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June 15, 2015 • $1.00
UNDERSTANDING THEIR ROLES
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MCC seeks search firm
BARRINGTON HILLS-TRAINED RIDER TO COMPETE IN SPECIAL OLYMPICS WORLD SUMMER GAMES
Board weighs cost in narrowing candidates to 3 By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com
Photos by Sarah Nader – snader@shawmedia.com
Jake McManus, 19, of Lake Barrington trains Thursday at Bravehearts Therapeutic Riding in Harvard. McManus, who is autistic, is one of 15 athletes and eight coaches competing for the United States in the equestrian events at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles in July.
Equine therapy vaults teen onto world stage By ZACH BROOKE zbrooke@shawmedia.com BARRINGTON – Jacob McManus was a kid in trouble, until he hopped onto a horse. McManus, 19, who is autistic, was still nonverbal and struggling with coordination when his mother, Stacie, brought him to his first stable when he was 5 years old. He was there to try hippotherapy, a form of treatment utilizing horses as therapeutic tools. As a child, Stacie had ridden horses and loved it. When she heard about a center opening in the area, she decided to take a chance to see what horses could do for Jacob. “The paper had an article about a new center that was opening up in Barrington Hills when we first moved out here 17 years ago. I’d
had seen it and thought, ‘How cool would that be?’ ” Stacie said. “Jake was taking speech therapy and occupational therapy – you know when your kid doesn’t talk, you’re in the midst of the diagnosis, you’re doing a lot things trying to find answers and solutions and things that help.” The first impression wasn’t promising. “They put a helmet on his head, and he screamed the whole time,” Stacie said. “It was tight,” Jake interjected. But as soon as he was placed on the horse, something special happened. Jake bonded with the horse in a way he had yet to connect with the outside world. It was readily apparent he would be able to develop
See RIDER, page A8
Director of operations Paddy McKevitt watches Thursday as Jake McManus, 19, of Lake Barrington hoses off his horse after training at Bravehearts Therapeutic Riding in Harvard.
CRYSTAL LAKE – Cost is one of the factors being weighed as the board charged with finding McHenry County College a new president considers what search firms are in the running. The college’s Board of Trustees narrowed the pool of firms to three after a discussion that weighed the guarantees the firms gave, their history with community colleges in Illinois and how full their plates already are. Those three will be interviewed ahead of the board’s June meeting when the board hopes to vote on a contract. The current college president, Vicky Smith, announced in April that she would be retiring at the end of the year. That’s not much time for the college to find a replacement, and the board has been moving quickly through the firm selection process, givRon Parrish ing the firms only four days to submit proposals. “I would be OK with any of the five because this is not brain surgery and it’s not so hard to do,” Trustee Ron Parrish said. “It’s done every day, and many organizations do this and do it very, very well.” That’s why Parrish was leaning toward the Association of Community College Trustees, which offers executive search services. He thought their services would end up coming in under what the others had laid out in their proposals and that they would have an incentive to do a good job because their relationship with MCC wouldn’t end with the search.
See MCC, page A4
Rauner, unions not close on contracts By KERRY LESTER The Associated Press SPRINGFIELD – The contracts for more than 40,000 Illinois state workers will expire at the end of the month, and their unions and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s negotiating team apparently aren’t close to agreeing on new ones. The impasse has gotten more public attention in recent days, with union members staging nearly 100 protests throughout the state to rally public support to their calls for fair contracts. With the potential for a far-reach-
ing strike or lockout looming, here are some things to know:
Status of negotiations
The state’s contracts with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the state’s largest public employee union representing about 36,000 state workers, and those with about two dozen smaller unions representing roughly 5,000 nurses, police officers and others expire June 30. Although they have been negotiating new pacts for six months, the sides remain far apart on several key issues, including wage
increases, health insurance costs, the promotion process and how overtime pay is calculated. Rauner has said little publicly about the status of negotiations. But AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch indicated they’re not going well, telling members in a letter last month that Rauner had indicated he planned to “force a strike and shut down state government” until the union agrees to his terms. In response to Lynch’s allegations, Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly told The Associated Press that the
governor’s “negotiating team is committed to bargaining in good faith with the government unions to reach a deal that is fair to employees and taxpayers.”
Contract expiration
If agreements can’t be reached in time, it’s possible the unions and Rauner could agree on contract extensions of several months to help facilitate negotiations under a less-pressurized setting, as has happened under past governors, including
See CONTRACTS, page A4
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AP photo
Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees protest Tuesday on State Street in downtown Chicago. More than 40,000 state workers’ contracts are set to expire at the end of the month, but no agreement is in sight between the various labor unions representing them and GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner, who has made damping down union might a focus of his first months in office.
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