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Tuesday, April 8, 2014
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Hopkins Pool’s future up in air DeKalb official: ‘Money constraints are driving this to be a renovation’ By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Hopkins Pool could be renovated rather than replaced based on the financial limitations of the DeKalb Park District. During the DeKalb Park District’s ad-hoc Pool Consideration Committee meeting Monday, members discussed the options for keeping the existing basin while replacing mechanics such as pipes and gutters.
What’s next: The Hopkins Pool Consideration Committee will hold its final meeting at 6:30 p.m. April 21. The committee expects to present its findings and recommendations to the Park District Board this summer. Preliminary information from PHN Architects placed renovation costs between $3.8 million and $5.7 million. PHN
Submarine hunting for source of ‘pings’ in plane search By NICK PERRY The Associated Press PERTH, Australia – Search crews were for the first time sending a sub deep into the Indian Ocean to try and determine whether faint sounds detected by equipment on board an Australian ship are from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane’s black boxes, Australia’s acting prime minister said today. Warren Truss, Australia’s acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, said the crew on board the Ocean Shield will launch the underwater vehicle, the Bluefin 21 autonomous sub, today. The unmanned miniature sub can create a sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the sea floor. If it maps out a debris field, the crew will replace the sonar system with a camera unit to photograph any wreckage. Angus Houston, who is heading the search, said Monday that the Ocean Shield, which is towing sophisticated U.S. Navy listening equipment, detected late Saturday and early Sunday two distinct, long-lasting sounds underwater that are consistent with the pings from an aircraft’s “black boxes” – the flight data and cockpit voice recorders. Houston dubbed the find “a most promising lead” in the monthlong hunt for clues to the plane’s fate, but warned it could take days to determine whether the sounds were connected to Flight 370. Crews have been trying to re-locate the sounds since Sunday, but have thus far had no luck, Truss said. “Today is another critical day as we try and reconnect with the signals that perhaps have been emanating from
the black box flight recorder of the MH370,” he said. “The connections two days ago were obviously a time of great hope that there had been a significant breakthrough and it was disappointing that we were unable to repeat that experience yesterday.” Truss said the crew would use the sub today to examine the water in the search area in the hopes of another breakthrough. Finding the black boxes is key to unraveling what happened to Flight 370, because they contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings that could explain why the plane veered so far off-course during its flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8. But time was running out to find the devices, whose locator beacons have a battery life of about a month. Today marks exactly one month since the plane vanished. “Everyone’s anxious about the life of the batteries on the black box flight recorders,” Truss said. “Sometimes they go on for many, many weeks longer than they’re mandated to operate for – we hope that’ll be the case in this instance. But clearly there is an aura of urgency about the investigation.” The first sound picked up by the equipment on board the Ocean Shield lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost, Houston said. The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again – this time recording two distinct “pinger returns” that lasted 13 minutes. “Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder,” Houston said.
pool and reporting those findings to the park board. The committee does not take any action. Park board members last year abandoned a $5 million plan to replace the pool in its existing footprint after three new members were elected to the five-member board. The board has since appointed two new members, Dean Holliday to replace Don Irving, who died late last year, and Bryant Irving – Don Irving’s bother – after Mike Teboda
estimated building a new pool would cost about $6.4 million. “I really think money constraints are driving this to be a renovation,” park board Vice President Per Faivre said, adding the costs of a renovation could be pared down. Faivre serves on the committee along with Commissioner Keith Nyquist, community members and park district staff. The committee was formed in October with the charge of investigating the options for the 40-year-old
resigned last week for health reasons. DeKalb Park Board leaders last year also briefly discussed partnering with the Sycamore Park District on a new pool, but abandoned those efforts because DeKalb officials did not want to spend money on land for a joint facility. A referendum that proposed higher property taxes to pay for a more expensive pool renovation was rejected by voters by a margin of 3 to
1 in 2010. The District has until March 2015 to have a plan in place to bring the existing pool into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Committee member Steve Irving on Monday asserted between $1.3 million and $1.5 million could be cut from the renovation project such as landscaping, re-routing Dresser Road and
Communities eye impact fees
Photos by Danielle Guerra - dguerra@shawmedia.com
Workers for Rood Construction frame a porch roof on a newly constructed house Tuesday in the North Grove Crossings subdivision in Sycamore.
Some ditch revenue stream to spur residential growth By DEBBIE BEHRENDS dbehrends@shawmedia.com Maple Park Village President Kathy Curtis is hopeful that reducing impact fees will jump-start residential growth in her community. Village board members voted in March to suspend most impact fees for the coming year, a move Curtis said is good for the village’s future. Maple Park hasn’t issued any permits to build new homes in the past three years, or so far this year. “We’ve seen no activity yet, but are hoping the suspension will spur development on the 100 vacant lots we have,” Curtis said. Impact fees were insti-
tuted by many communities during the housing boom to bridge the gap between when new residents start using local services and when they begin paying property taxes. Since the 2008 economic downturn, a lack of new construction, coupled with falling property values have left taxing bodies looking for new revenue streams. Genoa has been suspending impact fees for the first 20 homes built there each year in recent years; while DeKalb, Sycamore and Cortland haven’t made any recent changes in their impact fee structure.
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Luis Guzman of Brueckner Framing carries a stack of 2-by-4s while working on framing the first story of a house Tuesday in the North Grove Crossings subdivision in Sycamore.
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