Posted in Building Department, Conflict of interest, Deception, Elections, ePacket Agendas, Ethics, Minutes, Plan Commission, Politics, Property Taxes, Roads & Bridges Committee, Unions, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Clerk, Village Code, Village Director of Administration, Village Government, Village President, Village Treasurer on August 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Our Village Board of Trustees will be conducting their regular monthly meeting beginning this evening at 6:30 PM. A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here.
It’s doubtful the telephony issues have been corrected by the Cecola administration, but readers are welcome to call in and try once again to listen to the meeting.
Posted in Agendas, Barrington Hills Country Club, Going green, Meeting Minutes, Plan Commission on August 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
The Village Plan Commission will be holding a special meeting at 6:30 PM. The single agenda item is, “[Vote] Barrington Hills Country Club Forest Management Plan.”
A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here.
Posted in Agendas, Building Department, Conflict of interest, Elections, Ethics, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, OMA, One Barrington Hills, Personnel Committee, Plan Commission, Politics, Property Taxes, Roads & Bridges Committee, Transparency, Unions, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Clerk, Village Code, Village Director of Administration, Village Engineer, Village Government, Village President, Zoning Board on July 25, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Barrington Area Conservation Trust officers
Our Village Board of Trustees will be conducting their regular monthly meeting beginning this evening at 6:30 PM. Some of the topics on their agenda include:
A brief statement of Matthew Vondra’s qualifications for consideration can be viewed here. Without too much detail, we’ll expound on his experience a bit.
Matt is currently Vice President of the Barrington Area Conservation Trust (BACT). Their President is Brian Croll, who is also a Trustee of the Village of Barrington Hills. The BACT Treasurer is Loren Ekstrom, the husband of Village of Barrington Hills Trustee Laura Ekstrom.
The BACT is responsible for, “…creating the largest permanent land preservation easement in the state of Illinois,” known as Horizon Farm, which is now owned and managed under that easement by the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here.
Note: For the third month in a row, it’s unknown if the telephony issues that have plagued recent meetings have been remedied yet, so callers might encounter issues again.
Posted in Agendas, Audio Recordings, Big Red Whipped, ePacket Agendas, Financial Reports, Minutes, Plan Commission, Police Pension Board, Roads & Bridges Committee, Roads and Bridges, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board on June 27, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Our Village Board of Trustees will be conducting their regular monthly meeting beginning this evening at 6:30 PM. Some of the topics on their agenda include:
A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here. It’s unknown if the telephony issues that have plagued recent meetings have been remedied yet, so callers might encounter issues again.
Posted in Agendas, BACT, Board of Health, Building Department, Cuba Rd Bridge, ePacket Agendas, Financial Reports, Land Use, Minutes, Plan Commission, Resident Surveys, Roads & Bridges Committee, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Clerk, Village Code, Village Director of Administration, Village Engineer, Village Government, Village President, Zoning Board on May 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Our Village Board of Trustees will be conducting their regular monthly meeting beginning this evening at 6:30 PM. Some of the topics on their agenda include:
The two gentlemen being recognized for decades of service on the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Board of Health have our utmost gratitude and respect for their commitment to the residents of our Village.
A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here.
Posted in Board of Health, Building Department, Entertainment, Equestrian Commission, Ethics, Finance Committee, Financial Statements, Plan Commission, Police Pension Board, Politics, Property Taxes, Roads & Bridges Committee, VBHPD, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Clerk, Village Director of Administration, Village Engineer, Village Government, Village President, Village Treasurer, Zoning Board on April 25, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Our Village Board of Trustees will be conducting their regular monthly meeting beginning this evening at 6:30 PM. Some of the topics on their agenda include:
A copy of the agenda can be viewed and downloaded here.
Posted in Plan Commission, Resident Spotlights, Village Government on March 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
From left, Gillian Stoettner of Barrington Hills, chair of the 2022 Spring Luncheon for the Rush Woman’s Board, and Ali Wentworth, actress and author, who will serve as the luncheon’s keynote speaker. Photos by Kerri Sherman and Heidi Gutman
Elizabeth Graham
On Monday, May 9, the Woman’s Board of the Rush University Medical Center will host its 27th annual Spring Luncheon, a fundraiser supporting the Medical Center’s education, research and community service programs as well as The Woman’s Board Fund for Excellence in Cellular Therapy.
