part One and Part Two, Jacobsen, Zubak and Ramesh are distancing themselves from their extremist equestrian bias, in what we see as a deliberate attempt to mislead voters from their true agenda. We believe that the ultimate goal of these Trojan Horsemen candidates is to reinstate ordinances permitting unbridled, large-scale commercial boarding and unimpeded related commercial equestrian activities in the Village to the benefit of their friends, at the expense of the rights of the rest of us to the peaceful enjoyment of our homes. Electing any of these individuals will be a setback to the reforms of the past four years and will be a danger to all of our residential rights. They have shown themselves to be completely uninformed on the true state of village affairs, and will be little more than puppets for the former regime.
That is why we are endorsing the two other independent candidates on the ballot – Matt Vondra and Ralph Sesso.
Matt Vondra, a resident since 2012, is a consultant in logistics and business development, who works for contractors in heavy and highway construction. Matt volunteers on the Executive Committee of the Barrington Area Conservation Trust and recently won the Audubon Society’s Grassroots Conservation Leadership Award for his work on the restoration plan of the Bluff Spring Fen in Elgin, Illinois.
Ralph Sesso has lived in Barrington Hills for 23 years and is an investment fund manager and a certified financial planner. He and his wife raised their four children in the village. He is running to help preserve the long standing tradition of open space and the rural nature of our community. He is also personally interested in residents finding ways to live peaceably with each other, despite differences on political issues.
Vondra and Sesso possess unique professional skills, and both are supportive of the reforms and results that Marty and Colleen have instituted over the last four years. The Observer feels strongly that these two independent candidates would work well with the current board in continuing the positive trends of fiscal responsibility and creative approaches that have become hallmarks of our village government today.
We urge you to make your voices heard again as you go to the polls on Tuesday April 4th to support McLaughlin for President, and Hannigan, Vondra and Sesso for Trustees.
April showers indeed! It’s raining Actions Alerts! Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. It would be hilarious if people weren’t so gullible at times.
– SUPER IMPORTANT!!!! WE WILL BE SENDING YOU PROPAGANDA MEANT TO TARNISH REPUTATIONS SO WE CAN PASS OUR OWN AGENDA!
Super important, we’re going to dress our propaganda up as “Action Alerts” from our new favorite legal beagle, Kristina, and then we’re going to follow them up with news of a diabolical plot to destroy Home Rule in Barrington Hills! So salacious! If only it made sense – which it doesn’t – or was feasible – which it’s not. Barrington Hills was conferred Home Rule powers by referendum of the majority of the eligible voters back in 1990 and under the Illinois Constitution, only a referendum of a majority of the eligible voters can change that form of government. Article VII, section 6(f) of the Illinois Constitution states: “(f) A home rule unit shall have the power subject to approval by referendum to adopt, alter or repeal a form of government provided by law…”
The tentacles of this special interest group run deep and I wouldn’t doubt that their email lists were inappropriately obtained from the Village before McLaughlin was in office. Make sure you pass on Unite BH’s ‘You Deserve the Truth’ email to everyone you know.
– “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” ― Winston S. Churchill
Yes, McLaughlin and Konicek Hannigan have stood up for all of Barrington Hills and their opposition has no morals or shame. The rest of us better get our friends and neighbors to the ballot box to make sure those enemies don’t take back our village!
Ramesh, Jacobsen, Zubak, and Iacovelli have but one agenda. Do not let anything distract you from that.
Support McLaughlin, Konicek, Vondra and Sesso!
McCrowe:
Never heard the name Kristina before in VBH political circles, but I am very familiar with the disjointed views and rants of former Prevaricator in Chief (“FPC”) all too well. Rest assured, FPC’s finger prints are impressed all over these “Citizen Alerts” bubbling into the community. It is sad that a once promising politician like FPC has morphed into a charicature of Chief Inspector Dreyfus spending countless hours plotting and aways failing to snare the ever elusive Martin McLaughlin.
A vote for the Silent One is a vote for FPC and support for FPC’ prior record of “Waste”, “Corruption” and “Mismanagement” of village resources and suspension of the rule of law. (The Schuman Letter at the top of my list at a cost of $167,000 to VBH taxpayers.)
While evidence of “pay to play” politics; ongoing violations of the IL. Open Meetings Act; record spending; defenseless litigation costing taxpayers Millions of Dollars; backroom deals for benefit of favored special interests; improper appointments and expansion of village government to name a few, former VBH BOT member, Silent One sat idly by even when VBH residents en mass cried foul and demanded action. Silent One failed to act; she said nothing at board meetings; just stared!
