Not Business as Usual: Darch Says in State of Village

Village President Karen Darch delivered the State of the Village address at the March 18 Barrington village board meeting.

Prior to the address, Darch pointed out some highlights:

• Economic & Community Development -- 19 net new businesses, 11 jobs created at Heinens, and 9 jobs created at Ace Hardware.
• Public Works -- 27 years as a Tree City USA.
• Engineering & Building --$58,500 in grants used for installation of new crosswalk enhacements. Darch noted a key enhancement was extra flashing at Main Street near Barrington High School. 
• Community & Financial Services & Human Resources --4.02 percent increase in sales tax receipts;  $26 average per household monthly savings due to electrical aggregation.
• Police Department--4.71 on a 5 point scale for customer satisfaction. 
• Fire and EMS -- Barrington Fire Dept. received 1,910 calls.

Following is the complete address:

Tonight’s State of the Village address is in many ways as easy as A, B, C. 

There were more A’s in Village accomplishments in 2012 than even in its bond rating.  The first “A” is for the Administrative Adjudication program which was implemented in July of 2012.  Local Ordinance violation cases have been heard by our administrative judge ever since.  Not only has it been well received by the community because of the convenience and lower cost of attending court here, it has been a time and cost saver for the Village in terms of otherwise having to send staff to Rolling Meadows for prosecution.  Additionally, recently one of our sister Villages, Lake Barrington, has entered into an agreement with us so it may avail itself of our administrative adjudication process in Barrington to the benefit of both of our Villages. 

A second “A” is for ash trees, as we passed our emerald ash borer policy early in 2012 to address the issues brought on by that little green invader.  Our policy is directed at a removal of diseased trees and replanting to create a better overall, varied Village tree canopy, as well as allowing treatment of significant ash trees to further curb the destruction of this blight which the Midwest is experiencing.   

Cost savings for homeowners was the result of “A” number three – aggregation of electrical supply.  Taking advantage of changes in Illinois law which allowed municipalities to seek a competitively priced electrical supply contract on an opt-out basis for its residents, the Village was able to create a program and negotiate a contract which started savings for Village households in August of 2012.  As we saw earlier on the “by the numbers’ page, this has resulted in an average monthly savings of twenty-six dollars for each household in our program.

The much anticipated return of Ace Hardware to our Village caps our list of A’s for 2012.  Since the former Ace departed from the town five years ago, every community survey, town hall meeting, not to mention many private conversations, included the longing for a new hardware store.  After many, many hours and much interaction with various hardware entities over several years our Village staff was pleased to help John and Noni Brown with the process to open their Ace Hardware store in November on Northwest Highway in the former Fischer Nuts/ Home Economist site. 

In addition to our A’s other wonderful accomplishments over the last year have been achieved.  The opening in Barrington of Heinen’s Finer Foods store has been a terrific win for the community, and perhaps part of the reason our sales tax receipts were up again for 2012.   We were honored to be the first location for Heinen’s outside of its Cleveland, Ohio area market. 

Volunteers, working together and with our supportive Village staff and sponsoring businesses have made Barrington an even more exciting place this year.  A new Bike and Pedestrian Plan was prepared by our hard working well versed Bike and Pedestrian Committee in response to the many thoughts we heard about the desire for more pathways throughout the Village as we completed our Comprehensive Plan in 2011. 

The Cultural Commission has hit its stride in the last year and was instrumental in supporting the third annual and ever popular Barrington Art Festival, our holiday activities and recently added the wildly successful Oscar nominated short-film afternoon at the Catlow. 

As we count down toward our 2015 150^th Birthday, the Sesquicentennial Committee has been gearing up over the last year and is well on its way to planning a great celebratory year.

The sometimes under-sung heroes serving on our Village Boards and Commissions were again responsible for significant work that moved our Village forward and we thank them for it.  At the end of 2012, Plan Commission and Architectural Review Commission members spent many hours reviewing the plans for our much awaited Barrington Center Project. 

