Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Big Hollow Referendum
NOTE: Phil Carter the co-chair of the Big Hollow Referendum committee asked me to publish this on the blog. This in no way constitutes my endorsement one way or another of the referendum. I will say I have been terribly impressed by the energy, commitment and vision Phil brings to the process. For more information you can go to the citizens support group here at www.supportbighollow.org.The Big Hollow Referendum: A Good Investment
The
- It addresses a real district need. Big Hollow currently ranks last in instructional expenditures per student, next to last in operational expenditures per student, has the highest average class size in
- It is affordable. While still a significant financial commitment to be sure, the working cash bond currently offered by the District represents a reasonable investment. Out-of-pocket cost to most homeowners (median home price of $280k taking standard deductions) is around $32 per month. The working cash bond retains all the State aid given to the school and would be immediately available to pay off the District debt (~$3.3M). This maximizes the value of bond revenue to the district.
- It will make a huge impact. Restoring basic art, music, and computer programs in the ‘08-’09 school year will have an immediate, positive effect on the daily lives of 1,500 school children. In addition, reducing class sizes (some projected over 40 students) to more acceptable levels will clearly improve teacher-student contact time essential for learning. Finally, the Big Hollow Community regains the benefits and reputation associated with a quality school system.
The well-documented explosive growth in enrollment at Big Hollow coupled with the education-funding formula in
For its part, the District has managed its per-pupil expenses to the lowest in
While these are challenging economic times, I urge even more residents to look at the tax increase for what it really is: An opportunity to invest in the community and restore a measure of quality to Big Hollow’s longstanding tradition of strong educational values. On February 5th, let’s get the school and community back on track by voting YES. For more detailed information, please visit http://www.supportbighollow.org.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Your Ballot for the Upcoming Primary Election
The Lake County Clerk's office has an excellent feature where you can preview the exact ballot you will be presented with when you vote on February 5.If you live in Round Lake you will be presented with a variety of choices, where Round Lake residents are on the ballot.
On the Republican side
- You will see former Round Lake Trustee and Valley Lakes resident Jerry Shaw running for precinct committee-man.
- You will see Valley Lake Resident Cynthia Purim Haran for Lake County Circuit Court.
- Another Valley Lakes Resident named Bill Gentes is running to be State Senator for the 26th District.
- There are two referendums one for Big Hollow Schools and the other for Grant High School.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Early Voting Kicks Off
Early voting will be offered to any eligible voter, without reason (i.e. not required to be absent, physically disabled, etc.) beginning 22 days prior to Election Day through the Thursday before Election Day. Voters are required to present a valid Illinois driver’s license, an Illinois identification card issued by the Secretary of State, or any other government-issued identification document containing their photograph, name and address.- To find where you can early vote take this link.
- Are you registered to vote? You better be! Take this link to make sure.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Election Results
Yesterday was election day, and we had two major issues in the area that were decided. The first the trustee elections, and the second for 30% of the community, the Big Hollow School Referendum.
The Big Hollow School Election was a quite emphatic second time no to the district on increasing the rate. There were active supporters on both sides of this equation with the vote shaking out as follows.
The other issue was the the three trustee spots up for election in the village, between Trustee Sherry Perkowitz, Trustee Michael Blum, former Trustee Dale Multerer, and Rose White.
Congratulations to the three winners (bold above) the interesting number here is 2307, if you divide that by 3 you can tell that around 700-800 people voted. There are 6,400 registered voters in Round Lake so thats around 12% voter turnout, which is a shame. Four years ago in a the off year election we had a turnout of 11% so I guess that is better sort of.
The Big Hollow School Election was a quite emphatic second time no to the district on increasing the rate. There were active supporters on both sides of this equation with the vote shaking out as follows.
| Percent | Votes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YES |
| 32.63% | 572 | |
| NO |
| 67.37% | 1,181 | |
| 1,753 | ||||
The other issue was the the three trustee spots up for election in the village, between Trustee Sherry Perkowitz, Trustee Michael Blum, former Trustee Dale Multerer, and Rose White.
| Percent | Votes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael R. Blum (UN) |
| 25.14% | 580 | |
| Dale D. Multerer (UN) |
| 25.18% | 581 | |
| Sherry B. Perkowitz (UN) |
| 26.31% | 607 | |
| Rose White (IND) |
| 23.36% | 539 | |
| 2,307 | ||||
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Election Day is Coming Soon
I have been invited by the local radio station WRLR 98.3 to be part of there election coverage for the 3rd year. So on election night (the 17th) I will be there, with commentary on Lake county races. Tune in and listen to my pearls of wisdom!They have a great lineup of other people who are very knowledgeable about county politics as well. Which should make for a great evening! In the studio to provide insight and analysis on various local Lake County races will be former cable television host/reporter Sharyn Elman, longtime political observer Phil Howe and former Gurnee Mayor Dick Welton, amongst others.
Beginning after the polls close at 7 PM and up to 12 midnight, the election team will thoroughly monitor and report vote totals from races and referendums, as they become available from the Lake County clerk's office. Live telephone interviews with candidates will take place throughout the 5 and half hour broadcast.
WRLR specializes in spotlighting local races and issues like no other radio station can. It is a non-profit, community radio station operated completely by volunteers. It fulfills it mission statement to educate, inform and entertain through its 24-7, wide ranging locally focused program schedule. The station has been instrumental in giving Lake County's communities the opportunity to be heard on politics and issues at the small town level.
