While the Glenview Announcements offered a front page photo and story suggesting all is well at The Glen, construction workers were putting in long hours, and less than a month before their grand openings, prospective tenants were complaining that they couldn’t get in to prepare their restaurants and shops.

One guy in a hard hat arrived early Saturday morning and joked with fellow workers: "It’s double overtime after midnight."

Insiders say fewer than a dozen retailers may be ready for business when the center holds its grand opening in mid-October, although Starbucks is hoping to open early – supplying work crews with enough caffeine to fuel last-minute construction.

Meanwhile, Village President Larry Carlson offers a surprising explanation for all that road reconstruction along Patriot. In an e-mail to residents of The Glen, he confessed to bad planning, incompetence and putting future village revenues at risk, but advised taxpayers not to worry since the work wasn’t costing them anything.

"The key to this whole thing is the MURC (mixed use retail center)," Carlson wrote. "We had to make the MURC an interior shopping center, as opposed to being on Willow Road. This was done to ensure that the tax dollars from the MURC would accrue to School District 34. If the MURC had been on Willow, as most developers wanted, District 34 would have all the children from The Glen and no commercial property taxes to help pay for this, and they would really have been in the hole.

"So we held out for a developer who would build where we knew the MURC had to be. Many developers looked at the project and walked away. They did not want to take the risk – they wanted the easy way – put it on Willow. Because of this, finding the right developer took some time. But we had to go forward with the rest of The Glen, and we needed roads to do that. Without roads, Cambridge, the Great Park, the two golf courses, the Attea School, could not have been built.

"We made our best guess as to how the MURC would be laid out and developed the roads along that premise. That enabled the rest of the Glen to be built out while we searched for a developer for the MURC. Once we found a developer (Oliver-McMillan), they had to go through a rather lengthy approval process (this was under the old Board) and work through some hostility to the whole project. This put them even farther behind the rest of The Glen construction.

"Oliver-McMillan found a far better way to lay out the MURC. It now has an extremely nice curved pedestrian-friendly walking road. It is going to be a real jewel. But that required we make some corrections to the roads. We got it about 95% right, but not perfect. I would have preferred that we had perfect foresight, but I guess that doesn’t happen too often in a project this size. What may look like major reconstruction is really not. It’s making some lane changes.

"You asked who is paying for this. It is all coming from Glen funds and not from the taxpayers."

Editor’s note: We don’t know whether Carlson was attempting to mislead residents or does not understand the nature of tax increment financing. Either way, it’s alarming to find him claiming that work financed through the TIF does not cost the taxpayers anything. In fact, every dollar spent from the TIF delays its retirement – depriving our schools of money they should be getting.

The fact that village officials ignored the advice of the market, putting a shopping center in an undesirable location, is also cause for concern. Given our schools’ projected dependence on the MURC, should our local leaders – who had no experience as developers – have been willing to take such a risk? And finally, we take exception to Carlson’s characterization of the old board’s objections to this project. We fear time will prove that former trustees John Crawford, Rachel Cook and Donna Pappo were right when they expressed doubts about the extent of public investment in a risky private venture and demanded that public dollars not be put into movie theaters at the MURC.

Sunday’s New York Times reports on a California community that scrapped its local elections for lack of candidates. Two incumbents and two new people were appointed to the four-year terms on the city council board of Belmont, a suburb of San Francisco.

"The situation was similar in nearby Brisbane, Foster City, San Bruno and Newark, as well as two Los Angeles suburbs," writes Michael Falcone in an article headlined, "What If They Held an Election and No One Ran?"

"All seven cities are scuttling uncontested elections that had been scheduled for November; officials say they will save $4,000 to $38,000 by choosing not to stage elections for appearance’ sake."

Falcone quotes political scholars who feel, "the fact that voters in 7 of the 66 California cities that were to have elections this November will not be going to the polls points to troubling trends in civic involvement."

Harvard’s Robert Putnam said the number of candidates running for local office in this country fell 15 percent from 1974 to 1994 as did the number of Americans joining civic organizations, attending community events and even signing petitions. "This is not some kind of local California fluke," Putnam told the Times. "I’m sure it’s part of a larger pattern."