The B’s of our last year can best be described as a willingness to continue to Buck the trends and not accept Business as usual when there is a better way for Barrington to do something. 

Topping this list would be our continued work on the CN freight increase issue.  As those who have been attuned to this now five-plus year saga, the willingness of Barrington and our other TRAC member communities to engage in the acquisition review process, petition to require a complete environmental impact statement for the acquisition and advocate in the agency and legal process in this case have resulted in unprecedented millions of dollars being paid to communities for mitigation. Some communities came to terms with CN, using our group action as leverage, and other communities have been awarded mitigation by the Surface Transportation Board as confirmed by federal court. 

For Barrington, probably the most impacted community along the CN/ EJ&E line, as our four roads which cross the track (Lake Zurich Road, Route 14, Route 59, and Lake-Cook Road/ Main Street) are well travelled, are the routes to the nearest hospital and all cross the tracks at grade, the saga continues.  Thus far we have received a CN paid for quiet zone completed at Route 59 which ended the constant horn blasting through the Village, some as yet untested limited monitoring capability for our CenCom dispatch, and a three million dollar+ TIGER II grant for the phase 1 engineering for a grade separation at Route 14 and the CN/ EJ&E crossing.  During 2012 that phase 1 project got underway with the Village as lead agency working with IDOT, FHWA, EPA, CN and other interested parties.  Our Citizens Advisory Group, representing people from neighborhoods near the crossing and other community members was selected and met in 2012, and open house meetings for the public also began.  Next month, the Citizens Advisory Group will meet again to consider grade separation options and a public open house will follow two weeks later. 

As the oversight period for the CN acquisition continues at the STB until January 2015, Barrington has continued to work to mitigate the impact of what by 2015 will be 20 possibly 10,000 feet plus freight trains per day through town.  Our petition for a CN funded underpass based on post-acquisition evidence is in the legal process, and our petition for rulemaking to address tank car defects (which in increasing numbers carry ethanol and oil through the Village), was filed in 2012 with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA). 

Our ongoing oversight and research on CN rail operations and those drivers of it have been critical to our ability to understand what lies ahead and the importance of being proactive rather than just reactive, which in this area particularly can be a dead end.  News stories like the production of the tar sands oil in Alberta, Canada and CN’s newly forged agreements with gulf coast refiners, or the non-approval of the Keystone pipeline project all portend implications for Barrington’s rail traffic.  While we may not be able to turn it away, knowledge and action have been our best hope for dealing with it. 

Closer to home, in Springfield, Illinois, Barrington has joined with others to buck the trend of business as usual and continued to push for protection of local government revenues which residents pay and we use to provide local services, in the face of the State’s grab for these revenues as it has failed to get its own fiscal house in order.  Again, this past year and currently, local governments have implored the state to address pension reform including local government public safety pensions for which we do not make the rules or set benefit amounts, but are required to pay out of locally held and guaranteed funds.  Local governments have continued to refuse to sit idly by and just become collateral damage in the state’s financial fiasco. 

A third area in which we were not satisfied with business as usual is in the area of service delivery.  Our quest for more efficient and effective service delivery continues.  In addition to cost savings from the electrical aggregation and administrative adjudication programs, we continue to use new technology to achieve better results.  For 2012, the number of false fire alarms in the Village was down 37% from 2011.  This can be directly attributed to a switchover from phone line transmitted fire alarms to a newer technology – radio transmitted fire alarms.  And speaking of fire, as discussed in my newsletter column in November 2012 the Village must consider all of the costs of each department as we look to run government affordably, efficiently, and well.  As we work toward a new Intergovernmental Agreement with the Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District, uppermost in our minds is providing for your safety, and doing so in a way which recognizes the reality of the service which must be delivered and creates a structure which properly apportions the present costs and legacy costs of this service between the Village and District residents. 

