New storm sewers and new roads. The work will involve the installation of new storm sewers and new street construction that includes new curb and gutter and new pavement. Parkway areas behind the new curb will be sod and asphalt entrance aprons will be installed within the parkway area for each driveway at each house.
WHERE:
Two streets, Catalpa and Beechwood. The work will include Catalpa Drive & Beechwood Drive from Washington Street to Midland Drive.
WHEN:
This summer. Storm sewer and road improvement construction is scheduled to begin in the first week of July. The underground storm sewer work will be done first followed by the curb and gutter and road paving and the final work will be restoration and parkway sod. The work is expected to last the duration of the summer.
WHY:
There'’s one purpose and multiple benefits. The purpose of the project is to improve storm water drainage in your neighborhood especially during severe rain storms. New catch basin type manholes have been designed into the improvements to settle silt from the storm water to improve the quality of the water that drains to Round Lake as a benefit. As part of improving the drainage, concrete curb and gutter will be constructed along the streets to eliminate the gravel shoulders to better control storm water and at the same time enhancing the entire roadway as another benefit.
Temporary access inconveniences will occur during certain phases of construction during daytime hours. Roadways and driveways will be made accessible during off hours and weekends unless notified in advance. Efforts will be made to minimize any inconvenience and you will be notified in advance anytime access in or out of your property will be blocked due to construction. Dust is always a problem with this type of work and efforts will be made to minimize dust.
NEW DRIVEWAYS:
As a part of the improvement all driveway aprons will be paved up to the property line. However, the general contractor for this project,Chicagolandd Paving, Inc., is willing to quote a cost to individuals that would like their driveway repaved during the construction of this project. If you are interested in having your driveway paved, and would like to receive a quote from Chicagoland Paving, Inc., call Bill Bowes at 847/550-9681 between the hours of 8:30am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday. Mention that you are a resident within the "CATALPA DRIVE & BEECHWOOD DRIVE INFRASTUCTURE IMPROVEMENT PROJECT"” in the Village of Round Lake. Each resident will be responsible for the cost of paving their own driveway. Residents will not have to pay for the asphalt entrance apron up to your property line as this work is included in the construction project.
Thank you in advance for your understanding, patience, and cooperation. We will circulate project updates as necessary during the course of construction.
If you have any questions, please call:
Because of the high heat and little or no rain this month, the water usage in the Village has reached an all time high. Just in the last 3 weeks we have had 14 days in which the Village has pumped over 2 million gallons of water per day, 6 of those days were over 2.5 million, and 1 day reached 3 million gallons. The average daily use in the month of May was 1.2 million gallons. Because of this high water use I will be posting the Village ordinance pertaining to Landscape water use restrictions on the Village's web site, as well as asking the Valley Lakes, Madrona Village, and Bright Meadows web sites to spread the word on their web sites too. If our residents will do their watering in the late evening or early morning hours, we will be able to supply their water without further restrictions.
The Ordinance is as follows:
Ordinance #13.12.030 Landscape water use restrictions.
A. The use of water from the municipal water system for use in landscape irrigation from May 15th through September 15th of each year is prohibited between the hours of 12:01 pm and 6 pm, Monday through Friday, except that newly sodded or seeded areas of lawns may be watered at any time for a two-week period following installation of such sod or planting of such seed.
B. From Monday through Friday, outside water use shall be further restricted, as follows:
Occupants with even-numbered residences or other structures will be permitted to water lawns and gardens, wash cars and vehicles and use water for outside use only on even-numbered days; occupants with odd-numbered residences or other structures will be permitted to water lawns and gardens, wash cars and vehicles and use water for outside use only on odd-numbered days. (Prior code § 6.13 (b)).
As I post this its actually raining a wee bit! Hopefully it will be enough!
The question was about the need for a stop light at Bacon and 120 and could we expect one?
However, being popular does not mean he is a good manager or a capable administrator. In fact the reverse is true; over the last four years I have found numerous areas where the Chief’s poor management and human resource skills have put the Village at considerable risk of exposure and liability. Let me be clear as to what this means: exposure and liability equal money; money spent defending the Village and or paying judgments means fewer services to residents and potentially higher taxes as a result of significant judgments.
On Monday the 6th of June I had Chuck Smith, one of the Village Attorneys, speak to the Chief without me present and inform him that I was not reappointing him as Chief. I would have preferred to have been the person to tell him but both the Village Attorney and Chuck suggested I speak to the Chief immediately afterwards. I suggested my willingness to offer the Chief a generous severance package as an inducement for his resignation and retirement with grace. My desire not to reappoint him would never have come up; he could have voluntarily retired and moved on with no loss of esteem to himself or controversy for the Village.
At that meeting, he expressed appreciation for my willingness to allow him to avoid embarrassment; that he understood I could have just not reappointed him; and that he would prefer the option for an amicable departure.
Throughout the balance of the day, I notified the Trustees about my decision, Lt. Foy’s expressed willingness to amicably depart, and the importance to Lt. Foy and the trustee’s to keep this in confidence. It now appears that confidentiality was breached almost immediately.
While I know that public support is well intended, my decision is based on the best interest of the Village. While Lt. Foy is likeable, he is just not a capable administrator or a good manager.
