Round Lake Neighbors....a new website!

You know what? No post today...go check out this new site called www.roundlakeneighbors.com, its put together by some local residents and its a great idea!

Wellness-- Tenatative 5K dates and "Run with the Mayor"

I spent the morning trying to figure out a schedule that works for my life and 4 Saturday's for the Mayoral 5K series. I think I have come up with something that might be workable.

The Mayoral 5K series will be 4 races held in the 4 majors areas of the community. (Valley Lake's, Lakewood, Madrona, and Downtown.) The dates will be Sunday's February 11, May 13, July 22 and September 23. These race dates are up in the air still, if you have an event for your HOA that might partner up with me, I would love that.

If I can get sponsorship to cover it, I am going to try to make the race free to Round Lake residents and $15 to non-residents or something like that. I also would like to award trophy's to the winners and the overall champions in the various age groups.

I am setting aside the first Saturday of every month at 7am for the run/walk with the Mayor. My goal is to run 2 miles from 7:00am to 7:20am at a nice steady 10-12 minute mile pace (closer to jogging) that way I can talk (assuming anyone wants to talk) and run at the same time. The from 7:30 to 8:00 walk the same course. So if you compete in both you will get four miles in. I am going to move these around from neighborhood to neighborhood. I think its an excellent venue for people from other areas to learn about and meet there neighbors, plus I can listen to issues and hopefully solve some of them.

The first one will be January 6th at 7am and I will do it in Madrona, meeting at the park.

Make your Yard into a Nature Habitat-- One Lady Has!

One of our local residents Sue Krueger (her web page is here) has turned her yard into a National Wildlife Habitat! Here are the instructions on how she did it. She has quite the interesting yard, it has a web cam, pointing at it at all times. That's clever idea in itself, and as best I can tell is the only outdoors web cam in the Round Lake area.
Anyway back to Ms. Krueger's garden, it has its own web page with a listing of features, species sighted, and lots of pictures. What a very clever idea. I also scanned the steps to get certified as a Habitat and it seemed straight forward.

There is also a page to certify an entire community. Which is interesting and leads me to wonder if there would be some interest in doing it as a community. Comments or emails are welcome as always.

Interesting Occurance

First of all I must preface this story with a comment on hit counters for web pages. The one I use was set to count unique visitors, and counted hits, not visitors. So needless to say I did not realize that this meant that my traffic figures were off by like a factor of 5....so if I got what I thought were 1000 users I was really getting 200. Needless to say I fixed the counter.

So I was going to casually never speak of this to anyone ever again. However something came up that's kinda interesting, and of course is to good a story to bury in my Internet shame. Over the last year my traffic has been steadily climbing and my highs (not my old highs) were around 330. Then as we got to the middle of the month my traffic which has been edging higher over the last 4-5 weeks by about 10-15 visits a day, jumped by about 10% to a high of 388, 399, 424, 528, 848, 1,808 and then 2,289. You can see the giant spike in the accompanying graphic. One hour got me 249 users, which was equal to the entire amount of visitors last Friday

The numbers made me think I had screwed something up again and of course sent me looking for a new hit counter, however Sitemeter.com has a section where I can look at where my traffic is coming from, and 50% to 70% was coming from a search for a picture I used on Thanksgiving Day 2005. The picture is shown below.

Apparently this image is appearing on the first page for google images when you search for images of Thanksgiving. So the traffic is all going to the archive page for November 2005. Not for my brilliant witty observations on the state of Round Lake but rather for a turkey!

Early Morning Walk

Went for an early morning walk in the downtown area, with Trustee Michael Blum, sort of looked for garbage and stuff. I found a few things that I will have our department heads take care of on Monday. I did however find a sign at the train station that was quite humorous and we will be taking down, but I feel the urge to reproduce it here. Imagine that June 1999, I think most people know that by now!

