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McHENRY COUNTY 2016 CANDIDATES OFFICIALLY ENTER RACE
Officials: Low gas prices, rain forecast for Thanksgiving By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com Local residents taking holiday trips will find plummeting gas prices and soggy conditions during what experts predict will be the busiest Thanksgiving travel week in seven years. AAA projects 46.9 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home during the holiday. It’s a 0.6 percent increase over last Voice your y e a r a n d t h e largest number opinion of travelers since 2007, the agency How far are reported. you traveling “While many for Thankspeople remain giving? Vote cautious about online at the economy and NWHerald. their finances, com. many thankful Americans continue to put a premium on traveling to spend the holiday with loved ones,” AAA President and CEO Marshall Doney said in a news release. An estimated 8.5 million vehicles – about 3 percent more than last year – will be on Illinois Tollways from Wednesday to Monday, according to a news release from Illinois Tollway Executive Director Greg Bedalov. Wednesday is predicted to be the busiest travel day, with more than 1.7 million vehicles predicted to be on Illinois tollways. AAA officials estimate nearly 89 percent of Thanksgiving travelers nationwide will drive. They’ll find historically low prices at the pump. Gas price analyst group GasBuddy projects by Thanksgiving day, average gas prices will be below $2, the lowest gas prices have gone since March 2009. McHenry County prices had already dipped below that level by Monday, when GasBuddy reported the average price per gallon at $1.96. The average for the Chicago metropolitan area was $2.13 a gallon, while the state average was about $2.01. Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, said dropping prices won’t necessarily result in a spike in the
Photos by H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
Recorder candidate Joni Smith (right) and others wait for the McHenry County Clerk’s Office to open Monday. Smith was the first in line after arriving at 6:29 a.m. to file her petition for the March 15 primary election.
Hopefuls file for primary elections Monday marked first day By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com WOODSTOCK – The first minute of the first day candidates have to file to run for office in the March 15 primary was a busy one for the McHenry County Clerk’s Office. About two dozen Republican candidates, many of them newcomers, lined up at 8 a.m. sharp Monday morning to submit their petitions.
McHenry County Clerk Mary McClellan (right) and staff prepare to open the office for the candidate petition filing. About two dozen Republican candidates, many of them newcomers, lined up before 8 a.m. Monday to submit their petitions.
All six McHenry County Board GOP primaries, as well as the contested races for County Board chairman and county recorder, will require lotteries to determine ballot order, County Clerk Mary McClellan said. Incumbent Chairman Joe Gottemoller and challenging County Board member Michael Walkup, both Republicans from Crystal Lake, filed Monday morning. This election is the first in
which the voters will directly elect the chairman. Walkup also filed to run for his County Board seat representing District 3. If Walkup wins both elections, he intends to hold both seats so he can continue to vote on issues – state law forbids popularly elected chairmen in counties of McHenry County’s size from voting.
What it means: Candidates have until the end of the day Monday to file to run in the March 15 primary. On the Web: To see a complete list of candidates running in the 2016 primary elections, visit NWHerald.com.
See ELECTIONS, page A4
See TRAVEL, page A4
O’Hare top offender in increased ground delays at U.S. airports By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ The Associated Press
AP file photo
Planes taxi on the runway Sept. 8, 2008, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
NEW YORK – On a recent morning, Delta Air Lines Flight 435 pushed back early from the gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Passengers watched the safety video and settled in for a six-hour trip. Then they waited. And waited. Still within sight of the gate, their jet sat motionless because of airport congestion. It wasn’t until 30 minutes after passen-
gers buckled in that they were finally in the sky. It’s a scene playing out across the country. According to an Associated Press analysis, airplanes spent 23 minutes and 32 seconds, on average, taxiing between gates and runways during the first nine months of the year. That’s the longest it has been since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started tracking taxi times in 1995 and a 50-second increase over last year’s average. For passengers, the rising delays add to the frustrations
of travel. A plane might land early but then sit waiting for a gate to open up. Flights still are arriving “on time” but only because airlines have increased scheduled flying times to account for the added taxi times. The Delta flight made it to the gate in San Francisco 10 minutes ahead of schedule despite the takeoff delays. The creep in taxi times is attributed to a series of changes: massive runway construction projects at some of the nation’s busiest airports; schedule changes that increase the num-
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ber of flights at peak hours; and new, distant runways that relieve congestion but require more time to reach. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” said Vikram Krishnan, a partner in the aviation practice of consultancy Oliver Wyman. The problems on the ground are costing airlines dearly. “Two, three, four, five minutes in a fleet of 500 planes a day is significant amounts of money,” aviation consultant Mike Boyd said.
See AIRPORTS, page A4
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