Wednesday, Februar y 26, 2014
Vol. 19 No. 12
Voyager Media Publications • shorewoodsentinel.com
LOCAL
SCHOOLS
District 4 contingent say ill Barber needs to step down Mayor Tom Giarrante noted he had talked to Barber about her absence By Stewart Warren For the Bugle
BY JEANNE MILLSAP for THe SeNTINeL two shorewood students will be advancing to state competition at the rube goldberg Machine Competition in March after their team took second place in the contest held Feb. 18 at Minooka Community High school. Emily Wielbik and Kasey Watts, both Shorewood juniors, along with their teammates Haleigh Sullivan and Aly Gagnon, juniors from Minooka, placed for the “Countdown to Rube Day” machine they designed, which consisted of 30 steps of New Year’s Eve balls dropping, moving groundhogs, a flying Cupid, a spinning fourleaf clover, a string-pulling Easter bunny, a pilgrim on a Thanksgiving teeter totter and a coal-releasing Santa Claus hat. The last step in the team’s construction was a pulley that zipped up a zipper, which was the goal for all 20 teams in the competition. The team was excited at placing so high in the contest required by honors physics students at the school. “We were really happy with the outcome,” Aly Gagnon said. “We felt like we were the underdogs when we went in there.We were
photo bY JeANNe miLLsAp/FoR the seNtiNeL
MCHS students, from left, Kasey Watts of Shorewood, Haleigh Sullivan of Minooka), Emily Wielbik of Shorewood and Aly Gagnon of Minooka pose with the “Countdown to Rube Day” machine they designed for the annual Rube Goldberg competition. Placing second at MCHS, they will compete at the University of Illinois March 14.
all really nervous.” The one human intervention the team had to make was giving a train a little nudge. Points were deducted for that mishap.The entire run of their machine took only 15 seconds. “All this hard work for only 15 seconds,”Ally said with a laugh. “To tell the truth,” Emily said, “I was really surprised … We had one intervention. It was so much fun, more than I thought it would be.” “I was really praying it would work,”
Kasey Watts said. “I was so nervous. I didn’t want anything to go wrong … At the beginning, I didn’t think I could build anything like that. But if you set your mind to anything, you can do it if you persevere.” Emily said the team first considered a Christmas-based theme for their machine, then changed it to a holiday one after they realized Christmas might be a more popular subject, and the
>> See goldberg | page 2
On Aug. 19, Councilwoman Susie Barber became ill at the end of a Joliet City Council meeting and left City Hall in an ambulance. She has not been at a city meeting since then. Some residents who live in her district four neighborhood are upset about that, and they came to the Feb. 18 Council meeting to complain. “I am here to talk CoUnCIlwoMAn about the ‘elephant in sUsIe bArber, dIstrICt 4 the room,’” said John Sheridan of 1122 N. Center St., a member of the Cunningham Neighborhood Council,the residents’ association in district 4. Sheridan said he was referring to fact that city officials weren’t discussing the fact that Barber had not been around for 183 days. “Enough is enough,” he said. The situation simply was not fair to the residents, he said. District 4 was not represented when the city chose a new city manager and developed the 2014 budget, Sheridan said. He urged the city officials to do something. After all, Barber was paid $20,000 a year to serve. “Just how long do you think any other employer in Joliet would allow this to go on in their business without putting their employee on long-term disability,” Sheridan said. >> See step down | page 3