Happy Thanksgiving (600th Post as well)!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone in Round Lake has a wonderful filling day with family and friends. I know I am going to. I am running in a 5k for a food bank in Crystal Lake that I actually ran in last year in the cold. NOTE: I have sore knees today from a run earlier this week when I pushed to hard and fast so I may not go, its a game time decision! NOTE NUMBER 2: I did not run, but rather walked the distance instead.

Today is the 600th post of this blog, I thought I had missed the actual date, because I actually have 624 posts, but I counted earlier this week and 24 of them are drafts. I have so many draft posts, because until the events are over, I will not reveal my thoughts. Its awful when you have a big mouth and you have to learn to keep it shut!

Huge blog traffic this last week, I will reveal its reason on Monday's post I think, although I may write something sooner.

SWALCO Dates for 2007

Here are the lists of dates the Round Lake Public Works department will be holding the Household Electronics collections for 2007. (The second Tuesday of every other month). The times will be from 8am to 5pm.

January 9th
March 13th
May 8th
July 10th
September 11th
November 13th

Further information may be found at www.swalco.org

Wellness Plans

I have been amazed at all the good ideas that I received about a wellness program in Round Lake. The feedback has been quite good with lots of ideas for how to move forward. Let me summarise the ideas for you.

• Running four 5k's in the neighborhood was well received, some residents suggested some enhancements like sponsorship, (I already have one offer from the founders of http://www.mapmyrun.com/ to sponsor some things in exchange for their logo on shirts. A points series open to RL residents (sort of like NASCAR for age groups) with trophies given out to the winners and over all champions!


• Making Round Lake smoke free, which seems to be a move sweeping the county and the state. I am not sure of all the ins and outs of this right now and am going to talk to the village board about there thoughts as well.


• Hosting monthly run/walks in the various neighborhoods of Round Lake. To encourage neighborliness and fitness amongst residents.


• There was a call for eating healthy as well, I am not sure how a challenge could do that but it bears scrutiny.


• Another idea was to challenge neighborhood vs neighborhood in a walk-a-thon, how many miles each neighborhood walks or runs in a given time period. Or we could all issue a challenge to another community in the county to walk.

Please feel free to send me any ideas or improvements, I am going to do my first run/walk with the Mayor on January 6th! I think I will start them at 8am and jog for 20 minutes with a group of runners and then walk 30 minutes with the walkers. As for where I am going to do it! Invite me, otherwise I will pick a location and rotate from there each month.

Also I am looking for volunteers to coordinate this for me, since I have zero budget, I am going to hustle up some local sponsors, for signs, shirts, trophies and timing devices, but anyone with some energy and who wants to help, would be more then welcome! Please email me if you are interested in helping.

Directory of Labels So far

Well I have been labeling away at a good pace, and have come up with quite a few categories, it seems like I come up with new ones all the time so I think the best way to handle this since I can't place them in the side columns or so it seems. I will occasionally update them here as a post.

NOTE: For some reason I messed up the links this morning so you merely have a list with a count until I can get some time to figure out who this is supposed to work.

• 120 Bypass (48)
• About this Blog (22)
• Avon Township (8)
• Being Mayor (187)
• Bonds (10)
• Bradford Place (3)
• Bright Meadows (8)
• Building Department (4)
• Community Events (37)
• Downtown Development District (23)
• Elections (6)
• Fish Tank (5)
• Football (21)
• Fremont Township (3)
• Grant Township (13)
• HOA's (6)
• Housing (7)
• Impact Fees (3)
• Lake County Issues (3)
• Lakewood Homes (15)
• Library Things (13)
• Madrona Homes (31)
• Park District (46)
• Police Department (46)
• Public Works (56) Racing (14)
• Round Lake History (4)
• Route 60 (25)
• Running (20)
• School Districts (28)
• Silly (3)
• Soccer (5)
• Special Census (2)
• Taxs (2)
• Transportation (47)
• Treehouse in the Woods (5)
• Valley Lakes (35)
• Village Board (80)
• Vital Safety Information (1)
• Water Issues (9)
• Wellness (2)
• WRLR Radio (16)

