Another Hospital Denied

Is'nt this amazing? This board is the more incompetent board in the state.

From the Daily Herald-- Officials at Vista Health System say they will revise plans to build a new hospital in Lindenhurst after their latest proposal was denied by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board.

Barbara J. Martin, president and CEO of the Waukegan-based hospital group, said Thursday she will present the board a new or modified proposal in March.

"While we are disappointed by the outcome, we remain focused on improving access to health care for the residents of northwest Lake County and serving the health care needs of all our communities," Martin said in a written statement. "We will need to evaluate our new hospital plans and determine the next steps that are best for our communities."

In a split decision Wednesday in Chicago, the planning board denied Vista's proposal to build the nearly $100 million facility near Deep Lake Road and Route 132. It was the fourth time in the last two years Vista has sought approval from the board. The lack of a majority means the plan was rejected.

The planning board has repeatedly cited an over abundance of hospital beds in Lake County as its reason for denying Vista's effort.

Planning board executive secretary Jeffrey Mark said the two members who voted against the proposal believed Vista failed to comply with the specific criteria set by the board. Mark did not offer details about the decision.

The proposal presented Wednesday by Martin was a modified version of one that was deferred at a September meeting. It called for an increase in the number of medical/surgical beds from 64 to 100. The total proposed hospital beds would be 132, with 12 beds for intensive care and 20 for obstetrics. In turn, Vista would agree to discontinue the 108 beds not being used at Vista Medical Center East.

The Vista proposal called for a Level II trauma center, which would be equipped with a helicopter pad to transport the most critical cases to other area Level I hospitals.

Supporters said the facility would benefit the Lindenhurst-area economy. As a for-profit hospital, it would increase the tax base and attract professional offices and other businesses, they said.

Lindenhurst Mayor Susan Lahr called the decision "very disappointing."

"The village of Lindenhurst and our residents, as well as surrounding communities, continue to support the efforts of Barbara Martin and Vista Health in its endeavor," Lahr said.

Earth Hour returns!

On March 28, we will celebrate Earth Hour 2009. Once again, residents in the Chicago region will join millions of people around the world to voluntarily “turn off the lights” for an hour from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. to make a bold statement about climate change. Earth Hour will demonstrate that by working together, each one of us can make a positive impact on this global issue. Governments, business, communities, and individuals on six continents will participate in Earth Hour and agree to make changes that will curb their carbon dioxide emissions.

Like last year, Chicago has been selected as a flagship city for Earth Hour. Earth Hour Chicago and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus are asking the region’s mayors to participate and make Chicago’s efforts regional. All we ask is that you encourage the businesses and residents in your community to turn off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on March 28.

As you will recall, Earth Hour is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund. In 2007, 2.2 million people took part in the world's first Earth Hour in Sydney Australia. Just one year later, 50 million people in 370 cities and towns, in more than 35 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour. Earth Hour 2009 aims to reach more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, inviting communities, business and governments to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm on Saturday March 28 and sending a powerful global message that we care enough about our environment to take action.

Please consider participating in Earth Hour 2009. For more information, visit www.earthhour.org.

Some stuff to smile about while it's freezing outside!

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

The winners are:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts only until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it' s a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.
2. flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. willy-nilly, adj. impotent.
6. negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.
8. gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.
11. testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.
12. rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

Route 53 Referendum-- UPDATED

There is a move afoot at the county to place an advisory referendum on the April Ballot that endorses Route 53 and calls for it to be built. UPDATE...if you roll your mouse over the more button on the survey you can find out how many people voted (28 so far). Not so sure I like this survey software.

Okay I took the survey off...someone voted NO 53 times, which is quite funny, but not exactly, one man one vote! I had the survey software turned on to make sure only person can vote, but that apparently did not work.

When Blizzard's Attack!

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A BLIZZARD WARNING... WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 12 PM TUESDAY. A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR ACCUMULATING AND BLOWING SNOW IS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO THE ONSET OF THE BLIZZARD WARNING. HIGH WINDS OF 20 TO 25 MILES PER HOUR ARE EXPECTED. ARCTIC AIR MOVING INTO NORTHERN ILLINOIS BEHIND THIS SYSTEM WILL ALSO PRODUCE BITTER WIND CHILLS OF 15 BELOW TO 20 BELOW LATE TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING.

Area wide 911 service gets facelift.

