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3 iconic attractions are opening back up this weekend

Posted in Entertainment, Topics Of Interest on April 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Navy Pier in Chicago begins its phased reopening on Friday with a brass band performance, rides on the Centennial Wheel and other events.

For the many entertainment-starved seekers out there, this is your weekend.

Three iconic attractions are slated to open after months of being closed by either winter or the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you’re looking for a double feature at the McHenry Outdoor Theater, some fireworks at Navy Pier or a bet on the ponies at Arlington Park, it’s time to get out there and enjoy.

Arlington Park

The 92nd and what is expected to be the final year of horse racing at the Arlington Heights stadium begins Friday with opening day and Saturday with what organizers are dubbing the largest Kentucky Derby party outside Louisville. Click here for info.

McHenry Outdoor Theater

Offering movies under the stars since the 1940s, the suburbs’ last remaining drive-in returns Friday and Saturday with a “Sharknado” double feature of “Jaws” and “Twister” starting at about 8:15 p.m. Click here for more showtimes.

Navy Pier

Closed since Labor Day because of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the state’s most popular tourist attractions reopens this weekend with a partial resumption of operations. The Chicago landmark will celebrate with a 10-minute fireworks show every Saturday night in May. Click here for more information.

BHS Spring Musical: Songs for a New World presented tonight thru Sunday

Posted in Barrington High School, Entertainment on April 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »

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The Barrington High School Fine Arts Department is proud to present this year’s virtual musical, “Songs for a New World”.

Ticket sales and streaming will be offered through the publishing company, Music Theater International. Click here to purchase tickets!

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Elgin Symphony Orchestra to spend three ‘Friday on the Farm’ in Pingree Grove

Posted in Entertainment, Topics Of Interest on April 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra will be among the first in the area to hold a live performance in 2021 when it launches its Fridays on the Farm summer concert series next month.

The three-concert series, which kicks off May 21, will take place at The Venue at Goebbert’s Pumpkin Patch and Apple Orchard in Pingree Grove.

It will be a return engagement for the ESO, which held smaller concerts there last fall. Executive Director Erik Malmquist said it was a successful test run.

“It was an experiment with a new outdoor space and COVID mitigations, but it turned out to be a real win for us,” Malmquist said. “I think that in the long term, we’re making plans to come back even after COVID.”

Music director Andrew Grams said he was looking forward to the return trip after being “pleasantly surprised” by the fall concerts.

“In the acoustical music world, you don’t expect much from outdoor venues,” said Grams, who is in his last season conducting the ESO. “Goebbert’s was fantastic.”

There will be two performances per day during the series, with concerts at 2 and 7 p.m. Concerts are also scheduled for July 2 and Aug. 6.

Read more here, or visit the ESO website here.

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Village Board of Trustees meets tonight

Posted in 2021 Elections, Agendas, Building Department, Conflict of interest, Cook, County, ePacket Agendas, Ethics, Financial Reports, Land Use, Legal Expenses, Minutes, Plan Commission, Police Pension Board, Resident Spotlights, Roads & Bridges Committee, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Engineer, Zoning Board on April 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

April BOT The Village Board of Trustees will be holding their monthly meeting this evening at 6:30 PM. Some of the topics on their agenda include:

Presentation of appreciation for their dedicated service as Trustees Paula Jacobsen and Robert M. Zubak
Donlea Road Drainage Investigation – Engineer’s Memo
[Vote] An Ordinance Amending Section 5-5-3 of the Village’s Zoning Regulations to Include, in the Allowed List of Special Uses, Non-commercial Event Facility Ordinance 21 –

A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here. The meeting is open to those wishing to attend or readers can listen in by calling 508-924-1464.

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A special April Flashback

Posted in Commercial Horse Boarding, Elections 2013, Ethics, IAA, Land Use, LeCompte/Anderson Commercial Horse boarding amendment, News Media, Pension Funding, Politics, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Topics Of Interest, Village Board, Village Code, Village President, Well Water Quality on April 24, 2021| 1 Comment »

Editorial note: Monday’s monthly Village Board of Trustees meeting will be the last regular one for President Pro-Tem Colleen Konicek Hannigan and President Martin McLaughlin. Here’s what the Daily Herald wrote when the two first won office eight years ago:

Barrington Hills Village President-elect Martin McLaughlin looks over results Tuesday at his election night party with Trustee-elect Colleen Konicek Hannigan. Both won election and will be sworn into office next month. (John Starks | Staff Photographer)

McLaughlin looks ahead to Barrington Hills presidency

Posted 4/10/2013 5:15 PM

A day after his upset victory over two-term Barrington Hills Village President Robert Abboud, president-elect Martin McLaughlin said his intentions remain the same as during his campaign — to return the village to the normal business of providing services cost-effectively.

McLaughlin said he’d considered divisive debates over outdoor lighting regulations and commercial horse boarding to be manufactured and unnecessary, and believes voters ultimately agreed.

“There were a lot of exhausted, weary residents who were just looking for someone to represent them,” McLaughlin said. “We need someone to actively heal the divisions. I don’t think we need to do anything great here. We just need a deep breath.”

McLaughlin said he never considered the race to be personal and hopes he can turn to Abboud as a resource in the future.

Given the perceived strength of Abboud’s campaign, McLaughlin said he never counted on more than being a messenger.

“I thought I would define issues,” McLaughlin said. “The outcome was a pleasant surprise.”

While McLaughlin would like to give the village a fresh start, he realizes there’s few times when that’s entirely possible. The village remains in the midst of addressing important issues such as the proposed Insurance Auto Auction site in neighboring East Dundee, the long lingering lawsuit over covenants governing the Sears property in Hoffman Estates and mediated negotiations toward a police contract.