Fantasy Football Update

Standings
Tim Orris 8-2-0
Bill Gentes 7-3-0
Bob Stone 7-3-0
Michael Blum 6-4-0
Al Villasenor 5-5-0
Davis Clark 5-5-0
Sean Gilette 4-6-0
Terry Vandenboom 3-7-0
Paul Hollingsworth 2-8-0

Top six teams make the playoffs and there are three weeks left in the fantasy season. So everyone has a mathematical chance to get it done. Top two teams get first round byes so there is some competition at the top as well.

Thanksgiving Service this Sunday--Being Thankful!

Oliver Wendell Homes once said, "It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country."

This year several pastors of the area have again planned a community thanksgiving service. With the conviction that Thanksgiving was created to be a national day of giving thanks and not a church day only for Christians, they are trying purposely to assist the residents of the area in coming together for this grand and noble purpose.

Therefore, we are have planned a Community Thanksgiving service, Sunday afternoon at 5:00 P.M., at Village Elementary School gymnasium (Nippersink Rd.), November 19th. At this point the following churches have agreed to help - Abundant Life Church, B’nai Ohr Messianic Jewish Fellowship, Calvary Presbyterian Church, Community Church of Round Lake, Grace Chapel, St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Metropolitan Mayors Forum on Housing

With the changing housing market there are quite a few "rules" that are changing as well. Are elderly residents afraid they might not be able to remain in the community once they sell the home they've lived in for years? Are local businesses starting to complain that their employees are having trouble finding homes close to work? I have had these questions directed at me more then once in the last year.

The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is sponsoring a December Housing Forum "Supporting Workforce Housing Deals in Our Own Backyard: A Conversation with Mayors and Developers on the Give and Take in a Changing Environment." Co-Chairs of the Caucus' Housing Committee, Mayor Zenovia G. Evans of Riverdale and Mayor Rita L. Mullins of Palatine. I am planning on attending to see if there are answers to the questions!

This forum will be an opportunity for Mayors and Homebuilders to discuss the questions above, focusing on:

• The changing housing market and how it will affect housing production.
• Innovative local and regional housing issues and efforts, including: interjurisdictional initiatives; fee negotiations; community acceptance of housing policies and developments; school funding debates; and housing preservation.

I think this will be a great opportunity to meet some of the homebuilders in the region that are doing workforce housing. The forum will allow attendees to share their ideas regarding what can be done on the local and regional levels to encourage the creation or preservation of workforce housing. Last year I attended and over 100 municipal and development representatives offered their thoughts on how the state could help with this effort; this year, the committee is following up to explore what is being done "on the ground" in the Chicago area, and what else could be done, to create a balance of housing options across the region.

While I think our housing stock is moving in a differnt direction it was fascinating to hear about this issue that affects western Lake County in a big way.

The Power of Three- Special Census Numbers are in!

Yesterday we got the special census letter telling us what our new population numbers are. Just to refresh I wrote about this here when we started the process in August. Special census's are run by the United States Bureau of the Census.

This was the second census we have done in my five and half years as Mayor. First some facts about the special census and some information on the process.

• The reason so many municipalities do a special census is because MFT (Motor Fuel Tax) funds from the state of Illinois are based on population and the most recent census numbers are used.
• On the average we get between $100 and $120 per person per year from the state in MFT funds. Our recent money was based on the most recent census figures (2003 special census) of 10,100.
• The 2003 special census took us from 5,400 to 10,100, so the next fiscal year we got an additional $120 x 4,700 people or an additional $564,000 to the village starting in fiscal year 2004.
• The best part about this is we receive $564,000 more every single fiscal year until the 2010 census, which is an additional $3.38 million.

The actual new census number is 16,415 people, which is an increase of 6,315 people this will bring us, an additional $757,000 per year (assuming $120 per person). This means that the village's use of the special census has taken our MFT revenue from $650,000 to $1,970,000 in 6 years.

