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Marengo senior, family use football to help cope with mental disorders / C1
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Gabe Taylor
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Official challenges housing formula
DEALING WITH MENTAL HEALTH BOARD BUILDING EXPANSION PROVING TO BE TRICKY
Planning commissioner says IHDA method flawed By JOSEPH BUSTOS jbustos@shawmedia.com
Photo illustration by Sarah Nader and R. Scott Helmchen
PRICEY LEGACY Mental Health Board grapples with building expansion By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com A new and improved McHenry County Mental Health Board is doing its best to take it in a more fiscally responsible direction. But dealing with one legacy from the old board – a half-empty, 22,000-square-foot expansion that taxpayers are still paying off – is proving to be tricky. The expansion, actually a separate building, sits behind the Mental Health Board’s headquarters in Crystal Lake. Former board members built it anticipating future growth that never took place, and their successors are, at the very least, discussing whether it can be utilized in a manner that helps defray the cost.
However, the fact that it’s a public building financed through a unique federal bond program places limits on what can be done. The building is one of the many issues interim Executive Director Lyn Orphal has on her plate in steering the board to a better future after a tumultuous year of change that critics said was much needed and long overdue. “There are so many different nuances that are popping up as we work to find out what is allowable,” Orphal said. “It can open up a whole big can of worms if we think we can do something only to find out that we can’t.” And for the time being, the conventional wisdom seems to be that the list of things they can’t do with the building is a much
longer list. The Mental Health Board in 2009 made a pitch for the expansion, arguing it ran out of space at its 8,000-square-foot headquarters. It would fund the project with $4 million in federal bonding authority granted to the McHenry County Board as a means to stimulate the economy and get people back to work in the midst of the Great Recession. Three million dollars was used to build the new building and renovate parts of the original one, with the remaining $1 million covering planning and architecture costs. The County Board approved the bond issuance in 2010 over the objections of a
See LEGACY, page A10
Ever since Bull Valley surpassed the 1,000-residents mark in the 2010 census, its Plan Commission began preparing for the requirements of the state’s Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act. When the Illinois Housing and Development Authority published its latest list of communities that did not have enough affordable housing, Bull Valley wasn’t surprised it made the list, said Dick Magerl, chairman of the village’s Plan Commission. As the community began working on a required plan, Magerl began digging into the way IHDA came up with its numbers. He said the formula is flawed. The state’s Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act calls for municipalities with more than 1,000 residents to have at least 10 percent of their housing units be deemed affordable. Affordability for owner-occupied housing is based on several factors, such as median real estate taxes paid for
owner-occupied units in a community and the area-median income (McHenry County communities use the Chicago metropolitan statistical area). IHDA also assumes a 10 percent down payment, a 30-year mortgage and a 4.8 percent interest rate when determining affordability. Magerl objects to the way property taxes are used in the formula. Magerl suggests the percentage of the monthly payment that goes toward property taxes be used, rather than the median amount of property taxes for a community. Magerl said IHDA’s calculation penalizes a community with higher property values and hence higher property taxes, and lowers what would be considered affordable in that community. Communities with low property values and lower property taxes are rewarded, because it elevates the affordable price. “You would never pay as much taxes on an affordable house as you would on a $500,000 median [value house] in Bull Valley, but yet they’re using that full
See HOUSING, page A10
U.S. airlifts more aid to displaced Iraqis Obama says military airstrikes will be ‘long-term project’ By VIVIAN SALAMA and BRAM JANSSEN The Associated Press KHAZER CAMP, Iraq – President Barack Obama justified the U.S. military’s return to fighting in Iraq Saturday by saying America must act now to prevent genocide, protect its diplomats and provide humanitarian aid to refugees trapped by Islamic State militants on a mountain
ridge near the Syrian border. “This is going to be a longterm project” that won’t end and can’t succeed unless Iraqis form an inclusive government in Baghdad capable of keeping the country from breaking apart, Obama said at the White House. U.S. planes and drones launched four airstrikes on Islamic State forces Saturday as they fired indiscriminately on Yazidi civilians taking shelter
PLANIT STYLE
in the Sinjar mountains, U.S. Central Command said. The strikes, which were spread out during the day, destroyed armored carriers and a truck, according to the Central Command statement. It was the third round of airstrikes against Islamic State forces by the U.S. military since they were authorized by Obama on Thursday. The military support also has been helping clear the way
for aid flights to drop food and water to thousands of starving refugees in the Sinjar area. But the help comes too late for many of the religious minorities targeted for elimination by the Islamic State group, which swept past U.S.trained and equipped Iraqi government forces in recent weeks and now controls much of Iraq. A delayed response by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad left Kurdish
See IRAQ, page A10
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Officials project that they will have more minority than non-hispanic white students this fall / B4 BUSINESS
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Kurdish demonstrators gather in front of the White House on Saturday in Washington, D.C.
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