Y Me!

Lake County doesn't know it but there is yet another election coming up soon -- a consolidated election scheduled for April 9. Illinois holds a consolidated election every two years to consolidate your tax dollars at a local level, like in a township or municipality. That way, government pork can be doled out in consolidated amounts.

However, as readers of this blog are solidly aware ...

Q the Eye/03.09.13

Your LakeCountyEye keeps tabs on who benefits from the government pork in Lake County by reading the political Letters to the Editor before elections. But with the immanent demise of the printed newspaper your LakeCountyEye will need an alternate source to identify those lined up at the trough and sucking on the government teat.

One time-honored old-school standby are campaign contributions. For instance, this is a recent A-1 donation report to a Lake County political party, selected at random from the Illinois The State Board of Elections:

Illinois The State Board of Elections

The donors, Patricia and Vincent Foglia, gave a total of $15,000 to the Ela First Party, a slate on the April ballot for Ela Township government.

Fifteen Grand is a lot of money, particularly for a township election.

It turns out that apparently Patricia and Vincent Foglia head the Advisory Board of the Foglia YMCA in Lake Zurich:

Branch Leadership | Foglia YMCA of Metro Chicago

Looking for a link between Ela Township and the Foglia YMCA, your LakeCountyEye found a Sun-Times story. Ela Township, last year, needed to break a long-term lease with the Foglia YMCA:

Ela Township previously had a 25-year lease with the Foglia YMCA for space it rented for its community room and OMNI offices, for which the Township paid $1.5 million in 1999. Since there is still time left on the lease, Ela Township will receive about $400,000 from the YMCA for the remaining portion. Trustee Jack Reck estimated the Township will also save about $300,000 in utility costs over 12 years.
Ela Community Center to open Monday

Ela Township was about half way into their 1999-2024 lease with the Foglia YMCA when they terminated it. Now your LakeCountyEye may be just a simple country accountant, but half of $1.5 million is not $400,000. It is closer to $750,000. Just sayin!

Note to operatives: you can't always hide from your voters how you choose to burn through spend their money. So it often pays to emphasize the utility costs that all those pork dollars are going to save you, the taxpayer.

But wait there's more: $1.5 million divided by 25 years means Ela Township was spending $60,000 every year to rent some space at the Foglia YMCA.

Now, your LakeCountyEye would be quite pleased to rent out the LakeCountyEye Compound on a $60,000 annual basis (plus utilitity costs and over a 25 year duration) for office and community use. Heck, your LakeCountyEye would settle for $50,000 $40,000 $30,000 $20,000 $15,000 -- final offer. But act soon. It's not too late for your LakeCountyEye to make that political contribution!