Mayor Mancino's first move at his first monthly board meeting

This is the first blog since the election of a new Mayor in Hawthorn Woods. Due to the acrimony surrounding the previous administration, I think it is important that we all start fresh. I truly hope that Mayor Mancino does not send the Police out to my house day after day like the last Mayor, but if he does I am sure my wife will make them cookies again.

Monday night at the Village board meeting, Mayor Joe Mancino stunned us all by announcing that Hawthorns Woods had hired long time area resident and County Board Commission Pam Newton as the new Village Chief Operating Officer. Longtime Village employee Donna Lobaito will be staying on also in a newly created position, the Chief Adminstrative Officer. Some of you may have read about it in the Daily Herald, although not many read that paper anymore.

This was a bold move by Mayor Mancino and the Village Board. The Village Board hired someone who has spent 19 years cultivating relationships with all of the surrounding Municipalities as well as Lake County, which should help to offset the lack of governmental experience on the Board. Miss Newton, who will be resigning her position on the Lake County Board, has been the Chair of the Building Planning and Zoning, the Vice Chair on the Public Works committee and has worked extensively on the National Association of Counties. She has extensive relationships with many of the prominent developers in our area and she will be invaluable for the Village to drive some sort of commercial/retail development, which is something we desperately need to avoid the choice of increasing the property tax levies or cutting staff/expenses.

Pam is also Director of the Messiah Evangelical Church Preschool. She has already announced her retirement from the Preschool, which is a great loss for them.
Congrats to Pam and good luck- you will need it !

Also of note at the meeting was that the Attorney representing the Kemper properties lawsuit against the Village was present. He spoke to the Board, asking for a meeting with the Mayor/Village to try and get a settlement completed. This is good news as it will decrease the legal fees the Village is incurring, which has been one of the major problems the Village has seen over the past few years.

A group of property owners also spoke at the meeting. They are part of SSA#4, which is to build a sewer line down Midlothian. They are upset because their property taxes have went from $1500 to $73,000 and $112,000 and they have nothing to show for this enormous tax increase. The problem is that the Village did the SSA without having the needed permits and intergovernmental agreements. How and why the Village Board ever agreed to do the SSA without those agreements in place is beyond me, not sure where our legal council was on that one. Anyway, these property owners are upset as they fear the money might be missing and that the tax burden will force them into foreclosure unless they can get things taken care of ASAP. I personally don't believe the money is missing --- the previous administration may have been incompetent but I don't believe anyone was a thief. Mayor Mancino is going to fully disclose to them the financials and is trying to work out a solution to resolve the situation. He promised that he would meet with them to hear their grievances.

I also spoke and informed the Village board that Lake County was woefully late in filing the application for stimulus funding for the Glennshire Water system. This is most upsetting as Glennshire was in very good position to receive funding that would have lessened the financial burden by $24,000 per home. On May 13th I was notified by the IEPA of Lake County's blunder and this was the first opportunity to inform the Board since some of them had worked on it as well.

Those 3 items are some of the biggest issues facing the new administration. Hopefully they can be resolved soon.