An electronic records management software system was acquired in 2012 making digitization of old records and creation of new digital documents possible over the next few years.  Also, the Village’s radio utility meter reading software gives the Village staff ability to notify customers of unusual spikes in consumption – perhaps indicating an undetected problem – before they receive a large water bill.  Finally, we continued to refine the pay by phone parking options in our commuter parking lot in order to make things more convenient for our customers. 

“C” stands for cooperation, and in 2012, the need for the Village of Barrington to cooperate and work with our local, regional and statewide partners was never more apparent.  This is Barrington’s year to chair the Barrington Area Council of Governments and with our BACOG partners we continue to pursue research on our water quality and quantity studies as the water for all of our area comes from our shared shallow aquifer system, not Lake Michigan.  BACOG, as well as other regional councils of government, including the Northwest Municipal Conference of which Barrington is also a founding member, have joined with county governments outside of Cook County and as far away as DeKalb and Kendall counties to work together as the Northwest Water Planning Alliance.  Our bimonthly meetings in Elgin over the past two years have been an opportunity for the group, all of whom are non-Lake Michigan water users, to share information, best practices, and conservation techniques.  The alliance has recommended conservation practices to our local governments and has just been awarded a Technical Assistance grant to further study our water supply all in an effort to understand the supply and protection of our all-important water resources. 

Barrington also works with the 278 municipalities in our Chicagoland region through the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus.  It is my pleasure currently to serve as chair of the Caucus executive board, alongside the Vice-Chair Mayor Tom Weisner of Aurora, Illinois’ second largest city, and our Secretary Mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago, of course our largest Illinois city.  As a large regional group, we have worked together in support of or against legislation or rule making that effects municipalities.  We have received grant money, such as that which Barrington received to do our tree survey, the basis for our Emerald Ash Borer policy, or acquire electrical efficiency at our wastewater treatment plant.  The Caucus also addresses other issues facing our region such as business development opportunities or regional transportation needs.  Whether Barrington has been for or against on any issue, our seat at the table has given us a voice which has not always been the case in prior years. 

With our colleagues statewide, through the Illinois Municipal League, and the Pension Fairness for Illinois Coalition, which includes business as well as municipal interests, we have continued to press the issue of pension reform.  Our goal is to have our state legislature, which has control of this issue, including  our local pensions, address this issue in a way to make it affordable and sustainable, not another kick the can down the road problem.  We have been pressing this issue for the last several years and hope to see reform this year from Springfield. 

As we move through 2013, we should recall that it was 150 years ago in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, that our forebears decided that Barrington should become an incorporated Village.  In 1865, that status was recognized by the State of Illinois, ergo our Sesquicentennial celebration planned for 2015.  As we look back we must also focus on making our present and future something our descendants will be proud of 150 years from now. 

We completed 2012 in good financial condition with infrastructure and efficiency improvements, cost savings for our residents, more economic development and a positive sense of community.  It is a tried and true second set of ABC’s which we all recognize to be important, which will guide us in the months and years ahead - An Attitude that keeps us striving to make Barrington a great place to live, work, and play, and ready to meet the challenges that will inevitably come our way; Budgeting carefully to be certain to remain in the black and be ready for those rainy days; and Caring always about how the decisions made or not made will impact our community in the short and long run. 

The involvement of our business, cultural and philanthropic community, residents and friends from the area and beyond has made for vitality, heart and fun in our Village.  The dedication of our many, many citizen volunteers has enabled charitable work and the work of self-governance to move forward.  That latter work has been supported by the endless effort, innovation and patience of all of our Village staff.  Our department heads and their capable leader, our tireless Village Manager, Jeff Lawler, have made a huge difference in the successful outcome of many projects which you, the Village Board of Trustees have initiated, embraced and fostered.  This year’s finished product and our responsible forward focus have paved the way for a bright future.  It is as clear as A, B, C. 

Thank you.