In Belmont, officials say prospective candidates may have been discouraged by a particularly rancorous previous election that drained political interest.

Editor’s note: That was certainly the case in Glenview where former Trustees Donna Pappo and Rachel Cook chose not to run after an ugly campaign pitting Pappo against the UG party’s Carlson. She was the victim of a smear campaign in which Unite Glenview spent thousands of dollars on targeted mass mailings that falsely accused Pappo of failing to support the schools, trying to discourage downtown development and ignoring the needs of seniors. Opponents also made much of Pappo’s failure to secure a village permit for work on her home. The candidate said she thought her contractor had taken care of the paperwork, but she was forced to spend thousands of dollars undoing improvements to her attic.

Paul Lewis of the Public Policy Institute of California offered his own list of reasons why some communities are short on candidates: local elections are not always held at the same time as more visible state or national ones, there are often few divisive issues at the local level and residents often see incumbents as unbeatable.

Here in Glenview, the first and third problems apply. Our next local election will fall in April 2005 – five months after the presidential election of 2004. With the business community routinely producing thousands of dollars for the Unite Glenview Party and that group routinely resorting to last-minute lying about opponents, many who might run against Larry Carlson and his political allies are hesitant.

Howard Silver, Glenview’s long-time plan commissioner, could fall into that camp. Silver tried, unsuccessfully, to be slated on Carlson’s last ticket. He clearly has the credentials and the smarts to serve, but he’s demonstrated independent thinking about local affairs, and that might make the Unite Glenview party uneasy.

Instead, UG selected former Plan Commissioner Jim Patterson for a spot on the ticket. Patterson, an affable soccer Dad, has proven adept at catching spelling mistakes in meeting minutes but has made no serious contribution to local government.

Meanwhile, Silver is telling friends he will not run for office in 2005. An active member of Rotary International, he will – instead – be helping with that group’s centennial celebration in Chicago. Rotary’s gain is Glenview’s loss.

Two elections back, John Winand and Doug Kaiser ran unopposed for park district. In 2005, Judy Beck and Chris Warren will face re-election. Will anyone dare challenge these candidates who voted to send Bart the Bull to slaughter, paint the barn red and pave land beside the Chicago River with asphalt instead of permeable tiles? Will anyone ask tough questions about how these two have handled park district finances -- building a pricey recreation center at The Glen only to discover they have no money to replace ancient outdoor swimming pools?

Next year, the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday, creating a small dilemma for the Glenview Park District which normally stages its late-morning holiday parade from the parking lot of one of the community’s largest churches, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Parks Commissioner M.J. Coulson thought the parish priest might be willing to cancel his final mass to accommodate the parade, but district officials said they need to start staging at least two hours before the procession steps off. What’s more, the parks’ Director of Leisure Services Bob Quill said residents who attend other churches or clergymen who conduct Sunday morning services might object.

"The Fourth has fallen on a Sunday twice before," the long-time park district administrator recalled, "and both times we went with a parade on Monday. The churches all opposed a parade before noon."

District staff opposed the idea of holding an afternoon parade, saying they need time to set up for the evening fireworks. That provoked a second round of debate on whether to provide pyrotechnics Sunday and a parade on Monday. Staff liked that idea because it would allow a true Fourth of July celebration without keeping families out late the night before a work day.

On the other hand, Fourth of July coordinator Mary Van Arsdale said employees would have to work both Sunday and Monday if the celebrations were staged on those days. She ruled out a Saturday parade, saying downtown merchants and medical offices would object.

The board then agreed to hold both events on Monday, July 5 and pledged a strong marketing campaign to let residents know when their parade and fireworks would take place.

Glenview will soon own a computerized machine for making street signs, and the $30,000 bill will be charged to the TIF fund – a pool of cash set aside for development at The Glen. The trustees were excited when Public Works Director Bill Porter explained that signmaking is a labor-intensive process and the easy-to-use machine could cut the amount of time village employees now spend creating street signs the old-fashioned way. "The cost savings are half the time," said Trustee Mike Guinane. Ignoring the fact that a guy on the payroll is a guy on the payroll, he concluded, "This machine will pay for itself."