On the 9th of June, 3 days later, we were notified that Lt. Foy was claiming a medical disability that would render him unable to perform his duties as an officer for some unspecified time period. Upon receipt of this I acted by making Lt. Mike Kemmerer Acting Police Chief for the Village. In the past, Lt. Foy has suggested in public that he thought he could seek a permanent medical disability but he has never disclosed any basis for that. If he does have such a disability, I sincerely hope it can be treated.
Being Mayor involves making hard decisions and in many cases getting blamed for what goes wrong in the Village. I have one regret in this matter, which is that I did not act sooner. I also regret that I have to explain in public my action in not reappointing the Chief.
My problems with Lt. Foy’s performance as Chief exist in four broad areas. These areas are as follows: liability issues, human resources, management skills, and personal issues.
I am going to talk about a sampling of issues that I believe speak for themselves and have caused me to decide to take the police department in a different direction. The first is what I believe is the most important and the most serious, that of liability. There are dozens of issues to talk about; however, I will illustrate several that I believe are instructive.
Last year the Chief was requested to prepare a policy manual for the department covering the operating rules and regulations and general orders that the police department currently had in place. What he presented was just under 400 pages of disorganized memos and letters, all copied to a CD ROM Disk. This is the document that supposedly controls and guides day to day operations of the department. It certainly was not professional and it remains basically unintelligible and functionally unusable.
In the last two week pay period, the Police Department has had 185 hours of overtime. This is all too common and does not reflect good management. Overtime in the last 12 months exceeded $200,000 which is 14% of the total payroll to the police department. Or nearly 20% of the budgeted amount for the police department.
Early last year, Lt. Foy allowed a surveillance camera to be installed in the restrooms by one of his senior commanders because someone forgot to change the toilet paper. When I demanded its instant removal the then Chief acted like it was a joke. This type of action is not only illegal I found it to be outrageous. The liability could and would be potentially enormous.
Children of officers and staff have been allowed to roam the Police Station unsupervised for literally hours at a time. This is and was a common practice that was approved by Chief Foy.
We now have an Equal Employment Opportunity Claim filed against the Village by a police officer claiming discrimination. While I believe the claim to be ultimately defendable, appropriate management skills would have avoided this.
One of our officers was recently arrested for DUI by another village. I believe that a capable administrator could have recognized a growing problem and dealt with it effectively.
The human resource function is one area where Lt. Foy was incredibly poor, repeatedly over the last four years I have counseled and warned the Chief that he is to close to his command staff and his officers. Situations where he would be forced to be the “bad guy” would arise and he needed to make sure that he was able to make the tough choices and decisions. These issues could have been handled if the Chief was not (1) always trying to be one of the guys; and (2) capable of effectively disciplining his men. During one of my meetings about one of the earlier mentioned HR issues, over a year ago, the Chief offered to resign because of my extreme dissatisfaction with his performance. I regret not accepting it on the spot. I declined and told the Chief that he should and must pay greater attention to personnel issues.
On the human resources front there are no hard and fast methods of tracking employee performance. Employee reviews are conducted with none or vague goals or problem solving methods for the officers. Officers are not held accountable for their actions, and numerous officers have pulled me aside to complain about favoritism on the force. In addition the Village undertook a systematic review of our salary structure and we discovered that we were the market leaders in salary for new officers yet we are starting to lose rank and file officers at an alarming rate. Proper human resource skills are the hallmark of a professional manager none of the above problems has led me to believe that Lt. Foy has these skills.
Financially the Chief has made incredibly poor decisions that have cost the taxpayer quite a bit of money. The HIDTA cop program where we send an officer to patrol the streets of
On a personal level the Mayor and the Police Chief need a relationship based on trust and honesty. The truth is not pretty and as Mayor I need to know the truth of certain issues with no sugar coating. If any department makes a mistake I need to know about it. When I would ask the Chief questions, he would give me evasive or half answers about issues, over time I would discover through other sources that the answers I had received were not wholly accurate and by and large were evasive, I came to think of them as “white lies”. Over time the overwhelming number of these “white lies” caused me to have a dramatic loss of confidence in anything the Chief told me. For the last year and a half I found it more intelligent and useful to just assume he was lying to me. That’s a sad state of affairs and an awful commentary on his performance. Clearly I no longer trust Lt. Foy nor do I find him particularly honest in his dealings with me.
As I drafted this statement I was saddened by many aspects of this affair, I deeply regret not acting sooner. I regret that Lt. Foy was incapable of being discrete. Most of all I regret making the Village look foolish by the actions of the very people it trusts to run the Village professionally and competently.
On this day, in this room, and from this moment forward to all of those in Village of Round Lake I am sending a clear message, Mayberry is dead! I will not tolerate the “good old boy” methods of running this Village at any time and at any moment in the future. The next four years under my leadership, the Village will demand accountability, transparency and professionalism. That will extend down from my office to my department heads and all the staff of the Village. This is my promise to the residents of the Village. I also promise that any issues that I uncover in the future relating to the Police Department from the last years and going forward will be dealt with professionally and or they will be forwarded to the relevant legal authorities for action.
I will be appointing a new Chief of Police early next month. I have a detailed list of issues that I want fixed by him. In addition, I am sure the new Chief will have needed improvements and suggestions of his own.