Some random thoughts about the numbers.

• From 2004 until today we gained 6,315 people, more then the village population in 2000. (62 percent growth in 2 years)
  
• From 2000 until 2006 we gained 10,815 people. (303% growth!)
  

Or in other words we have tripled in size.

Halloween Contest at Madrona

A few weeks ago I was the special judge at the Madrona HOA costume party, and this group of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were the winners of the most creative costume award by a long long way! The names of the winners were Katie Smith, Audrey Rehm, Logan Smith, Morgan Monahan, Millicent Rehm, Michael Monahan, Madelyn Monahan, and Lanie Smith.

Is a Healthier Round Lake Possible?

For quite awhile I have been mulling around a Mayors Fitness Challenge series of events. I always am a fan of wellness programs for companies. I looked into some national programs for wellness and got some ideas. The central thing was fitness and exercise.

Which got me thinking about having a series of 5K Run/Walks. I spent a few minutes diagramming a couple on this marvelous google based software that I use called www.mapmyrun.com that measures runs using GPS. I designed three 5K routes and would propose a fourth, there are some logistical issues route design must take into account as I discovered when I worked on these.

• Tour de Lakewood & Prairie Walk (route here)
  
• Tour de Madrona (route here)
• Tour de Valley Lakes (route here)
• Tour of Old Town and Bright Meadows (not done yet)

Would you run or walk in a 5K in your Neighborhood?
	Yes
	No
Free polls from Pollhost.com

I also would love to have some feedback on other ideas for health based programs in the community. One excellent suggestion I got from local business man Doug Dortch of MVS Molding was to have a run/walk in the various neighborhoods with the Mayor on Saturday mornings or some predetermined date.

Would you join the Mayor for an informal run in your Neighborhood?
	Yes
	No
Free polls from Pollhost.com

If you have any other wellness ideas please forward them to me at bgentes@eroundlake.com

Potential Lakewood SSA Bond Refinancing?

Six years ago when I was the chairman of the Planning Commission Lakewood Homes presented a proposal for building 800 homes in the area where they currently exist. We insisted (I was not Mayor then) on a variety of things that I concurred with, the two commercial parcels, the extension of the Cedar Lake Road, park set asides, and the impact fee structures. I won't go into the tactical reasons why going ahead with Lakewood at that time was important to the village, (that's a whole other post). Eventually the decision was made that to achieve the major objectives with SSA financing. The SSA is basically an addition to your tax bill to pay off bonds that were floated for your specific neighborhood, village etc. I won't go into the way SSA's can potentially help buyers get more home for less etc here (also another blog post as well). By the way not one trustee who voted yes on Lakewood is still on the Village Board.

Now fast forward 5 years later, Lakewood is built out, Fremont Township's assessments are some of the highest around, and the SSA is tacked on. You get high tax bills.

I have been working with some Lakewood residents who have contacted me about some issues specific to their homes and purchases, so it has led me to doing some global thinking about how we can lighten the load for the Lakewood Homeowners with the SSA's currently in place.

Speaking with the company that handles our bonds, Speer Financial, they were of the opinion that currently there is the ability to "refinance" the existing bonds. While not going into the obscure technical details we can reduce the interest rate by almost two points. At the moment with some quick calculations this can reduce the SSA total by $3.6 million over the life of the SSA.

Obviously a potential saving to the residents of Lakewood of any amount on their tax bills would be a positive. I am not sure how much impact this would be on the tax bill but we are going to find out.

I directed the Village Board Finance Committee chaired by Trustee Sherry Perkowitz and with Vice Chair Trustee Brian Brubaker to look into this and report back to the board as quickly as they can to see if this is feasible and firm up the process so we can act to cut the total owed and the rate.

Challenging Test

Okay clearly I found this one on a late night insominac trip across the internet. I messed it up repeatedly becuase I am color blind. But it was clever and fun, and for that reason alone it deserves to be on this blog.