"I can’t imagine what took you so long to request this," said Trustee Patterson. Village President Carlson joked that the old machine looked like it should be operated by Humphry Bogart or George Raft, and the group voted unanimously to spend the money. Not one member questioned the use of TIF dollars for this purchase or asked if the sign-making machine would be used only for The Glen.

Editor’s note: Once again, it’s important to remember that every penny spent from the TIF fund delays the day when Glenview schools will benefit fully from development at The Glen. To put it more bluntly, we’re borrowing from our children’s education fund to make sign-making easier at Village Hall. That’s what happens when one party runs the show.

When Glenview decided to leave a regional coalition formed to provide emergency dispatch service in the best and cheapest way, Village Manager Paul McCarthy insisted Glenview would actually save money by setting up its own operation. Last week, his fire chief went before the village board to ask for computer software that will link emergency dispatch with record-keeping functions. Originally, Chief Dan Bonkowski explained, the software cost $80,000. He had waited patiently for the price to come down. Now, it was selling for just $40,000, and by partnering with the RED Center we would pay just $20,000 for the software plus $5,000 for licensing and hardware. The trustees agreed without question.

Editor’s note: No one asked the obvious question. What would this have cost Glenview had we continued to cooperate with the neighbors – sharing the price of all software and equipment with nine other communities?

The village has unveiled a $1.3 million plan to restore sections of prairie at The Glen and to build a nature center where children can go before or after visiting the small preserve near the corner of Lehigh and Compass roads. Budget permitting, the building will have a green roof where prairie plants absorb rain water and solar heat while converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. Prairie Steward Kent Fuller said a roof of that kind at Chicago’s city hall reaches 90 degrees on a hot summer day, while the black tar roof next door hits 190 degrees.

Fuller stressed that the building would be modest, with much of the money used to remove non-native plants, sow prairie seeds and build an accessible path for people in wheelchairs. "None of us is interested in building some sort of a monument that has a huge maintenance cost," he said. The village will also install a permeable parking lot that allows rain water and snow melt to seep back into the ground where it is filtered.

The center will be named for Evelyn Tyner, a local pioneer in prairie preservation. Tyner fought to keep the small Woodworth Prairie on Milwaukee Avenue from being developed and later lent her energy and talent as a photographer to saving the Air Station Prairie.

Trustee Mike Guinane asked Parks Commissioner Judy Beck whether the park district might eventually take over the property. "Our hope is to have a close partnership, and what will evolve will evolve,’ Beck said, adding that some park board members are concerned that the village will overbuild. "If it’s too fancy, it might preclude us from accepting [it]."

Editor’s note: The McCarthy administration is quietly trying to unload some of the natural properties it created or acquired during the past decade – hoping the park district will take responsibility and assume the expense. Recognizing the considerable cost of maintaining Gallery Park, Little Bear Garden, the Techny Basin and Air Station Prairie, the park district is in no rush to step up.

As the board reviewed its plans for nature, nature was taking its own unhappy course in Glenview. On Tuesday at dusk, a small green toad hopped across Patriot Boulevard and got stuck at the western curb. A woman passing on a bicycle was thrilled to see wildlife at The Glen and stopped to watch. As the animal struggled to surmount the curb, the woman wondered what to do. If she left the critter, it might move back into traffic. She lacked the courage to pick it up and thought it might just die from fear if she did. Instead, she took a piece of cardboard and scooped it into the grass. As she rode away, the woman wondered where that toad was going and hoped it would find its way to a wetland. Instead, when she returned, she found it flattened on the road, having met its maker under the wheels of someone’s SUV.

Should you encounter a toad in Glenview, experts offer this advice. First, be assured that these amphibians are not dangerous. They live on land and spend their evenings in search of food, fattening up for the winter. If you pick them up, toads don’t bite, but they usually pee in an effort to scare off predators. The best place to take an at-risk toad is the prairie, Gallery Park or the Grove – at least 20 feet from the road.