The Spring Luncheon will feature keynote speaker Ali Wentworth, an actor, comedian and three-time New York Times best-selling author. Wentworth made a name for herself as a regular on three seasons of In Living Color. She has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno more than one hundred times, as well as on Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel, and was an on-air regular on The Oprah Winfrey Show for three years. Her television and film credits include Seinfeld, Jerry Maguire, Office Space, Trial and Error, and Nancy Meyer’s It’s Complicated. Ali’s career in the entertainment industry has also included off-screen roles such as TV series creator, executive producer, and writer.
Gillian Stoettner, a long-time resident of Barrington Hills, will serve as chair for the 2022 Spring Luncheon. Stoettner, who has been a member of the Rush Woman’s Board for more than 20 years, believes Wentworth’s combination of approachability and humor make her the ideal speaker for this year’s event.
“The Spring Luncheon is known for having incredibly dynamic and accomplished women as its keynote speakers, and Ali is no exception. Ali’s style is very real, unafraid to talk about real situations and real problems and to approach them with a sense of humor,” said Stoettner. “After all the difficulties and challenges of the last few years, I think we all need a good laugh. Ali is sure to give us that in droves.”
As previously mentioned, proceeds from the Spring Luncheon will go toward to Woman’s Board’s 2022 principal project: The Woman’s Board Fund for Excellence in Cellular Therapy. New cellular therapy approaches allow medical specialists to re-engineer a person’s own cancer-fighting cells to attack tumors more effectively. They have transformed how lymphoma, leukemia and other hematologic malignancies are treated at RUSH currently, and clinical trials at RUSH will test the therapies for lung cancer and melanoma. The Woman’s Board Fund will enable RUSH to introduce these exciting by complex immunotherapy treatments into patient care.
The 2022 Spring Luncheon will take place at The Ritz-Carlton Chicago. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit thewomansboard.org or contact The Woman’s Board office at (312) 942-6513.
Posted in Commercial Horse Boarding, Finance Committee, FOIA, Fox River Valley Hunt, FRVPC, Guest Essay, Land Use, LeCompte/Anderson Commercial Horse boarding amendment, Legal Expenses, Plan Commission, Politics, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Real Estate, Riding Club of Barrington Hills, Topics Of Interest, Transparency, Village Government on February 22, 2022| 2 Comments »
Earlier today we published the agenda (seen here) for tonight’s Board of Trustees meeting. We included links to both the approved 2021 Appropriations, and the proposed 2022 Appropriations, and a longtime subscriber shared the following:
“Of the total decrease in Legal Expense ($948,937), decrease in Litigation, Planning/Zoning and FOIA expense ($446,000) represents 56.3 % of the total decrease.
Unless one examines the budget items in detail, one might conclude that the current administration is doing a pretty good job of managing the finances of the Village. That would be an incorrect assumption. It hides other areas of the budget (such as Permit Administration) where improper management may be concluded.
It should also be noted that much of the huge legal expense incurred in recent years revolves around the desires of one resident to impose a huge commercial horse boarding operation on residents, in effect having residents subsidizing equestrian amenities and lifestyle to non-residents by giving access to the Equestrian Trail System.”
Related: “Village Board of Trustees meets tonight“
Posted in 2021 Elections, Barrington Children's Charities, Conflict of interest, Deception, FUBAR, New Normal?, OP/Ed, Plan Commission, Politics, Topics Of Interest, Transparency, Village Attorney, Village Board, Village Clerk, Village Code, Village Director of Administration, Village Government, Village President on February 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Our gratitude goes to those who’ve followed our four-part journey thus far. Hopefully, it may lead you to the same conclusions we now share.
Obvious to all, there is no way that the current Board of Trustees (BOT), especially President Cecola, would ever consider seating Robin VanCastle next to them in the MacArthur Room. She has shown the unwavering honesty that causes many to avert their eyes, for fear that eye contact would reveal truths some, such as President Cecola, cannot hide.
No one will ever know if Trustee Buettner contemplated this in her discussions with Pro-Tem Konicek. The question is, do we owe her a debt of gratitude for setting the bar so high as to cause the BOT themselves to raise theirs? Only time will tell.