So to play...Click Here!

Blogger Issues

I converted to Blogger Beta today, and guess what archives are not working, the templates are messed up, and worst of all the comments won't load as well! So guess what this weekend will be a "new" blog weekend!

Blog Changes

At the bottom of this post and others will be something called a label. The label will indicate the topic I think this post should reside in. They are all hyperlinked to other articles in the same category (thats what the number next to each listing means). I spent an hour working on the 588 posts I have and came up with the ones below for now, I am slowly going to cateorgize them all, some can appear in multiple spots as well. So if you want to read about HOA's or 120 and the broader things I write about all the time it makes it easier to find! Below is a list of "Labels" that I did in the last hour or so. More to come as well.

• 120 Bypass (47)
• About this Blog (18)
• Bonds (1)
• Community Events (6)
• Elections (1)
• Football (19)
• HOA's (6)
• Lakewood Homes (15)
• Police Department (46)
• Public Works (47)
• Racing (12)
• Round Lake History (4)
• Route 60 (24)
• Silly (1)
• Taxs (1)
• Village Board (1)
• WRLR Radio (16)

120 Corridor Planning Council Last Night

Last night was a 120 corridor Planning Council Meeting, I am not going to write about the discussion of bylaw changes and discussions on how to get the Request for Proposal funding (RFP) moving, but I am going to include the copy of a letter that I wrote in my capacity as Chair of the 120 CPC to the Daily Herald and other area newspapers last week. This letter was published in the Daily Herald on Monday the 6th.

Get involved with Route 120 planning
The need for improved east-west corridors through Lake County becomes crystal clear as more than 500,000 motorists sit in traffic each day in a county that'’s one of the fastest growing in the state.
In particular, Route 120 from Green Bay Road in Waukegan in the east to the McHenry County line in the west, was identified as the number one priority at last year'’s Lake County Transportation Summit; part of a bipartisan effort to combine Lake County'’s 12 votes in Springfield to more effectively deal with transportation issues.
While the Lake County and Illinois Departments of Transportation pinpointed Route 120 as a critical traffic bottleneck, hundreds of residents also have expressed their concern by speaking at public forums and by posting Web site comments.
A state grant to begin feasibility planning for improving the corridor has recently been approved. The targeted area traverses Waukegan, Libertyville, Gurnee, Wauconda, Mundelein, Hainesville, Round Lake, Round Lake Park, Volo and Grayslake. In addition, we have obtained $2 million in federal funding for engineering.
While support for the Route 120 corridor has been overwhelming, some questions still exist that should be addressed.
First: the Route 120 corridor has no connection to plans for the extension of Route 53 --— an issue that has been shelved in Springfield for lack of a budget and has had a polarizing effect on residents. That said, highways can'’t be built in a vacuum. Existing Route 53 rights-of-way will be considered in the planning of Route 120 in order to save time and taxpayer dollars, and plans must incorporate north-south connections along Route 120, whether or not Route 53 is built. And while all sorts of options are being studied, the possibilities of roundabouts and other ways to speed traffic flow must be considered only in the context of future growth.
Second: although feasibility studies have not yet begun, residents have weighed in with assumptions and dire predictions about the effects of the corridor on area homeowners and visiting wildlife. While the exact location of Route 120 has not been determined, every effort will be made to ensure that the corridor is planned with care and an eye to protecting the quality of life as well as our precious natural resources.
To get the facts about the Route 120 planning and implementation process, we urge you to get involved. Meetings of the Route 120 Corridor Planning Council are open to the public; the dates are posted regularly in this newspaper and on the Web site, www.120now.com.
There, you''ll also find detailed information about the Route 120 corridor. Let's act now to ease traffic congestion and make Lake County a more enjoyable place to live and work.

Sincerely
Bill Gentes
Mayor of Round Lake
Chair, 120 Corridor Planning Council
Member, Executive Committee Lake County Transportation Alliance

Tune in to WRLR -- 98.3 FM-- For complete election coverage!