Editor’s note: Several years ago, the village paid a consultant nearly $10,000 to look for reptiles and amphibians at the Air Station Prairie. He found them and proposed the village include small tunnels or culverts underneath the new roads it built to facilitate the movement of wildlife and prevent road kill. Needless to say, the village didn’t take that advice.

An expert in veterinary medicine says she’s puzzled. Last month, Bart the Bull collapsed at a farm sanctuary in Wisconsin, but he has now recovered, and after reviewing results of a blood test, Dr. Dawn Morin at the University of Illinois says she sees no signs of disease. Bart was apparently exposed to leukosis – a form of leukemia – and carries antibodies to that illness, but Morin says the vast majority of infected animals never develop it. The local vet has speculated Bart might have suffered a simple case of heat stroke in August.

Members of Citizens Organized for Wagners were upset some years ago when the Glenview Announcements editorialized against preserving Wagner Farm, but the editorial board now appears to be in COWS camp. Last week’s paper praised the group on the eve of a prestigious award from the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois.

"Congratulations to the Citizens Organized for Wagners," said the editor in praising "activists who have a genuine interest in Wagner Farm and are willing to put their money where their mouths are." Noting COWS had raised funds to rescue Bart the Bull and offered to pay for staining the weathered old barn, the paper concluded, "The group’s continued lobbying on behalf of the farm it loves creates some political tension from time to time, but it also ensures the Park District weighs all options as it manages the facility and continues to check in with the public as it plans for the farm’s future operation. And that’s great, because the farm belongs to the public – a public whose interest in the farm was fueled by COWS."

Members of COWS’ board gathered at the Chicago Art Institute Saturday night for an awards dinner sponsored by the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. The Glenview group was the first of 10 to receive an ornate trophy for its campaign to preserve the farm, and about a hundred well-heeled guests from around the state showed enthusiastic support as they joined the Glenview table in a cheer of "Moooo." As pictures of Pete Wagner, Fourth of July parade participants and their beloved farm appeared on the big screen, COWS members chuckled. "That barn doesn’t look right," joked one on seeing the old, weathered structure. "It needs a coat of red paint," quipped another. The group missed COWS Vice President Norma Morrison, who was home in bed with viral bronchitis, but they agreed the 87_year_old community leader is a fighter and would recover soon.

Thousands of Cook County residents are getting tax bills with errors according to this week’s edition of The Glenview Announcements. Reporter Irv Leavitt says exemptions for home owners and senior citizens were left off some bills. Those breaks could save $200-$500. The Northfield Township Assessor says she’s getting a dozen calls a day after being deluged with about 50 on the first day tax bills arrived in local mail boxes. To correct their bills, residents must go to the Cook County Assessor’s office at 118 N. Clark St. in downtown Chicago or to the courthouse in Skokie – 5600 Old Orchard.

SAVE THE DATE

-- Want to understand more about village government? Plan to attend public discussions of next year’s budget – Wednesday, October 15 and 22 at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 25 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the board room of Village Hall, 1225 Waukegan Road.

-- The Woods and Wetlands chapter of Sierra Club will meet from 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, October 15 at the Park at Vernon Hills Senior Residence Rainforest, 145 N. Milwaukee Ave. just south of Route 60 and Continental Drive across from CDW. Next month’s meeting will feature a 20-minute multi-media show about Utah’s spectacular canyon country and efforts to preserve that wilderness area. For details call Evan at 680-6437.

-- Gardeners can get some important advice on tool maintenance and sharpening from 7:30-9 p.m. Tuesday, October 7 at the Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road in Glencoe. For details, call 291-9434.

--The Glenview Library Association hosts its annual Book Ball at 7 p.m. Saturday, October 11 at The Glen Club. Tickets are $85 per person. For details, call Anne Dolan at 998-5918.

