McHenry County Blog

You couldn’t hear 76 Trombones playing outside, but the Music Man was at the McHenry County College Board meeting last night.

It was Crystal Lake, not River City.

Professor Harold Hill wasn’t there, but EquityOne Development’s Mark Houser was.

He and another man from Libertyville, plus the one from the Frontier Baseball League, were going to tell the board how to liberate us from the sports entertainment blahs.

To help give the pitch to which the public was excluded, Houser brought Pete Heitman, President of Mid-America Sports, and Bill Lee, Frontier Baseball League Commissioner since 1994.

The three men who want a sizable chunk of McHenry County's property tax dollars weren’t in the meeting room for the first hour.

Apparently, they didn’t want to be seen in public waiting as the petitioners they were.

They must have been back in the complex where MCC President Walt Packard has his offices.

After the public had been asked to leave the college board’s meeting room, the three came striding down the hall shepherded by a woman in a black and white plaid outfit whom I presume is a college administrator.

The board meeting had started at 6.

The main attraction arrived shortly after 7.

I didn’t get home until 10:45.

Theirs was a long pitch ending at 9:44 with sustained laughter—fairly raucous actually—plus intermittent clapping.

One of the participants, Frontier League Commissioner Bill Lee ducked out the back door before the meeting was over.

Then the door opened and two of the promoters walked out the door.

They didn’t take time to talk to me when I asked if either were Mr. Houser.

You can see the picture I took of the man I later learned was Houser. It's shot from below where I was sitting on the folding chair I finally found after standing up for over two hours.

I wonder why he’s smiling.

Both hurried to the men’s room and, unlike what you might think I would do, I did not accompany them.

When they came out I asked,

"Are you guys from EquityOne?"

The man I later learned was EquityOne’s Houser, replied,

"No comment."

Over two and one-half hours of talking inside, yet no comment to the only reporter waiting around.

I got a couple of photos anyway in the hallway and as they were walking past the vending machines.

On the way toward the main entrance, I asked,

"Patrick Engineering?

"Legat?"

Houser replied,

"I know all of those, but no,"

and disappeared down the hallway along with Heitman.

After the short recess, the Board reconvened and the names of the participants in the top secret, hush-hush meeting were read into the record by MCC Committee of the Whole Chairman George Lowe of Cary

Last Friday the Northwest Herald ran an article by Joe Stevenson and Nick Swedberg in which Lee said,

"I haven’t heard from anyone in the county, but I’ve heard there’s interest. It’s my job to keep up on things like that."

Maybe that was why he was shy, ducking his head approaching the room.

I got a good close-up of Houser and Lee anyway, don’t you think?

You can read some of Heitman’s previous pitches in this article. Maybe he succeeded in building a baseball stadium, but I didn’t have time to do more research before hitting the hay.

McHenry County College is husbanding its money in the hopes of buying 57 acres adjacent to the current property.

The desire to buy the farmland became apparent after the board let the public, that is, me, back into the room.

The baseball stadium would presumably be constructed on this land.

The desire to purchase the property was evidenced in two of the seven board members—Scott Summers and Chairman Donna Kurtz—mentioning or referring to it while discussing how high tuition should be increased next year.

Both came down with the majority at the $5 per credit hour upward adjustment in part because of the “once in a lifetime opportunity,” as Summers put it.

The tuition hike seemed to be between $3 and $5, with the extra $2 per credit hour bringing in something over $200,000.

Here is Tuesday's Northwest Herald story by Nick Swedberg.

If you haven't read about how McHenry County College refused to release the $70,000 report by Houser's EquityOne, you might be interested in this story posted yesterday.

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In the top photo, from left to right, is the mystery administrator, Mark Houser, President of EquityOne Development, Pete Heitman of Mid-American Sports and Bill Lee, Commissioner of the Frontier Baseball League.

Next comes the room's door plaque. You can seen the closed door keeping the public out. And, in the next picture you can see the three troupadores making their pitch behind the closed doors.

Just below on the left is a happy Mark Houser leaving the meeting room.

Directly below is Pete Heitman, smiling broadly, but saying nothing on the way from the bathroom to his car.

Another picture of the grand entrance from the President Walt Packard's office complex. This was taken later than the one on top and shows Bill Lee ducking his head away from the camera.

Ok. By popular demand, below the photo identification line I've posted one of the coming out of the bathroom corridor pictures

All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Labels: Baseball Stadium, Bill Lee, Equity One Development Corporation, EquityOne, Frontier Baseball League, Mark Houser, McHenry County College, Pete Heitman