Monday, March 16, 2009

You can't escape the rush hour traffic in Lake County.

Fight Gridlock

You've tried leaving early. Going home late. Taking a bunch of different routes. Nothing works. You're losing sleep, time with your family and friends, time at work. Instead, you have lots of windshield time with your car. You're losing part of your life, wasting time in a congested mess on Lake County roads with no end in sight.

A simple "yes" vote April 7 can help change all that.

The Route 53 project has been planned for years. Now, you finally get to vote in favor of it. You can tell Lake County, state and federal leaders know you're sick and tired of traffic jams. You want to stop wasting dozens of hours behind the wheel every month, watching all the vehicles around you pollute the air while they inch along at a frustrating pace.

And, you can do more than vote. You can tell your family, neighbors and friends to vote "yes" for Route 53. Tell them how it will enrich their lives, help businesses and improve the economic future of the county. We can help you do that. Sign up for e-mail blasts, Twitter alerts, and a Facebook page that will provide the latest on our plan to bring some sanity to the crazy mess of traffic in Lake County.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

911 Service Gets its Facelift

A few months ago I wrote about the ongoing improvements to our area wide 911 service and showed a partial picture of the work that was done, well here is a picture of the finished product. Kudos to Director Lisa Berger and her team for improving our 911 services and of course making the center look very good.

I stopped by the center a few weeks ago, and was quite impressed with what I saw, the new cubicles are "state of the art" for the tele-communicators and the ones I talked to were very happy with the new stuff.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

2008 Audit Report Highlights

Last night the village board discuss and voted to accept the 2008 Audit report. Here are some of the highlights of the report. Its pretty dull, but its all mostly positive, which given today's economic climate is a good thing!
  • The Village’s Governmental net assets increased $11,978,849 from the prior year.
  • Business-type activities unrestricted net assets increased $489,032 from the prior year. The fund balance for the General Fund equaled $3,310,475, an increase of $758,219 from the prior year.
  • General Fund expenditures were 19.5% under the final appropriated amount of $8,736,188.
  • Village-wide assets exceeded liabilities by $69.8 million at April 30, 2008.
  • Program revenues for governmental activities increased $1,219,387 over the preceding year.
  • All funds operated within legal budgetary limitations during the year.
  • The Water and Sewer Fund reported total operating income before depreciation expense of $224,916.
  • As of April 30, 2008, the Village had seven debt issues outstanding totaling $17,752,174 and during the year the Village’s total outstanding debt decreased by $820,713.
Major capital asset events during the current fiscal year include the following:
  • The purchase of downtown land for $1,434,476 for future development.
  • The completion of the West Townline Road project capitalized at $599,629.
  • The capitalization of $2,136,661 for the trunk sewer / Dawn Marie pump station project. The capitalization of $889,292 of construction costs related to the 2006 CDBG Linden and Sycamore watermain improvements.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Our Drinking Water is first Class

From the Waukegan News Sun

It's so good it won a taste test, and it's so cheap it's practically free.

The Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency has won a regional taste test for tap water, beating out 12 other Illinois water treatment facilities that are part of the West Shore Water Producers Association.

The next level of judging will be at the state competition in March in Springfield.

"This is just another example showing our member communities that we have access to some of the highest quality drinking water in Illinois," said Round Lake Beach Mayor Richard Hill, JAWA's chairman.

A plastic bottle of Aquafina water from a vending machine is $1 for just over a pint. Meanwhile, residents of JAWA are charged $2.15 per 1,000 gallons, or .215 cents per gallon. Aquafina by the pint is about $8 per gallon.

William "Burr" Koepsel, director of operations for JAWA, said the last time the building in Lake Bluff was retrofitted, they had bottled water in mind.

"Actually, during the last phase of construction we actually put in piping so maybe we could look at that in the future," he said.

Call it JAWA JUICE. Think of the profits if the starting costs are just .215 cents per gallon.

The reason the water taste so good is that Lake Michigan water is a "very high quality water to begin with," Koepsel said.

It goes through ozonization (many plants use chlorine first), then it is filtered through a granular activated carbon -- charcoal in layman's terms. Then a quagulent is added to make suspended particles clump together and settle out of the water. "Some particles tend not to settle," he said.

Next comes ultraviolet light, which does not kill bacteria but destroys DNA -- thwarting reproduction.

Last is a shot of chlorine -- "the smallest amount possible," Koepsel said.

"This was the first year we won (the taste test)," he said.

While taste is important, the professionals are more impressed with other awards like the Phase 4 Award given out by the Partnership for Safe Drinking Water and the American Water Works Association. JAWA received the reward for its personnel, physical plant and operations.

"The award recognizes the highest quality operations and drinking water we produce," Koepsel said.

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