Terry Wodder is back with some thoughts on a survey to help determine a new library location: "Over the past two years the library board has wasted almost $250,000 on site and public opinion surveys but not a single dime on patron seating. In a 1998 letter, I warned the library board that a study calling for 465 seats – more than 11 per 1,000 residents – might be too high. The average for nearby communities that have recently expanded or built new is 5.79. Library planning expert Anders C. Dahlgren of the University of Wisconsin says towns with fewer than 50,000 residents (like Glenview) need only 4.5 seats per 1,000.

"The fact that the board has failed to count the number of occupied chairs is proof that they are determined to build new regardless of cost, regardless of need, regardless of your right to choose. Next time you bump into a library trustee, ask them why they need so many extra chairs. Better yet, do your own survey. Just count the number of occupied seats the next time you're at the library and e-mail the results to Glenview Watch.

"I did on five occasions last July. The average: a whopping 42 occupied seats. So, what's the big deal about a few empty seats? That's easy. It's one of the reasons why the board's plan will result in 63% more space than 19 other libraries that have recently expanded or built new.

"Fortunately, there is a simple, cost-effective alternative: Swap the five acres of land set aside for a new library at The Glen for the post office's current site on Prairie, add-on to the existing building like Northbrook, Niles, Wilmette and Skokie did to their libraries, and build a new post office at The Glen, leasing it back to the postal service. It can all be done for half the cost of building a new library at The Glen and one-third the cost of a new library at an undisclosed site downtown.

"Call, write or e-mail Larry Carlson or Library Board President Mark Grant. Attend a board meeting. Let them know you support the best solution. Otherwise you're going to be stuck with a new $25-$35 million library with hundreds of unoccupied seats, thousands of square feet of excess space, and a decrepit, out-of-date post office with no off-street parking."

Ron writes about plans to move the library: I know that common sense hardly ever rules in Glenview, but it appears that the library definitely would like to move to The Glen. I think it would be better to move the post office to The Glen and build the library between the old and new site. You can hardly find a spot to park by the post office, and if it were at The Glen, postal trucks wouldn’t be parked all over Lehigh and across the tracks at Bess Hardwaare. One site in The Glen would provide ample parking for employees, customers and mail trucks.

The Watch replies: You are not alone in thinking out of the box about this issue. Critic Terry Wodder has long argued that it would be cheaper to build a new post office and expand the library at its current site, but the deck is being stacked to make a case for locating at The Glen. Having ruled out its present site, the library board claims it would cost an additional $10 million to build downtown. We’d like to hear some alternative scenarios. What if the village were to sell land at The Glen which is now reserved for the new library to a private developer for provision of affordable housing – small houses or condos for young teachers, firemen, police officers, social workers, artists and musicians. That money could then be given to the library to offset the cost of land acquisition at one of Glenview’s industrial parks where a processing station and parking space for trucks could be provided. The library could then expand at its current location, and the people of Swainwood and east Glenview would be happy. You said it, Ron. Common sense rarely rules here.

Downtown with a Library Frown was one of those surveyed about where a new library should be built. He writes: "Bias towards The Glen was obvious when they warned that a library at The Glen could be constructed in one to two years while a library downtown would take three or four years. Which would you prefer? They also claimed a library at The Glen would cost $23 million, creating the need for an $80 annual tax increase for someone with a property tax bill of about $5,000. Downtown the price tag jumped to $36 million or a $130 annual tax hike. Which would you be willing to pay for? I told them I favored the downtown site. It would be convenient by car, bike, foot and train. With other businesses in the area, that location would also make it easy to do several errands at one time. On the other hand, The Glen will be inconvenient for most of Glenview’s 40,000 residents."

And Fritz thinks the survey ignores another key issue: "Nobody has talked about the tax revenue implications of these choices. How much would be lost if Colonial Courts and the Patio Shops were destroyed? What would become of the current library? The village and library boards have no shame. They already know what they want to do. Like the 34-Connect process for District 34, they are going to pass this around until the people in town ‘discover’ their original intention. Apathy will rule the day. The fact that neither the library nor the village survey includes the choice most favored on the last survey, to remodel on the current site, stinks big time."

