Daylight savings time ends: Did you set your clocks back?
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2013
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PREP FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS • SPORTS, C1
2013 ILLINOIS GRAND CHAMPION
Cary-Grove beats Guilford, advances to second round
Teen fiddler takes talent to national contest Planit Style, 8
Georgia Rae Mussared
Athletics earns its keep
Experts say local use of krokodil not likely By CHELSEA McDOUGALL cmcdougall@shawmedia.com
Lathan Goumas – lgoumas@shawmedia.com
Huntley fans trickle in to the home side of the stadium before a game Sept. 20 at Huntley High School. Huntley recently completed a $3.6 million renovation of is sports facility.
School officials: Benefits well worth sports’ bit of budget By SHAWN SHINNEMAN sshinneman@shawmedia.com
Three years ago, faced with a deficit that was thought to be more than $4 million, McHenry District 156 officials threatened an end to extracurriculars. If voters didn’t say yes to raising taxes 60 cents per $100 in equalized assessed value, they said, students could kiss band and Key club goodbye. Still more fearsome to many: how could a community survive without sports? “Athletics taught me how
to compete,” resident John Meyer said at a school board meeting shortly after the referendum was voted down, according to Northwest Herald archives. “We cannot take this away.” But a debate exists about whether those strong feelings in the U.S. toward high school sports might actually set students back when it comes to academics. Some argue that school districts across the country over-em-
phasize the importance of sports, putting hundreds of thousands of tax dollars toward athletics every year, sometimes undertaking multi-million dollar stadium renovations, while the financial times call for cuts. McHenry County schools have been no stranger to patching deficits in recent years, yet significant cuts to sports have been sparse, if
See ATHLETICS, page A8
While terrifying, the reports of krokodil making its way to McHenry County and a nearby suburb could be overblown, drug experts say. Earlier this month, a Centegra doctor said the health system might have treated a patient with large lesions who had injected krokodil – a horrific, flesh-eating drug identified in Russia. A doctor in Will County said he treated three Joliet women with similar symptoms. The drug also been reported in Arizona and Utah. Bu the Drug Enforcement Agency has not been able to confirm that the flesh-eating heroin lookalike has made its way to the U.S. Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Chicago field office, said agents in five neighboring states are buying heroin, which is later lab-tested for krokodil. The tests have all been negative. “At this point we do not have any samples that have come back positive,” Riley said. “We have not seen it. That doesn’t mean we’re not aggressively trying to identify it. We just haven’t seen it.” Krokodil is a synthetic form of a opiate-like drug called desomorphine. It is used as a cheap heroin alternative in Russia and Ukraine,
“At this point we do not have any samples that have come back positive. We have not seen it. That doesn’t mean we’re not aggressively trying to identify it. We just haven’t seen it.” Jack Riley special agent in charge of the DEA’s Chicago field office
Voice your opinion: What do you think about how much high schools spend on athletics? Vote online at NWHerald.com. See KROKODIL, page A5
Report: For lawmakers, no easy fix for Illinois’ financial woes By SARA BURNETT The Associated Press CHICAGO – As Illinois lawmakers return to Springfield for the final week of the fall legislative session, it remains uncertain whether they’ll address the nearly $100 billion public pension shortfall – the worst in the nation. Even if they do, Illinois won’t be out of the woods financially, according to a
sobering report issued by the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs Fiscal Futures Project. The authors concluded Illinois’ finances are in such bad shape it will take a multipronged approach to fix it. They found that even if lawmakers make permanent the temporary income tax hike passed in 2011, the state is still on course to have a more than $7 billion budget gap by 2025.
LOCALLY SPEAKING
But if the tax increase is rolled back in 2015 as scheduled, the budget shortfall would be $14 billion by 2025. Professor Richard Dye, one of the authors of the study, spoke to The Associated Press about how Illinois can repair things – and what will happen if it doesn’t. Here are edited excerpts of the interview:
Q: How bad is the state’s financial situation? A: It’s serious. Illinois
already has the lowest bond rating and highest borrowing costs of any state. Getting to the actual point where [the state is] illiquid, that may not happen for several years. But on the current path, it certainly would.
Q: Lawmakers are considering both a solution to the pension problem and alternatives to letting the tax increase sunset. Which is the more pressing issue?
WOODSTOCK
POT ZONING RESTRICTIONS MULLED Officials want to put zoning restrictions on medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation centers should any take interest in Woodstock. Proposed changes to the city’s unified development ordinance would require any entrepreneur with an interest in opening either type of facility to first acquire a special use permit. The distinction would allow public input should someone apply. For more, see page B1.
Tom Templeton Sarah Nader – snader@shawmedia.com
HIGH
LOW
52 38 Complete forecast on A12
McHENRY COUNTY: Dealerships adjust to new technologies in cars. Business, D1
Where to find it Business D1-4 Classified F1-8 Local&Region B1-6
Vol. 28, Issue 307 Lottery Obituaries Opinion
A2 B5 A11
Planit Style Inside Puzzles F3 Sports C1-12
A: The state has such a large problem that it is a tax problem and a spending problem and a pension obligation problem. In terms of immediate crisis, it’s an imbalance between tax and spending. If we look out 10 or 15 years, it’s the pension problem. In my view, all three problems need to be solved. Q: Do you feel like the public has not yet grasped the urgency of this?
A: Yes. People say “Oh they’re lying about the problem” or “They’re just overpaid.” Simplistic solutions abound. I do not think that even with swinging a twoby-four we’ve got the mule’s attention yet that this is a profound and multipronged problem. Q: What has to happen on the spending side? See ILLINOIS, page A5
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