As we’ve stated, our Village President nominates appointees of his (or is it his household’s) choosing. At the very least he should have reached out to Ms. VanCastle as he did to other prospective nominees to express Trustee Buettner’s desires. That is just common courtesy, which apparently he and most trustees have forgotten. It’s that change which can lead to moral turpitude that prompted this series.
The Observer was founded over twelve years ago, since many residents at the time recognized the ethical erosion in our Village government, not only at the Board level, but Commission levels as well. We like to think our communications had some influence in correcting that situation beginning in 2013.
Unfortunately, last year we witnessed our Village government heading in a downward path, and the speed at which it is continuing has us concerned.
Last year we elected four people to our BOT, one being an incumbent Trustee escalated to Village President. For six years, then Trustee Brian Cecola relied almost exclusively on the guidance provided by former Village President Marty McLaughlin and Trustee Colleen Konicek Hannigan. Their education, experience and long hours studying the many issues facing our Village proved immensely beneficial to Cecola and were arguably the reason for his election to President.
Sadly, President Cecola did not retain enough of what he should have learned from his previous mentors to be effective in his new responsibilities, which has become glaringly evident to residents. And it appears that the three newer Trustees are following Cecola’s lead, but the question is, who is setting his leadership path? From our observations, not him, and in fairness, we need to explain why.
President Cecola is a hard worker when it comes to performing tasks he derives income from. However, in his volunteer roles he seems to prefer to relegate research and decision making to others in his duties at Village Hall.
He appears to lean heavily (some say exclusively) on the former Building Permit Coordinator and the current (inexperienced) Village Administrator for guidance (and decisions). The has led to the three new Trustees relying on often biased counsel from non-elected sources.
Examples include the former Permit Coordinator’s well documented advocating for aboveground swimming pools for a neighbor, now permitted for the first time in our Village of estate properties’ history. This in Cecola’s first month in office, dutifully approved to his wife’s delight.
There are other examples of Cecola’s self-interest voting that have occurred, not the least of which is convincing the BOT to terminate a longstanding snow plowing and salting relationship with Cuba Township in favor of awarding business to a private landscaping company he socializes with. Without providing a reason when asked, Cecola conveniently abstained on voting on that one.
Before our newer Trustees continue in this trend, governed by two non-elected people planning Cecola’s course in our Village, we implore them to pause and take stock of where they’re at now and how they’re perceived in the community.
President Cecola is no longer credible and has lost the support of many former supporters, apparently including President McLaughlin, who now can be heard opining that Cecola is not the same today as the person he and others supported and voted for last April.
If Cecola continues to be disinterested, we sincerely ask Trustees Ekstrom, Riff, Strauss and now Hills, to pay much closer attention to what is happening in our community and to the management of our Village.
Related: “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 1),” “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 2),” “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 3),” and “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 4).”
Posted in 2019 Elections, Big Red Whipped, Conflict of interest, Deception, Ethics, OMA, OP/Ed, Plan Commission, Politics, Roads and Bridges, Village Board, Village Director of Administration, Village Government on February 4, 2022| 3 Comments »
President-elect Brian Cecola and Trustee Debra Buettner paused for a photo taken on May 3rd, 2021, before Cecola took the Oath of Office.
Monday, we published a memo written by Village President Pro-Tem Colleen Konicek Hannigan to the Board of trustees in November. On January 7, 2022, Village President Brian Cecola convened a special meeting of the Board of Trustees to nominate his choice to fill the seat of Trustee Debra Buettner.
Following is a transcript of a portion of that meeting:
Konicek: For purposes of discussion, I want to read into the record my email to President Cecola of November 18, 2021, which was disseminated to the rest of the board on that same day.
(Pro-Tem Konicek’s memo can be found here.)
Konicek: So, having sent that email on November 18, 2021, I was never approached by the president following that. He and I did meet at one point with Mr. Hammond, Deb’s husband, at his request, and also discussed his conversations with our departed trustee, and the fact that she very much endorsed Robin VanCastle for this position.
I wanted to go on record that while I appreciate Darby Hills immensely, and I think she would be a wonderful fit for this board, that I find this to be an incredible disservice to Trustee Buettner, in not having considered her recommendation which she was very vested in.