Over the years we have seen enormous changes and improvements to Cencom our Round Lake Area 911 service, the agency went from a scary pit, to award winning in 5 years. That's a testament to the hard work put into the process by the Cencom board with the 4 Round Lake Area communities, the Round Lake Fire District, the Round Lake Park District as well as Barrington all having a say in the improvements.

Recently the facility (the Round Lake Beach Public Works building) that is home to Cencom has been undergoing some changes, and the Cencom board has approved a complete remodeling of the facility. Some time soon when its all done there will be an open house.

Trustee Brian Brubaker is my appointment to the Cencom board of directors and Police Chief Cliff Metaxa is on the oversight committee for operations.

Christmas Tree Pick-up

If you drag your used Christmas tree to the curb on Monday Waste Management will pick it up, they will pick up the discarded trees all four Monday's in January. They dispose of them for us in a clean environmental so that way your tree keeps on giving! Kind of a nice service we were able to negotiate with them!

UPDATE NOTE: You are certainly not going batty, I wrote the post thinking Wednesday and when I checked with Waste Management they said Monday...my apologies!

Welcome to the New Blogging Mayor's Blog Version 2.0

Happy New Year! Welcome to a new beginning of my Mayor's Blog! I have been posting on blogger and then using pointers to the village's eroundlake.com website since this blogs inception way back in the spring of 2005. One of the things that I have always felt unable to do because of its quasi-official status is not post about ongoing issues in the village with complete candor.

Over the years I have not written about some issues that I could have because of my sensitivity to the political process and my position as mayor. I have separated the blog as of last night completely from the village's website, and it no longer has any links that I know of on eroundlake.com (Harder then it seems given the nature of the internet).

One of the original reasons I started this blog was to keep a diary of what I did on a day to day to basis for future reference. An underlying reason I blog was so I could write a book about "being mayor" (that project has not been slumbering by the by). The blog took a different direction, which I am not sure was a bad thing.

However the new version blog will be harder and more behind the scenes at politics in Round Lake, the Round Lake Area as well as the county and state. An example of something I started to write about way back when was the Police and Public Works building. As I wrote it I realized that I was going to have talk about the then political climate and some individuals who were serving then who made poor decisions that cost the village money. So I decided not to continue the process, this blog will carry through on future issues.

I will write about topics that I feel like as opposed to topics I felt I had to write about, so there should be a change in the tenor of the blog.

The blog is as you can see changed format wise, however it still has the 1,400 old posts on it, and the comments. My rules have not changed, I allow unrestricted comments, and of course, profanity, attacks on my family and libel will be removed and the offending commenter banned until I decide to allow them back.

I also may from time to time allow guest bloggers to take over the driver seat here and "spout" there opinions on things, however they will be clearly identified as such and subject to the same rules as me.

Flooding Alerts

With the snow accumulation, temperature rising and a hard rain we are susceptible to flooding. So do a couple things, keep an eye on your street drains, and go into your basement an look at your sump pump to make sure nothing bad is happening! Also drive safely those puddles might be deeper then you think!

New Blog Location plus Holiday wishes to you and your familly!

The time has come to say goodbye to the eroundlake.com/blog (no April Fools joke this time) and welcome it to its new location, which has actually been its old postion all the time. It just pointed to the eroundlake.com site, those pointers will be removed, and the blog will reside at its new headquarters.

billgentes.blogspot.com

The new blog will debut on January first, but you can go look at it now if you like, it looks slightly different appearance wise, but all the content is there so from that aspect nothing has changed. The blog will however change and I think that will make it more readable and enjoyable.

Finally I wish all of you a wonderful holiday tommorrow and I hope all of us get exactly what we wanted from Santa, and then we move on and have a wonderful 2009.

Worse/Best TV Show ever!

Over the years I have slowly stopped watching TV, reducing my viewing to sports, and the news. However the promos for one show caught my eye, and my daughters as well, Momma's Boys on NBC. Needless to say we Tivo'ed it and thank god we did, because some of the lines were so priceless we had to replay them a few times.

The premise of the show are three adult men who still live at home with Mommy (that's what they call their mother) are going to chose from 32 high quality young ladies, who range from doctors to convicts and all points in between. The moms live with the 32 girls in some monster mansion on the pacific coast while the three boys live in condos somewhere nearby. At some point the boys kick off the girls one by one, based I would assume on mom's orders. Talk about emasculating!