On election night I will be anchoring election night coverage on WRLR from 6pm to 11pm. Local radio! For you in other communities outside Lake county you can listen on the internet at www.wrlr.fm

POSTSCRIPT
I was on from 7 to 11 last night, and had a great time. Sean Gilette was there all evening with me, and was excellent! Chris Thelen was patient and prepared as always, and Bish and all his group of volunteers did a great job keeping us informed. The national races were interesting and I was able to talk about a lot of the house and senate races that were key in shaping the new House of Representatives and as of this moment the "sort of" shaping of the new Senate (still waiting on Virginia and Montana Senate races). The hardest part for me was keeping my rabid partisanship under control. Two democrats called me to tell me that I was syncophantic towards republicans so I must have done a good job.

There were some exciting local races to talk about, and I am going to blog about what they mean for us in a post later on this week.

New Trustee Named

Last night I appointed Michael Blum (looking very serious in the picture at the right) to the vacant trustee spot that was filled by Patty Blauvelt until her resignation two meetings ago. Michael was approved by a 5-0 vote. Michael is the President of the Madrona Homeowners Association, has lived in Round Lake for 3 years. He grew up in Lake Zurich and went to Western Illinois University he is also a member of the Round Lake Planning/Zoning Commission He is married to Jennifer and has two daughters Madison and Mikayla. Mike has worked for Hewitt Associates for 8 years as Customer Service Client Manager he manage 90 associates.

I have tried to recruit a new type of person to our village boards and commissions and I am very happy to have had the opportunity to bring Michael on to our board. He is the first trustee from Madrona and I am excited to finally have representation from this important area.

The Daily Herald weighs in on the appointment here.

I was just counting up how many people I appoint to boards and positions in the village and I came up with 33 positions, and you know what? I have appointed 32 of them. The exception is Ed Amman who has now served on the Round Lake Planning/Zoning Commission for 7 full terms and is a few years into his 8th. Just so you know what that means, each term is 7 years long so he is over 52 years of service to the village.

The Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake

When I go speak in schools (about 10-15 times a year) I always get asked to tell the legend of the "Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake". The kids love the story, I love it as well, plus its an excellent "accurate" history lesson with a potentially mythical ending.

On the site of today's Alpine Country Club used to exist the Armour Ice House. There are two pictures of the actual ice house from 1912 in this post as well.

Ice houses were buildings used to store ice throughout the year, prior to the invention of the refrigerator. The most common designs involved underground chambers, usually man-made, which were built close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes (i.e. Round Lake)
During the winter, ice and snow would be taken into the ice house and packed with insulation, often straw or sawdust. It remained frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during summer months. This could be used simply to cool drinks, or allow ice-cream and sorbet desserts to be prepared.

So how did they create ice? In winter months, ice was chopped from a lake surface and often dragged by sledge to the ice house, and in summer months, was delivered from local ice houses to residences in ice wagons or ice trucks, where it would be stored in an ice box, which was used much like a modern refrigerator. In Round Lake it was not dragged by sledge but was moved via temporary rail lines laid down on the iced over lake. There was an engine that would move the ice back and forth. In addition the engine would take loads up the rail spur to the main line about half a mile away. As home and business refrigeration became more common, ice houses disappeared. The home ice delivery business declined, and was virtually gone by the late 1960s. Our ice house was gone by 1928 as near as I can tell.

You can still see evidence of the rail spur, which is still existent. When our downtown development district gets cooking (it will) one of the goals for this area is to make a nice walking path from the older area of Round Lake into our downtown.

So here's how the train engine got to the bottom of the lake, with the advent of refrigeration the ice house business collapsed quickly in the late 20's and with the depression, business contracted even quicker. So when the decision not to continue with the ice house was made, the question was what do to with the equipment. So legend has it that when the last ice cutting season was finished the engine was parked on the ice, and allowed to fall in when the ice melted.

