Annual Christmas House Decorating Contest

One of the very nice traditions we have in the village is the house decorating contest. Last year we had about 10 entries. Lets have more this year! The Village will be judging for the annual House Decorating between December 4th and the 10th. If you wish to have your home included in the judging, you must contact the Village between November 28th and December 2nd to have your house registered.
I know I have been a judge for a four years and I tend to prefer the homes that are "visible from space" although I am not sure the neighbors would be as positive about that. Usually the 8 village elected act as the judges and we rank each house 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and then we collate the results to determine the winner.

Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony December 2nd at 6:30pm

The Annual Round Lake Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony will be held on December 2nd at 6:30 pm. It's always a nice time, generally lots of kids show, we have hot chocolate and snacks and we have a special visitor from the North Pole to talk to the kids. In addition the Round Lake High School Choir will sing Christmas music.

The tree lighting will be at the Village Hall. We all look forward to seeing you there!

ADDENDUM: When I get the names of the entries I will post them so residents can drive around and look at them. I am also going to investigate having a post where residents can vote on my blog for their favorites. See what happens when I run on a treadmill. Actual good ideas!

Regional Planning Board Started for Chicagoland 6 County Area

The Regional Planning Board was created through legislation that unanimously passed both houses of the Illinois General Assembly and was signed into law by Gov. Rod Blagojevich on August 8, 2005. The RPB will combine the previously separate transportation and land-use planning agencies for northeastern Illinois into a single entity designed to protect natural resources and minimize traffic congestion as the seven-county region plans for the 21st Century and beyond.

The new agency will combine the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS) and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC). CATS has been the federally designated metropolitan planning organization since 1955, and NIPC has been the region'’s comprehensive planning agency since 1957.

The Lake County Representative is Elliot Hartstein Mayor of Buffalo Grove. He is quite energetic and will be an excellent representative for our county.

Turkey Trot Today was More Like an Ice Trot

Well I drove to Crystal Lake and warmed up by stretching in the car. I also put every stitch of warm-up clothing I had on to run to the palm tree! Ha! The only palm tree I saw was when I was hallucinating while my hair froze through my ski cap. Talk about cold!
Anyway for those keeping score (I am) I finished 158th of roughly 350 people with a time of 32:30. Slow, but it was into the wind for the first two miles and exposed so it was slow going and the best I could do was get the first two miles in 21:00 minutes, I did better in the last 1.1 miles which was a positive but it was also downwind!

Happy Thanksgiving Day!!!!

On behalf of the village I hope everyone has a marvelous Thanksgiving day. I am getting an early start on burning the calories I will consume by racing. I am running in a 5K race in Crystal Lake at 8:00 am sharp hosted by the Hillstriders Running Club at Lippold Park in Crystal Lake at 8:00 a.m. sharp. There is no registration and the entry fee is any non-perishable food items which will be donated to the Crystal Lake Food Pantry.

For those of you who know I am goal oriented I want to get under 28 minutes. Which is roughly a 9 minute mile pace. The course is flat but it is also a path, so it might be muddy which is not good but you deal with the hand you are dealt. Cool weather is conducive to going fast (relatively speaking in my case) so all signs are pointing upwards.

The New Deputy Chief Francis Foy Sworn in at the Last Board Meeting

At Monday's board meeting we formalized Officer Francis Foy's step up into the Deputy Chief Position by swearing him in. Chief Cliff Metaxa read a short statement talking about how Francis had grown as an officer and talked about most of his awards were actually won by "Sniper" his canine partner! Kidding aside Francis is the future of the Round Lake Police Department, he represents what is best about the young talented set of officers we are and have recruited over the last few years. Chief Metaxa's appointment of Francis send a clear message of a modern, professional police department in the village. The ceremony was attended by quite a few of Francis' family and friends as well as Round Lake officers and officers from other departments.

New Director of Public Works

This Monday I appointed a new Director of Public Works Davis Clark. Davis has been with us for over a decade and was the most impressive candidate that we interviewed. Davis is a Round Lake resident (Bright Meadows) and is just what the village was looking for, aggressive, bright and full of ideas! Our former Director Charlie Olsen has moved to a newly created position as Superintendent of Roads reporting to the Director of Public Works. Please join me in welcoming Davis to the new corner office at the Public Works department!