WRLR reaches a potential listening audience of more than 200,000 people throughout Lake County, western Mchenry county, and southern portions of Wisconsin. In addition, the station has listeners throughout the world who get WRLR's programming stream over the Internet at www.wrlr.fm .
Friday, November 10, 2006
Blog Changes
At the bottom of this post and others will be something called a label. The label will indicate the topic I think this post should reside in. They are all hyperlinked to other articles in the same category (thats what the number next to each listing means). I spent an hour working on the 588 posts I have and came up with the ones below for now, I am slowly going to cateorgize them all, some can appear in multiple spots as well. So if you want to read about HOA's or 120 and the broader things I write about all the time it makes it easier to find! Below is a list of "Labels" that I did in the last hour or so. More to come as well.Friday, November 3, 2006
Don't Forget to Vote
This Tuesday is election day, there are quite a few races out there. However due some gerrymandering in the last redistricting, Round Lake is not in any of the other Round Lake's districts where the hottest races seem to be taking place. Michael Bond vs Susan Simpson for Senate is not us, Sandy Cole vs Sharyn Elman for State Rep is not us either, and just a small part of us is Ed Sullivan vs Amanda Howland for State Rep is us (South part of town). The other state representative in Round Lake Mark Beaubien is running unopposed.The county has a variety of races for Clerk, Treasurer and Sheriff, all seem highly competetive. The one for sheriff is the most highly charged with Gary Del Re vs Mark Curran vs Sharron Narod vs Willard Helander the other.
If you don't know where you should vote click this link for directions.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Thoughts on Blogging
I have been reading the comments and have been wondering what I should do about them if anything. I have had this discussion before on the blog about comments and I still think that as long as you follow my relatively simple rules its okay. I do cringe at some of the comments about people on here but I do believe it's a free country.
As a rule of thumb I never respond to comments in the comment section, but I did notice that a thread was broached a few days ago about this blog being a personal vehicle for me. I do recognize that I have an ego, and I can tell you that you better make sure the next mayor has one as well. I digress. I went and counted the last 300 posts I have done which went back roughly to December 2005. I looked for something that did not talk about the village and I counted them.
I found 25 posts or 8% that were all about me with no village influence, and I was scoring generously since I would argue that I appear as the Mayor in a few of the 5K races which made up a few posts and of course the fantasy football posts which are self serving. Most of these posts appear on a weekend as well. The most over the top one is of course the butter post and the egg post that along with this post have gotten me the most comments and traffic.
I also have been told that some people believe that I am going to use this blog as a place to grind home my political agenda during the upcoming trustee elections. Tempting as that is I made a conscious decision a long time ago to say nothing pro or con about trustees, I have broken that rule a few times but I generally think twice and take it down or edit it quickly. I try to just list people who attend events and besides this blog is about me not them. I will write nothing here about the local elections other then a post reminding people to vote.
As many of you know I participate in partisan politics at county, state and federal levels so I went and counted how many posts had a partisan bent to them, I found 2 of the total out of 557 total posts since the inception of this blog that's less then 1%. Those posts by the way were listing a "meet the candidates" before the primary.
I think these numbers indicate that I am meeting my original goals of what the blog should and could be.
Lastly this blog is hosted by Blogger a free software on the internet, we use a pointer off of eroundlake.com to get to it. When I decided to do the blog 2 years ago I could not make up my mind if I wanted it to be attached to the village web site or not. My choices were as follows:
- Link off the eroundlake.com page (the current format), the challenge here was that since it would be hosted "quasi officially" I would have to be under control therefore no partisanship, no venting about trustees etc. I ultimately decided that this was the best thing for what I wanted to do with the blog, the blog is about the village and me as the village's Mayor. I think the blog has changed to something different over time which I actually appreciate more then I thought. I also thought that this way would hold down my readership because it would be more corporate.
- The second method was to do it off site via blogger as something like mayor.blogger.com and vent what I really think. Those of you know me well enough know that with friends I have a sly sense of humor about village business. I ultimately thought the sly, acidy, "call it like I see" it blog would be much more popular. However I also thought that it would not be as effective towards what I wanted to do which was inform people about Round Lake and the surrounding area and let people know what its like to be Mayor.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Signs and Wasting Village Time and Money
I am sure we have all seen these campaign signs around the village, AFTER the election, not just after the election but well over a week after. So today I asked our Public Works department to pick them up so we did not have to look at them any longer. I am not going to name names, of the candidates who were not picking up signs. But the pictures do speak for themselves.I would note to the state level candidates that local elections for example set a much better example. The 100's of signs my campaign, Trustee Shaws and Steve Skinner's campaign had for Round Lake office last year were ALL picked up within 24 hours. So it can be done, and it should be done. I am tempted to send a bill to the offending campaigns for time and labor, but that would be a waste of time.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Early Voting Closes tomorrow
I went over last week and tried out the early voting and was impressed, by its ease and convenience, this is quite the idea an idea whose time has come I would say. It does certainly make election day longer however.Early voting will be offered to any eligible voter, without reason (i.e. not required to be absent, physically disabled, etc.) beginning 22 days prior to Election Day through the Thursday before Election Day. Voters are required to present a valid Illinois driver'’s license, an Illinois identification card issued by the Secretary of State, or any other government-issued identification document containing their photograph, name and address.
Early voting was offered February 27 - March 16 for the upcoming General Primary on March 21, 2006. Early Voting will be available at most townships and a few municipal offices. Please be sure you are registered to vote. Check your voter registration status. Click on the link below to:
If you have any questions, please call the Elections Department at 847-377-2406.
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