McLaughlin believes the fact East Dundee voters also elected a new village president — Lael Miller — provides opportunity for a fresh start for talks about the auto auction proposal, which he considers a threat to the aquifer Barrington Hills residents use.

McLaughlin disagreed with his predecessor’s aggressive approach to East Dundee.

“Shaking hands isn’t a bad way to start, instead of shaking fists,” McLaughlin said.

He also hopes to reach a settlement on the Sears lawsuit and examine the police department’s pension system, which broke away from the state’s several years ago.

Senior Village Trustee Fritz Gohl, who won re-election Tuesday, said he’s keeping an open mind on working with the new president, whom he’s not yet met.

McLaughlin will be joined on the board by two new trustees, Gohl’s running mate, Michael Harrington, and McLaughlin’s running mate, Colleen Konicek Hannigan. Though he’s unfamiliar with McLaughlin, Gohl knows Konicek Hannigan very well.

“I know where she’s coming from because she’s a Barrington Hills lifer like me,” he said.

Having worked with both Abboud and the late Jim Kempe, Gohl said he knows the approach to the village president job has a lot to do with each president’s personality. He agrees with McLaughlin’s assessment that new leadership in East Dundee offers new opportunities for negotiation over Insurance Auto Auction.

Gohl is less certain McLaughlin will find any obvious places to cut the village budget short of laying off workers, and said he welcomes professional insight of the new president and Harrington on managing the village’s police pension fund.

More challenging will be the village’s change of leadership in the midst of police contract talks, Gohl said. The new contract will be one of many areas in which the new president will likely experience a baptism by fire.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens,” he added. “He’ll be learning as he goes.”

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Constable: ‘Brain glasses’ let concussion patient see path to recovery

Posted in Resident Spotlights, Topics Of Interest on April 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Clare Mantelman of Barrington Hills couldn’t do simple math, forgot words and was so confused that she couldn’t ride her horse. A pair of “brain glasses” has her riding Blue again. (Brian Hill | Staff Photographer)

While driving in April 2019, Clare Mantelman of Barrington Hills was rear-ended by a car that drove her vehicle into the car in front of her. “My head hit the steering, and I bounced back,” she says.

“You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,” Mantelman says she was told by her doctor and a neurologist, who assured her time would cure any effects of a concussion. Weeks later, she still had difficulty.

“I couldn’t add, subtract or divide. I was skipping words. I couldn’t spell. I’d lose my balance,” says Mantelman, 57, who couldn’t drive, needed husband to do everything for her, and even forgot how to ride her horse, Blue. “My whole personality was gone. The surroundings were just too much for me. Nobody could tell me where to get help.”

A special pair of “brain glasses” changed all that. Realizing how odd that might sound, Mantelman simply says, “It’s real.”

Her path to recovery began when a friend gave her the 2015 book, “The Ghost in My Brain,” by Clark Elliot, an Evanston musician and associate professor of artificial intelligence at DePaul University who suffered a very similar injury and recovered, in part, by wearing brain glasses.

Horse OK with the help of VBHPD, BCFPD, HARPS, Cuba Township resources and others

Posted in Accidents, Animal Welfare, BCFPD, HARPS, Topics Of Interest, VBHPD on April 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Firefly, An American Paint Horse, who is affectionately known as “Phoofie” found herself in a precarious situation. “I noticed she was down which is not normal for horses to do,” said resident Sarah Quinn. She called her son-in-law to help raise Firefly and they quickly discovered they needed additional assistance.

Quinn called VBHPD. Sgt. David Kann and Ofc. Brian Baird arrived on the scene, assessed the situation and called in the necessary resources.

“We were overcome with emotion. It was so nice to have the community support you. It was wonderful,” said Quinn.

Read the full Village Facebook post here.

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Suburbanites mark Earth Day by planting in nature preserve, cleaning up park

Posted in BACT, Going green, Organizations on April 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

About 40 people turned out Thursday, including 10 members of a local Brownie troop, to plant native plants like St. John’s wort for Earth Day at Pederson Preserve in Barrington. (John Starks | Staff Photographer)

Volunteers celebrated Earth Day on Thursday by installing native plants in a Barrington nature preserve and cleaning up a park in Warrenville

About 40 people, including 10 members of Brownie Troop 2370, gathered Thursday to plant St. John’s wort and other native plants in the Pederson Nature Preserve.

The 5.6-acre parcel across from Barrington High School was purchased by the Barrington Area Conservation Trust with funds donated by Frederica Smith Pederson, whose late husband, Keith Pederson, was a distinguished Barrington resident. The property is named after him.

Since the conservation trust formed in 2001, its mission has been to conserve open spaces and the rural character of Barrington communities. In 20 years, the trust has saved 520 acres of land, formed five nature preserves, installed 52 monarch butterfly pollinator gardens and planted 110 oak trees, its members say.

For more information, visit bactrust.org.

Firefighters Called to Help Rescue a Horse, County Line Rd West of Bateman Rd

Posted in Animal Welfare, BCFPD on April 21, 2021| 3 Comments »

BCFPD Barrington-Countryside firefighters and paramedics responded about 12:10 p.m. Wednesday, April 21, 2021 to a call for help to rescue a horse in the block of 100 West County Line Road in Barrington Hills.

Firefighters received a report that the horse’s leg was stuck in a hole in the ground, and was injured.

Source

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Penny Road closed at CN crossing starting tomorrow

Posted in Community Alerts, EJ&E/Canadian National, Road construction on April 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »

CN April 21

Penny Road will be closed starting tomorrow at 9 AM between Old Sutton Rd and Rt 59 for three days due to crossing work being performed by Canadian National Railway. CN will reportedly reopen Penny Rd Friday at 6 PM.

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Archive for the ‘Topics Of Interest’ Category