Village Server is Under Construction...so my Blog is on hiatus for a few days!

The village is having new servers installed over the holiday and once we are up and running on the server its going to take 48 to 72 hours to propagate throughout the internet. In addition it might be hard for me to publish to the blog so, I am on an enforced vacation and my streak of 208 straight days comes to an end I fear!

Thanksgiving Service

I went to the Round Lake Area Thanksgiving Service yesterday evening. It was very nice. There were 9 participating churches from the area. All of them contributed to the service in some fashion. I saw quite a few elected officials and friends among them Round Lake Park Mayor Ila Bauer, Hainesville Mayor Ted Mueller, Round Lake Beach Trustee Judy Armstrong, Round Lake Trustee's Jerry Shaw and Don Newby, Round Lake Library District Vice President Linda Kauffman, former Round Lake Clerk Lillian Frost, and I am sure many more I missed.
The picture is of the Round Lake High School Choir who were marvelous. All in all a wonderful celebration of the season!

Quick Reminder on Today's Service

Over the last few years the area church's have banded together to have a non-denominational service for the community. They are trying purposely to not make it a service only for "church" people but a service for the majority of the residents of the area. They are having it at the Round Lake High School Theatre on Sunday afternoon, 4:30 P.M. Nov. 20th. Please join me in attending this service this afternoon.

Confucius says.....

Do not ask a 16 year old High School cross-country runner and swim team member to go for a 3 mile jog when you are a 46 year old man. Because a jog for them is a run for you, and an all out run as well. 27 minutes and a handful of seconds. One member of the "joggers" was not winded, the other was gasping. No points for guessing which runner is which in the above scenario. At least my daughter had the decency to not go for a 2 mile run as a cool down right in front of me.

I am running in the Crystal Lake 5k Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving day. So this was to be a blow out and I am going to taper down to Thanksgiving morning. My goal is under 28 minutes for the 5K. On the basis of this run I think I should be able to get it done.

Guns and Booze

A lethal mix? One would think so, it was with surprise that I read this article about guns, booze and the FBI Gun Range. What were they thinking? I am not suprised they are investigating the "protocol" of doing this. Plus throw in the Chicago Bears and what do you have?

Come Celebrate Thanskgiving with the Round Lake Church Community!

Oliver Wendell Homes once said,

"It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country."

Over the last few years the area church's have banded together to have a non-denominational service for the community. They are trying purposely to not make it a service only for "church" people but a service for the majority of the residents of the area. They are having it at the Round Lake High School Theatre on Sunday afternoon, 4:30 P.M. Nov. 20th.

I would strongly urge all of you to consider attending, its a marvelous idea and is a wonderful brand of fellowship. Please join me in attending this Sunday.

The King and I

What do these two handsome men have in common? Do they have low digit license plates? Well yes they do, but that's not it! Do they both have badges? Well yes they do, but that's not it either. Are they both Mayors? Well yes they are, but that's still not it! So what do they have in common? They are the only two Blogging Mayors in Illinois! The gentlemen on the right (I am the one on the left) is Mayor Jim Willey of Elburn, his blog is where it all got started for me, when I discovered his blog late last year I was sold on the concept! So yesterday I made a pilgrimage to the master to learn "grasshopper style" the art of blogging!

We Interrupt this Blog to Talk about Indoor Track and Field

As many of my loyal readers know I am a budding Masters Track and Field competitor. I have convinced two other local Round Lake residents (who shall remain nameless since I did not ask them if I could reveal there identity) to go to the Ted Haydon Indoor Track and Field Meet at the University of Chicago. I am going to compete in the Long Jump, Shot Put, 55 meters, 200 meters and the 400 meters. The meet is on the 17th of December and it takes place most of the day. Entry fees are $6 per event so its easy to go and they have day of meet registration.

By the way the picture is of me running the 400 meters early this year at an indoor meet in Sterling Illinois. (1:15 was the time). There is a reason there are no other competitors are in the picture, but I prefer not to go into those sordid details.

If any one is interested in going along to compete December 17th, let me know, the more the merrier! Plus who knows world records might await!