District 12 Candidates: Need a Plan to Fix Roads in Unincorporated Areas

While Sunday's Candidate Forum at the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Senior Center focused primarily on Lake County positions, and had an opportunity to present themselves as the hometown boys running for the Republican nomination for the District 12 seat on the Lake County Board.

District 12 represents Lake Forest, Knollwood, and portions of Highland Park and Deerfield.

Rummel has lived in Lake Forest for 28 years, and served as an alderman and mayor of the city. Helton moved to Lake Forest more than a decade ago after serving on the village baord for 12 years in Glenview.

The seem to agree on several issues, but perhaps different ways to get there based on their experiences.

Here is a cross-section of questions the two candidates faced in the forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Patch.

• What is your position on Winchester House? Should it be repaired, torn down or build a new facility, and how it would be financed?

Mike Rummel:

“Winchester House has now been privatized as far as care. The county is looking at doing a building and they have a task force already. The interesting issue about Winchester House is that it is paid three ways – Medicare, Medicaid and private contributions. And then by a tax levy that we all approved. That tax levy is not enough to keep Winchester going, so the county has been taking money out of its operating budget to keep it going, so something has to be done with this building. I do think it needs to be rebuilt. I believe we need to offer the service to the community, but I think we need to look at private organizations as far as whether they want to rebuild it. This is a business venture."

Scott Helton:

“Private care facilities such as Winchester House rarely do well when run by the government. I actually suggested when I ran for the county board six years ago that Winchester House be turned over to the private sector. For the day-to-day operations. County Board finally did that in October of last year and the result was $2 million in savings to the taxpayers of Lake County. Winchester House needs to be rebuilt. I think the private sector is the one to rebuild it for us. We’ve had a good relationship with the private care company running Winchester House, and I think we should take them a step further and get hem more involved in the redevelopment. I think there is funding tat they can get and not use the $35 or $40 million of Lake County taxpayers money to rebuild it. I do think we need it. We always need a safety net for people to fall back on.”

• Do you believe in cutting and salaries and benefits of county board members as a cost saving measure for Lake County?

Mike Rummel:

"We can certainly cut Lake County board members. But if you cut our salaries in half, you’re going from $800,000 to $400,000, so does that really achieve any kind of maximum savings? There are plenty of other places to go to get savings. One of the things I am a proponent for is group purchasing. When I was mayor of Lake Forest, we started the Northern Illinois Purchasing Group. There are all sorts of opportunities to do group purchasing and save costs. One of these opportunities is when we go out to purchase a fire truck for a fire district, they are going out there to finance it by themselves. Why isn’t the county offering their AAA bond rating and their lower rates. It will reduce your taxes and give people an opportunity to fund it. I bet if we do that, it will save a lot more money for the taxpayers than cutting county board salaries."

Scott Helton:

"The county board job is an awful lot of work. If the county board took the position of cutting salaries, I certainly would not object. One of the things I want to do with my salary is to start a group in District 11 to help people. Help seniors with that money, or people down on their luck. We need to do more buying together to bring the units of local government together to lower the cost.  There are other things we can do to reduce the budget."

• What would be your top three priorities?

Scott Helton:

"No. 1 is to simplify the tax assessment system. I think we can do it for the senior citizens so rather than go to Waukegan to appeal your taxes, you could go to the township offices. We should be able to do it online. That will be a cost savings to the county and seniors. Jobs are certainly a priority. We have to promote small businesses to locate into Lake County. Third, we have to maintain the fiscal responsibility that the current county board has done so well. We need to fine ways to work together with local units of local government, such as purchasing."

Mike Rummel:

"You need to attract and maintain businesses to Lake County. That is important to the growth of the county. Make local government more efficient, such as joint purchasing. Third, work on how we are going to bring those businesses in, redo some of our zoning laws that are antiquated that make it very tough for businesses to get stared here. I want to get those changed immediately."

• What should be done with the Fort Sheridan golf course? Should it be built and how should it be funded?

Mike Rummel:

“As mayor of Lake Forest, I formed the original task force on the golf course and we got together with Highland Park and Lake Bluff. To build a golf course there you would be killing those local golf courses, so you don’t want to have one local government put another local government out of business. However, we do to reach to the people of Fort Sheridan. It is open space, it is beautiful. Three interesting facts that I found out. One, there are the same amount of golfers today with 25 percent more golf courses. Economically, it does not make sense. Third, it doesn’t fit. You can’t get an 18-hole golf course in there. We need to reach out to those residents and have a survey to show them open lands is just as important as a golf course and it will retain the value of their homes, and we need to move forward together to work with government bodies to make the restriction go away."

