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D-155 tax levy to rise slightly
NOVEMBER IS NATIONAL EPILEPSY AWARENESS MONTH
Unanimous vote by board OKs 2 percent increase By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com CRYSTAL LAKE – Community High School District 155 taxpayers will likely see the taxes they pay to the district rise next year. The school board unanimously approved a 2 percent increase on its property tax levy at its meeting last week, bringing the levy to a proposed $70.5 million. A state-mandated tax cap limits how much additional property tax revenue the district can bring in, tying the increases to inflation plus new growth. The inflation rate, as determined by the Consumer Price Index, is 1.5 percent, and the district expects to add about $7.5 million in assessed value to the tax rolls, said Marty McConahay, interim assistant superintendent of finance for the district. The new growth is about a million more than the district added last year but less than a percent of the district’s total assessed value, according to the McHenry County Clerk’s Office. McConahay estimated the district’s tax rate would increase from 2.8 to 3.1 this year. This rate does not include any bond levies. Property taxes make up the majority of the $123.2 million budget for the 201415 school year, although not all these taxes will go to this
Kyle Grillot – kgrillot@shawmedia.com
Ben Lukas helps customers Friday at a 7-Eleven in Crystal Lake. Lukas has been working for the convenience store for the past two months after being out of work for five years, including three and a half years on disability. “I’ve never been so happy to work a minimum wage job,” Lukas said. Two years ago, Lukas had a cranial lobotomy to address his epilepsy. He now hopes to return to school and become involved with human services and work with the Epilepsy Foundation.
‘Everything has been normal’ CL man rejoins workforce after 2 years without seizures
By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com CRYSTAL LAKE – Ben Lukas has never been so happy to have a minimum-wage job. On Aug. 18, 2009, he had been a 25-year-old automotive mechanic, just home from work. But a couple minutes later, his brother found him on the floor having a grand mal seizure. He had two more grand mal seizures, also called tonic-clonic seizures, that day at the hospital, earning him the diagnosis of epilepsy. With that, everything changed. He couldn’t drive. He couldn’t work. He couldn’t go out to the bar with his friends without worrying the large crowds and loud noises would trigger a seizure. But after a right cranial lobotomy two years ago to remove about
a quarter-inch piece from his right hippocampus where there was a concentration of scar tissue, Lukas has been seizure-free. And by hitting the two-year mark, doctors figure that what he’s experienced up until this point is what the rest of his life will likely be like. “It’s an awesome feeling,” said Lukas, now 31. “That’s like the main, main milestone. All the EEGs have been normal. Everything has been normal since the surgery. All the testing we’ve done just to check everything has been completely normal.” The surgery did result in some short-term memory impairment, and every now and then, he’ll have trouble finding the right words. So step by step, Lukas has been regaining the parts of everyday life
See SEIZURES, page A5 See D-155, page A2
Grand jury focused on key ‘tussle’ in Ferguson teenager’s death By DAVID A. LIEB and HOLBROOK MOHR
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n Protesters return to riot-scarred Ferguson streets. PAGE B6 FERGUSON, Missouri – Some witnesses called it a n Anger at Ferguson case based tussle. Others described it as on emotion, evidence. PAGE B7 The Associated Press
a tug-of-war. Ferguson officer Darren Wilson testified that they were fighting over his handgun. None of the witnesses who testified, other than Wilson, could say exactly what was happening inside his police
car, but by almost all accounts, Michael Brown was physically struggling with the officer through his open window moments before he was fatally shot on Aug. 9.
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“At this point I’m like, why Wilson blamed it on Brown, saying the teenager reached isn’t this working? This guy is going to kill me if he gets ahold through his of this gun. I pulled it a third driver’s side time, it goes off.” window, hit Wilson’s description of his him in the face, state of mind during that inicalled him a tial confrontation may help [expletive] and explain why jurors decided grabbed his not to indict. One of the legal gun. Wilson standards for justifiable use told the grand jury that he Darren Wilson of deadly force in Missouri is whether an officer reasonably pulled the trigger twice in his own defense, believed his life was in danger. Thousands of pages of testibut no shots went off.
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mony reviewed by The Associated Press show the encounter between the white police officer and the black 18-year-old started off badly, and very quickly spiraled out of control. Wilson had just wrapped up a call about a sick child. Brown had just stolen a pack of cigarillos from a convenience store. Wilson spotted Brown and a friend walking down the center of a residential street, and told them to move aside. They refused, and Brown re-
sponded with an expletive. That was the moment when Wilson said he realized Brown matched the description of the robbery suspect, and decided to confront the young men singlehandedly, backing up his vehicle to block Brown’s path. What happened next was witnessed by people in at least two passing vehicles and residents watching from the porches and balconies of
See FERGUSON, page A5
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