Recitation of her abysmal record of performance as VBH BOT member would take too long to recite again here as I did previously in a recent BHO comment. For this highly unqualified candidate, I leave you with the lyrics of Raul Sigmund and Bart Gardenfinkel who I believe best summed up the conduct of Silent One’s as VBH BOT in their song:
“The Sound of Her Silence”.
Hello my “Save 5 Acres” friend
I bring this truth to you again
In 2010 when reality came creeping
Upon residents while you were sleeping
And the corruption of 2011 planted in their brains,
It still remains
All because of your Silence
Inexplicable votes you were not alone
Voting in unison with Abboud who set the tone
Cast by you below the halo of a ceiling lamp
Contrary to rights of residents objectng in the cold and damp
When their eyes were faced with a political fight
Between wrong and right
And where were you; you were silent
And during this fight we all saw
One “quid pro quo” and maybe more
Residents rudely treated while speaking
Trustees’ spending money without thinking
Writing letters to the village in an attempt to share
You did not care
To disturb your silence
Fools your “Save 5 Acres” friends we all know,
Silence by you allowed their political cancer to grow
Hear our words this time which might reach you
Focus this time so that we might teach you
That our words are no longer silent raindrops which fell
It is time for you to tell
By breaking your walls of silence
In landslide numbers residents voted and conveyed
That the “Save 5 Acres” name would have to be remade
In 2013 Knoop sent out his warning
That “Save Open Spaces” was then forming
And their words
Like graffiti written on public bathroom stalls
Said nothing at all
And all the while you were silent
Reject the Silent One, Elaine Ramesh for VBH BOT on Apirl 4th. A silence which VBH government can no longer afford.
Two years ago, someone posted this comment here on the Observer:
“While out for a walk on Church Rd. today I encountered two women putting up signs for the SOS party. One approached me and introduced herself as “Joan Abboud.” Pointing to their campaign sign she stated, “We need to elect these people to save Barrington Farms.” Not fully comprehending what she was saying I asked, “Which farms?” She gestured to the land around her and said, “Barrington Farms, the former Duda property.” She went on to explain that if the SOS candidates don’t get elected, Barrington Farms “won’t get the permits they need and we might lose them.” When I asked if the other candidates were against Barrington Farms, she said, “They won’t talk about it.” I walked on a little bit and then it dawned on me, Barrington Farms is in unincorporated McHenry County. The Village has no jurisdiction over it no matter who gets elected. Was her statement due to ignorance or an outright lie- Barrington Hills can’t afford either.”
Well today, in the midst of the #FAKENEWS, Call to Action, the Sky is Falling! URGENT! email blasts, a little donation of $3000 made it into the coffers of the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. From whom? None other than J.R. Davis, close friend of the former president, and current developer of the 600 acre former Duda property. The same person who gave $10,800 to SOS in 2015. The same person gave $5000 to Fritz Gohl’s campaign in 2013.
600 acres, and we haven’t heard any plans for the property other than a 40 acre HARPS facility. What’s going on with the rest of the land?
Does anyone have any doubt that this ACTUAL developer (not a phantom) wants back into VBH, with a compliant figurehead president and lackeys on the board to give him wide latitude to develop this property into a huge commercial horse boarding facility, maybe even an equestrian subdivision?
Sorry, the distractions won’t work any better this time than they did two years ago. Reject the troubled legacy of the past! Get Sesso and Vondra on the board along with Marty and Colleen and let’s clean up this town once and for all.
BREAKIING NEWS
It has been alleged that president McLaughlin has been seen in the company of hi ranking Russian officials. Some say that he has a dedicated phone line (in his home) directly connected to the Kremlin but we were unable to verify this at the time of publication.
Is it possible that he is receiving material support from Russia?
We know for a fact that he has read and owns a first edition copy of (dare I say it?) (Cooking For The Masses) that bears the imprimatur of Stalin himself!
If elected will McLaughlin institute electronic ease dropping on his former opponents?
Is this the type of leader we want to elect to the highest office in the Village?
Is his past history of being one of the best Presidents and one of the most productive presidents that the Hills has ever seen, just a smoke screen to aid him in this election?
Folks……. this is THE most important election in recent years.
Please vote.