Scott Helton:

"Initially when the golf course was closed, it was something the county should have put out to bid and let the private sector build and operate it. $30 million was the last figure to build the golf course, and that’s not something Lake County taxpayers want their money spent on. I like the open space. There are five golf courses within the proposed site and I just don’t think we need it."

• What should be done about Route 53, should it be extended and how would it be funded?

Scott Helton:

"Route 53 should be extended. Funding for it as a tollway. It will take a lot of the traffic of Route 41. It will create a central corridor for Lake County, which will attract businesses. Funding it will probably fall on Lake County because the state is behind in paying its bills."

Mike Rummel:

"Route 53 is of paramount importance to Lake County. If you look at traffic patterns, when traffic comes out of Indiana, if you can route it around all of Lake County and take it out west, then you are going to create enterprise zones out there, you are going to be more fuel efficient for truck traffic, and you will take truck traffic off the tollway and off Route 41, and also relieve East-West congestion. It’s going to create an enterprise zone that is good for Lake County. One of the first thing I will work on."

• How you can best serve the unincorporated areas that you represent. Since the roads in unincorporated areas are underfunded, what could you do at the county level to enhance funding for township roads? Some of the unincorporated areas are densely populated and some are farmland, how could you effectively serve both?

Scott Helton:

"The 12^th District has two unincorporated areas: one is Knollwood near Lake Bluff and one is Del Mar Woods near Deerfield. The problem for the roads is drainage. The Dept. of Community and Economic Opportunity has funding to do an engineering study for the areas to improve the roads. We need to develop a plan for engineering of the roads and get the drainage right."

Mike Rummel:

"What needs to be done is what we did in Lake Forest. There are funds available to do coring on the roads to determine the life value. Once you have facts, then you can go and be an advocate for anyone. Then you can go talk to Springfield, the state, or look at the county, this is a priority – facts will get you more attention rather than just saying the roads are bad. The costs to get those studies done are available through other sources."

• Why can’t the Sherriff’s Department patrol the forest preserves than have a separate police force for the forest preserves. Wouldn’t that save money?

Mike Rummel:

"The Sheriff’s Department is already stretched thin. They could have a 20 to 30 minute response time from one place to another. What needs to be looked is how you are going to separate those people. Do we need the forest preserve police or is there another level of administration needed, take that off and hire more policeman to do both jobs. That would help response time. We also need to put sheriff’s police in different substations so they are closer to areas so they are not responding to ca call in Knollwood from Long Grove."

Scott Helton:

"The County Sheriffs Office currently has five substations that they have their force divided into, and I think we need to revisit those to see if they are properly used for the people who use them. They were designed at a time when there was less housing and population. The forest preserve police force, we should look at that. They could be incorporated into the sheriff’s force so they are working together. I’m sure the dispatchers used for the forest preserve are separate from the Sherriff’s office, and maybe that’s another level of government we can eliminate."

• The Army let the Fort Sheridan Golf Course to the County for $1 with the provision that the golf course be maintained. What are the legal ramifications if the course is not built. And, if you are both opposed to a golf course at Fort Sheridan, what is your position on the County managing other golf courses, like ThunderHawk, should they be privatized?

Mike Rummel:

"There was always a Plan B provision in the agreement with the Army on Fort Sheridan and that was for open space and play fields. In the final document, that got removed.  That’s important that there was another alternative. We need to go to those residents of Fort Sheridan and show them open space is just as valuable, and together we can march to Washington and get this changed. We need to look at privitazation for services like ThunderHawk and see if they would be better off."

Scott Helton:

"The Fort Sheridan Golf Course, the current use is the best use. I realize there is a deed restriction. I think the deed restriction is the first thing we need to look at removing. We need to talk to the Fort Sheridan residents and talk to them about why we are not building the golf course. Lake Forest just privatized their golf course at Deer Path and they saved money doing it, and I think the same can be true at ThunderHawk. I played there over the Fourth of July holiday and there were County workers out there trimming trees on the course, and I can’t imagine that was a good use of county funds. We need to look at privatization."

• Should the County approve more Lake Michigan water withdrawls by western Lake County towns? Why or why not?

Mike Rummel:

"We need to look at usage of that water and how we are using it. In Lake Forest, we were taking out 13 million gallons a day, but by being more efficient we could take out less water. This is a natural resource that is not going to be replenished very quickly. We need to be careful about it. We need to look at allocations and see if they are in the best interest."

Scott Helton:

"When I was on the village board in Glenview, we did buy two water well systems and then provided them with Lake Michigan water, So I am somewhat familiar with the process you have to go through. We have to be careful with what we do with Lake Michigan. Make sure we have the most modern pumping system available. We’ve talked about building out Route 53 and the development in western Lake County, and that means we have to have available water, so for that to happen, we need to take a look at water issues."