She did not want to step down from this board. She wanted to serve out her term, and health prevented her from doing that. And not even considering her recommendation is a slap in the face, in my opinion, so I wanted to bring that to the board’s attention, and I will speak on behalf of Deb since she isn’t here to speak for herself.
And I will also let everybody know that I spoke to Darby about this. I called her following the announcement that was made like two days ago, to all of us which was the first I’d heard that Darby would be the person that the President would put up for this position.
So, I reached out to her, and I called her and told her what I would be saying to the board today, and she’s fully aware of that. She was very appreciative that I brought this to her attention since she wasn’t aware of it prior to our conversation.
Riff: I got a question, so I’ll go. I was elected in March, is that correct? We got elected in March, and I haven’t seen Deb for most of the summer as we all know, and I did not know she was ill, nobody would really express that. Later on in the fall we found out that she was ill, never once heard about Robin VanCastle from her. Sat in many board meetings, four, five, six she did not attend. Then we got a note from you in November with her recommendations, but that was through you, through her husband, through somebody else.
I mean, I would have loved to have heard, spoke to her about it, but I know she’s been, she’s no longer with us, but I never heard her express or say she wanted Robin VanCastle or sent me a letter. That’s just my two cents.
I don’t know. I would have loved to have discussed some things with Deb, here and there, but we can’t.
Konicek: That’s right, we can’t, and I’m sure she would have loved to have had the conversation with you as well. She intended to have it with Brian, and she died.
So, I am honoring the conversations I had with her. At the time, I was honoring the confidentiality that she asked me to place in our conversations because they went beyond just those related to the Village position. Some of them were related to her profession. And, you know, all of you did utilize Deb, and you sat in her office during your campaigns and utilized her services during your campaigns, not just the ones that took place this past April, but ones that took place over the last three or four election cycles.
President Cecola and Trustee Croll all utilized those services, as well as yourself and Trustee Strauss and Trustee Ekstrom, and Deb was very supportive of all of you, and she was supportive of me as well. And she was supportive of this Village, and I want to be on record as saying that I am going to voice support for what she asked for. The fact that she wasn’t able to ask you personally, I’m sure she would loved to have had that opportunity, but she didn’t.
So again, I’m just going to stand, or I guess I’m sitting, I will sit here on her behalf to the best of my ability at this time. She’s much more eloquent that I am, but her voice isn’t here, so I will be it to the best of my ability.
Cecola: I’ll say a few things. I did…, it was not an easy decision or nomination or recommendation. Uhm, I really wish I would have been able to speak to Deb. I did reach out to her prior to her passing, after a month or two of her missing meetings, I was just concerned.
It was not an easy decision. Did I meet with her husband and you? Yes. It was not easy. I just came to the conclusion, I thought about a lot of different people, I took everybody’s names that they, you know, suggested to me to hear. I weighed everybody’s name to my best ability, and I came up with that,
Konicek: Did you meet with Robin?
Cecola: I did not, no.
Konicek: Did you even talk to her?
Cecola: (unintelligible)
Konicek: Is that a no?
Cecola: No, correct.
Konicek: So, may I ask why?
Cecola: I know Robin, um, there was no need to…, I know last time she did not want to run in the last election when we asked her, but no, I did not reach out to her.
Konicek: So, you didn’t reach out to her because you were relying on the fact that she had said a year ago or more that she wasn’t going to run in that election.
Cecola: No, I ju, I re, I just, I really don’t have no answer. I didn’t reach out to her.
There were several people that came to mind, and I did not reach out to everybody.
The recording can be reviewed beginning at the 32:25 mark here.
We’ll wrap up our series next week, though most should have a good idea what we’ll say. And for the record, none of the other Trustees took the time to meet or even talk to Ms. VanCastle either. None, except Pro-Tem Konicek.
Related: “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 1),” “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 2),” “Our predominantly pusillanimous Village Board (Part 3)”
 | M on Cook County forest preserves p… |
 | Nothing nonpartisan… on Forum for 52nd District state… |
| Elections on District 220 posts April 2023… |
| Ficke’d on District 220 Board of Educatio… |
 | Dump these chumps! on District 220 Board of Educatio… |