The highlights/lowlights of the show encompass the following:

• Creepy audition videos, where one mom asks her son to disrobe so everyone can see his body.
• Racist creepy audition videos, where one mom disqualifies the entire human race from being with her son.
• Mothers packing son's clothing for the trip and treating sons like they are in 2nd grade.
• A highly disturbing girl who has a compulsion to clean up everything, loves ABBA, and is actually my favorite character, she would in my humble opinion be perfect for the three boys.
  
• A young lady who has an extreme melt down over a broken shoe heel. She aspires to be a philanthropist when she grows up!
• Another young lady who has angst about being the Penthouse Pet of the Year and won't talk about it and then another who has no problem talking about herself posing in Playboy.
• This one was unable to recall what she did for a living.
• A lady who is a critical care nurse who hates men!
• Two of the moms look alike so its hard to separate the racist mom from the uber creepy domineering mom extraordinaire without having to concentrate.
• The girls have alcohol in their hands throughout the entire show, which makes for better TV, and lively interaction amongst the contestants.

Some of the classic lines are:

A female contestant says "I paid for my second boob job with my student loan."

One mom says that she "I call him at least 100 times a day and he answers 100 times a day."

I have no idea what the rules are, nor the actual point of the show, but all that's irrelevant when confronted by what I would guess is the stupidest TV show ever. Therefore highly watchable! Monday night 2 hour episode be there or be square! There is an encore of this episode tonight at 7pm by the way!

County Snow Alert

Current forecast guidance suggests that the onset of precipitation for Lake County will not be until around 9:00pm tonight, with the heaviest rates of precipitation occurring between 2am and 8am. The Weather Service currently expects all of the precipitation across Lake County to fall as snow, with snowfall rates of up to two inches an hour possible. There is a potential for thunderstorms within the overall storm system, and heavier snowfall rates are possible where thunderstorms develop. In general, the expectation is for from 8 to 14 inches of snow, with the potential for locally heavier amounts, across Lake County. Because of the nature of this storm system, the snow will be wetter and heavier than what fell earlier in the week.

Former Trustee John Huebner (1934-2008)

Yesterday the village lost a wonderful public servant John Huebner who was a life long resident of Round Lake, and who served as a Village trustee for 16 years, retiring in 2003. John passed away yesterday after a long struggle with cancer.

John was a village trustee when I was elected and I served with him for two years until he retired, I always valued him for his insight, opinions and his support. He had a passion for water issues and was always a useful person to consult on the history of why something was done that way versus another way when it came to engineering or public works.

Trustee Dale Multerer and I had been visiting him at the hospital for the last few weeks and his sense of humor and command of the facts were there right to the end. John will be missed by all of the village.

Weather Warning from Lake County

Lake County will be affected by three separate winter weather events over the next five days.

First, forecasters expect the light fluffy snow to continue accumulating the remainder of today and overnight, with a total of around 5” (+/- 2”) of new accumulation. Winds will be light, and temperatures not as cold as they have been, but heavy snowfall rates may make for a challenging commute home this evening. Please use caution when driving.

The second evolving situation may cause serious problems later this week. There continues to be disagreement between the major forecast models, but there will be a wintry mix Thursday evening. Some indications point to a brief period of freezing rain followed by heavy liquid rain, while others indicate the likelihood of heavy freezing rain and significant ice accumulation.

Because of the divergence in the models, confidence is low in any particular solution, so we need to pay attention to the changing forecasts and be prepared for problems Thursday night into Friday. We generally look at ½” of ice as the threshold for substantial damage to trees and utility lines, so if the model that is currently anticipating more than ¾” of ice proves to be correct, we will likely be facing widespread power outages and fallen trees in the roadways on Friday morning. In addition, both the Des Plaines and Fox Rivers are nearing their action stage because of the rain last Sunday, so there is a possibility for some flooding.

We need to emphasize that the forecasters and forecast models do not yet have concurrence about what form of precipitation we can expect, and very subtle changes in the forecast can cause drastic changes in our consequences.

The third winter weather event will likely be a moderate snowfall Saturday night into Sunday, but is still far enough off that projections may change.

Mayor Bowl 3 is set with the finalists

The long season is almost over with two teams finally making the prestigious "Mayor Bowl 3". The semifinals were finished yesterday with the following results.

Terry Vandenboom beating Chris Rozakis 108-96
Al Villasenor beating Rik Flor in overtime 80-80 (tiebreaker was 3-1 in TD's scored)

Good luck to the finalists!