Mark Lonoff wonders where profits from developing The Glen have gone: "Since 900 acres of former military property were sold by the federal government to the village of Glenview for $1, where did all the excess value go? The excess value is the price of the land, less the cost of development. What is the rough value of such a prime suburban parcel? If you went for nice residential development on 500 acres, you could easily build 1,000 homes on one-third to one-half acre lots and still leave 400 acres for public amenities. At $500,000 per lot, the apparent value for residential land judging from tear downs in North Shore communities, this would yield $500 million. Allowing for the costs of installing streets and sewers of $100 million it would seem the village was due for a windfall of at least $400 million. Is there something wrong with my arithmetic? Where did this money go?"

The Watch replies: You need to begin by subtracting about 12 percent of the land for roads and infrastructure -- property that produced no revenue. Then consider other expenses for redevelopment. We are, for example, building a new fire station at The Glen and are heavily invested in construction of a shopping center that will, we hope, provide long-term sales tax revenue. Two costly parking garages are being built at public expense there. We have already paid for the main roads, street lights and sewers, but new paving efforts are now underway to accommodate the changing landscape and traffic flow at The Glen. Then there are expenses for Gallery Park – an elaborate and ambitious public facility for a community of this size. In addition to the costs of development and maintenance, Glenview agreed to pay its school district, park district and library board for the services they provide to Glen residents, so each year there are so-called "make whole" payments coming out of The Glen kitty. And finally, let us not forget the enormous marketing, legal and financial charges associated with a development of this kind. In the end, we’ll be pleased and surprised if Glenview breaks even on The Glen once the tax increment financing (TIF) arrangement ends.

Our English reader, Barry Gardner, comments on plans for an Internet arcade in Glenview: "We have put about 100 free computers around the borough in community centres and public libraries. Access to the Internet is free. We have even installed terminals in our civic offices, but I must say that use by young people has been very limited, and I think the reason being is that they prefer to use their own PCs at home. My gut feeling is that your Russian gentlemen will lose their money. For your information, our web site is www.havantonline.org.uk "

The Watch replies: Our guys are planning a facility devoted to games, and they say Internet play is more fun with friends around, so perhaps in this limited area they will find a profitable niche. Others in this country have.

Another reader, Howard Wilson, checks in from the west coast where he works for Intel: "My father, Jack Wilson, has just moved here to Oregon after 47 years in Glenview. He has tuned me on to your publication and I enjoy the humor. I was born and raised in Glenview (1957 to 1975), attended OLPH and GBS. I had the privilege of working (both full and part time) for Dave Rugen at the original Rugen Hardware store during my high school and college years from 1973 to 1979. The best part of that job was the ritual scuttlebutt that took place every Saturday morning at the hardware store counter. Anybody who was anybody usually came into Rugen's on Saturday (whether they needed anything or not). I learned a lot about life in general at that place. I find the current state of affairs regarding the old Wagner farm highly amusing (Bart the bull, painting the barn, etc.). I'm sure Pete Wagner is laughing away in his grave. If Pete (who was a real tight wad and would haggle over a $2 pocket knife) were alive today, the barn would be a dilapidated pile of (unpainted) rubble and my golden retriever would be savoring Bart with every bowl of Gravy Train"

The Glenview Golfers replied to Karen’s letter of last week -- defending the Glenview National 9 "by reminding us that St. Andrews Links in Scotland, the ‘Mecca of golf’ as she put it, also has shared greens. Karen neglected to mention St. Andrews was developed in the early 1400's, 600 years ago, when earth-moving equipment consisted of serfs with hand shovels. So we Glenview Golfers should be grateful for the shared greens largesse of our city fathers and learn to appreciate our 15^th century state-of-the-art Glenview National 9's features. As any golfer who has played St. Andrews knows full well, it is not much of a course. And we prefer 20th century features, like all the other golf courses in North America."

YOUR TURN: Write to glenviewwatch@aol.com or 3537 Maple Leaf Drive, Glenview, IL 60025. If you haven’t already done so, please consider making a contribution to support The Watch. Non-deductible checks should be payable to Glenview Watch. Thanks for your support and for reading. Dean Schott and Sandy Hausman, Co-Editors.

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