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Janu ar y 25 , 2016 • $ 1 .0 0
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Officials to mull Sycamore agreement City Council, Planning Commission to convene for joint meeting on development future By KATIE SMITH ksmith@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – The City Council and Planning Commission will convene Monday for a joint meeting to discuss a plan that would pave the way for adding 300 acres to the city and allow for residential development in the rural area northwest of the city.
Sycamore aldermen referred the highly debated annexation agreement back to the city’s Planning Commission in November, with the hope that a special workshop might smooth out the kinks in the agreement, which proved unpopular with people already living in the area. “This is just more of a meeting for the two bodies and the petitioners to get
together and discuss what the sticking points are, what some of the issues are with the relationships with property drainage and that sort of thing,” Sycamore Mayor Ken Mundy said. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday and will have time for public comment, Mundy said. Most of the meeting, however, will focus on brainstorming ways
to work around council members’ concerns, including the developments’ proximity to the Sportsman’s Club, Mundy said. The council rejected the proposed annexation agreement at a meeting Nov. 2 after neighboring landowners raised concerns about the impact of future development. However, they later voted,
5-3, to reconsider the agreement at another time. The landowners have said they are willing to compromise on some points to move forward with the annexation plans and offered to bar the allowance of guest houses by limiting buildings to one per lot. They also have agreed to increase the the amount of land required for horses
and livestock from three to five acres, and remove the three-story height allowance. Neither the Planning Commission nor the City Council will take action at Monday’s meeting, Mundy said. “I think we need some clarification about the points of the plan to see if it’s workable,” he said.
President facing challenges
Snow-filled Kishwaukee College leader steps in amid state budget impasse weekend brings hard commute By RHONDA GILLESPIE
rgillespie@shawmedia.com
MALTA – Kishwaukee College’s new president doesn’t have plans to shake up things at the community college, but Laurie Borowicz said she’ll be paying close attention to the fiscal mayhem in Springfield that is wreaking havoc on public higher education funding. “We’ve not experienced anything quite like this in Wisconsin,” she said. “The only challenge I feel like I am facing here is the monetary challenge.” The 53-year-old was tapped last month to be the college’s new leader. Tom Choice stepped down after 14 years at Kishwaukee College, the last eight as president. Trustees said Borowicz was picked, in part, because she had weathered money troubles at Northcentral Technical College, in Wausau, Wisconsin. She had been the vice president of student services there before starting Jan. 11 at Kishwaukee College. Borowicz hails from a state known for its own tumultuous political times, including a Republican governor whom Democrats tried to recall. But she admits that Illinois is a bit different. Here, the clash between the GOP governor and the Democrats who hold a supermajority in the legislature has led to a state budget impasse that shows little sign of being resolved anytime soon. “We endured some pretty significant budget cuts, and we had to do a lot of layoffs and reductions, and become very efficient. So that part of the process, I have been through. But we knew our bottom line, how much we were going to be losing,” she said of her time in Wisconsin. “The issue here is we just don’t have any idea as we build our budget for next year. We don’t know if we can count on any of that money.” Kishwaukee College has not received any portion of the $5 million in state aid it expects. The amount is about 22 percent of Kishwaukee College’s $23 million fiscal year 2016 budget. “It’s very hard to be able to say that 22 percent of what we have in our budget are things that we can easily discontinue. It’s very hard,” Borowicz said. But for now, the school is chugging along because vacant positions won’t be filled, travel reimbursements have been curtailed, departments had to cut back on expenses, and the college put a freeze on capital projects, officials said. There are no plans to lay off any of the 450 faculty and staff or have significant program cuts, Borowicz said. In fact, Borowicz said she is taking time in these early days on the job to simply listen. She said her first days after arriving on campus were spent hearing from faculty and staff. She greeted some of the college’s 9,000 students
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and VERENA DOBNIK The Associated Press
Photos by Danielle Guerra - dguerra@shawmedia.com
Kishwaukee College President Laurie Borowicz poses for a portrait on her first day at Kishwaukee College in Malta on Tuesday, the start of the spring semester. Jan. 19, the first day of the semester. “It was really good, and they had a lot of great things to say,” she said. “People who are connected to this college or who have been to this college are very passionate about what goes on here.” Kishwaukee College could not front state grant awards for 460 of the 2,000 students who get financial aid there. Still, the new president said she takes the helm of a school in good fiscal shape. She credits the board of trustees with prudent money handling, which she said has the college positioned to ride out the state’s fiscal woes – albeit Borowicz shakes Trey King’s hand on her first day at Kishwaukee College in Malta on Tuesday. King, of Sycamore, was registering for classes. briefly.
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Proposed local bar wants liquor, gaming license / A3
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NEW YORK – After a weekend of sledding, snowboarding and staying put, the blizzard-blanketed Eastern U.S. will confront a Monday commute slowed by slick roads, damaged transit lines and endless mounds of snow. Authorities cautioned against unnecessary driving, airline schedules were in disarray, and commuter trains will be delayed or canceled for many as the work week begins after a storm that dumped near record snows on the densely populated Washington, D.C., to New York City corridor. The last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday, but crews raced the clock all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks devoid of their usual bustle. Ice chunks plunging from the roofs of tall buildings menaced people who ventured out in Philadelphia and New York. High winds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side kept the snow from entirely swallowing the tiny Mini Cooper of Daniel Bardman, who nervously watched for falling icicles as he dug out. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars covered with snow all week after a 1-day record of 26.6 inches fell in Central Park. That advice came too late for Bob Raldiris, who tried shoveling his Nissan Maxima out of a spot in Ridgewood, Queens, before passing plows and trucks spoiled his labor. “This is terrible,” he said, pointing to a pile of snow 3 feet high. Sunday’s brilliant sunshine and gently rising temperatures provided a respite from the blizzard that paralyzed Washington and dropped a record 29.2 inches on Baltimore. The weekend timing could not have been better, enabling many to enjoy a gorgeous winter day. It was just right for a huge snowball fight in Baltimore, where more than 600 people responded to organizer Aaron Brazell’s invite on Facebook. “I knew people would be cooped up in their houses and wanting to come outside,” said Brazell, who was beaned by multiple blasts of perfectly soft but firm snow. But treacherous conditions remained: Of at least 30 deaths blamed on the weather, shoveling snow and breathing carbon monoxide claimed more lives than car crashes as people recovered from a storm that dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England. The Pennsylvania Turnpike reopened Sunday afternoon near Pittsburgh after more than 500 cars, trucks and buses – some carrying the Duquesne University men’s basketball team and the Temple University women’s gymnastics squad – got stuck Friday night. The huge backup happened after trucks couldn’t climb through the mountains toward the Allegheny tunnels in what would become 35 inches of snow. But one day of sunshine wasn’t enough to clear many other roads. Federal offices were closed Monday, and Virginia’s state workers were told to stay home. Schools from Washington to the Jersey Shore gave students Monday off; in the D.C. suburbs, classes also were canceled for Tuesday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned
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