Wine Tasting Questionnaire?

I was asked a question today via email about if residents here in the area would enjoy a wine tasting fund raiser for the Round Lake Area Park District Foundation so I have decided to ask the question since this is election season in the form of a poll. So vote away! One too a customer however. Also if you are interested email me I will forward your name to the Park District if they decide to do it.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

If the Round Lake Park District Foundation held a Wine Tasting Fundraiser would you attend?

Yes No

Free polls from Pollhost.com

If you answered yes, how much would you pay per person to attend, knowing it was for a good cause?

$25-$49 $50-$74 $75-$99 $100 or higher

SEDOL Winetasting Fundraiser Last Night

Late post today! Why? Well I went to the annual SEDOL Foundation winetasting fundraiser. You can imagine why I did not get up at my usual bright eyed and bushy tailed hour I am sure from those clues. There were two types of wine tasting, the "private cellar" and the "public rooms" the private rooms were avoided by my party, because wines were over $25 and in some cases WAY over. The temptation to purchase would have been way to strong. My purchases were confined to the $10-25 range and I quickly found a caseful of goodies for my wine rack.

SEDOL is the Special Education District of Lake County, a cooperative educational system working with 36 local school districts to serve their physically, mentally, and emotionally challenged students. They serve all the districts in Round Lake (all 9 of them) so its a very important organization educationally here in the area.

I saw a few people of interest John Burnett who is SEDOL board member and former president, and is building the Goddard school off of Townline road in Round Lake. Along with an old friend State Representative Kathy Ryg. Also Park District Board member, and Round Lake Planning commissioner Barb Daudelin and her husband Dave were there as well.

Don't Forget to Vote

This Tuesday is election day, there are quite a few races out there. However due some gerrymandering in the last redistricting, Round Lake is not in any of the other Round Lake's districts where the hottest races seem to be taking place. Michael Bond vs Susan Simpson for Senate is not us, Sandy Cole vs Sharyn Elman for State Rep is not us either, and just a small part of us is Ed Sullivan vs Amanda Howland for State Rep is us (South part of town). The other state representative in Round Lake Mark Beaubien is running unopposed.

The county has a variety of races for Clerk, Treasurer and Sheriff, all seem highly competetive. The one for sheriff is the most highly charged with Gary Del Re vs Mark Curran vs Sharron Narod vs Willard Helander the other.

If you don't know where you should vote click this link for directions.

Save the Date for the Round Lake Christmas Tree Lighting

The Round Lake Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony will be held on December 1st from 6pm to 7pm. It held in the parking lot of the village hall at 442 Cedar Lake Road. Its a nice time, we build a tent, have the local choir sing carols, serve hot chocolate, and snacks along with lighting the tree!

We also have a special guest arrive to usher in the season the appropriate way! Overall its a nice family gathering, so please save the date and come share the joy of the season with your neighbors. Last years tree lighting post gives a clue on the special guest!

We are a Series of Beats!

The Police Department has scheduled three "“Beat Meetings"” for the month of December. Each meeting will be specific to one police beat (section of the Village). The goal of the beat meetings is to offer a clear line of communication between the police department and the citizens they serve. The beat meetings will be held in the Community Room at 6:30 p.m. on the following dates: December 1st (Beat 1), December 8th (Beat 2) and December 15th (Beat 3). There will be some information on the next water bill and detailed information will be on the police section of the village website in the next few days.

For those of you wondering what beat you are in, as I was, here is a description. For those of you who want a visual representation of where the beat boundaries are I will send you a PDF map if you email me.

Beat 1
From Park Road on the north to Route 120 on the south. From our neighbor, Round Lake Park on the east to Fairfield Road on the west.

Beat 2
From Route 134 on the north to the southernmost section of Valley Lakes subdivision. From Fairfield Road on the east to our village limits on the west.

Beat 3
Everyone south of Route 120.

I will write a little bit more about these as we get closer to the actual dates.