Big issues led to some big changes in the elected leaderships of both Buffalo Grove and Long Grove in 2015.
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A new Village President presides over Buffalo Grove this year, while a changed and — as some vote counts indicate — divided Village Board will guide Long Grove through a full slate of contentious decisions in 2016.
Village matters
In Buffalo Grove, trustee Beverly Sussman defeated one-term president Jeff Braiman. The incumbent edged the challenger in Lake County, the more populous of Buffalo Grove’s two sides, with 50.28 percent of the vote, but Sussman rolled up on him in Cook County, claiming nearly 60 percent of the total.
Buffalo Grove’s Village Board also has a new face: Dave Weidenfeld.
Both he and Sussman were supported by a group called Save Buffalo Grove, which played a role in making this spring’s election one of the year’s more unusual stories, as well as its most important.
The members of Save Buffalo Grove banded together in 2014 to fight a Deerfield developer’s proposal to turn the entire Village Hall campus into a commercial and residential “downtown.” The developer withdrew his proposal in December 2014, but during the campaign that followed, Braiman, Sussman and the six candidates for three Village Board openings spoke about the merits and flaws of the dead deal.
In Long Grove, Village Board incumbent Stan Borys and running mates Bill Jacob and Michael Sarlitto outperformed their three opponents almost two-to-one.
Long Grove faced a spate of challenges in 2015:
* The Village Board is exploring the idea of using federal money to tear down the one-lane bridge over the Buffalo Creek and replacing it with a two-lane new model, but has not committed to any path yet.
* After studying the concept of video gambling in restaurants and taverns for a year and a half, a Dec. 8 vote put the village in the position to pass a permanent ordinance allowing video gaming in early 2016
* Several new businesses opened in the downtown area’s once-vacant stores, but elected and business leaders remain uncertain about whether the area should have a municipal water supply — and how it would be funded.
* The Long Grove Business & Community Partners brought longer hours and more pedestrian walkway to their three warm-weather festivals in 2015. The group now runs its Strawberry, Chocolate and Apple Fests until 10 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, committing more money to bigger-name bands.
Stevenson celebrates golden year; but student faces charges
Stevenson High School celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015 with one of the most coveted trophies in the state, winning the boys’ 4A basketball title for the first time in its history. The Patriots finished their 2014-15 school year with a handful of other state championships, which late in the spring prompted a discussion among Lincolnshire’s Village Board members: would they be able to make all of the “Home of state champions” road signs they needed? The answer turned out to be yes.
But Stevenson’s fall semester included one of the low points of its now-51-year history: a student accused of bringing a gun to school. Lamont Glenn, a 17-year-old junior from Buffalo Grove, was arrested Dec. 4 by Lincolnshire police and charged with possession of a firearm. Officers said he brought an unloaded .38-caliber revolver with him in his backpack.
The cost of crossing guards
Student safety became the subject of other talks elsewhere in the area this year. Community Consolidated Elementary District 21 and Buffalo Grove’s Village Hall could not come to terms about who would pay, and how much they would pay, for the crossing guards who supervise foot traffic in front of the district’s three Buffalo Grove schools. Longfellow, Kilmer and Tarkington had crossing guards for the fall semester, funded 50-50 by the district and village, but will not when the kids return to class in January.
Buffalo Grove Village Hall has funded the service for decades. But in 2013, village officials notified their three elementary districts that each would need to start paying half the guards’ salaries. Buffalo Grove’s two other districts acquiesced, but District 21 refused, noting that they never agreed to start picking up half the tab. Both sides pointed to conflicting bits of the state’s Municipal and School Codes, saying the other agency was responsible for payment.
District 21 is expanding its bus service in 2016 to help some students cross the busy Arlington Heights Road.
Route 53 debate continues
No ground was broken that allowed for the extension of Illinois Route 53 into Lake County —but it was still probably the most-talked-about subject of the year.
At the end of 2015, the idea has the same gargantuan price tag, estimated at $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion, in 2020 dollars. The newest iteration of the decades-old concept has the attention of Lake County, but staunch opposition is coming from citizens’ groups like Livable Lake County and a few of the municipalities in its path, including Hawthorn Woods and Long Grove.
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Public meetings that regarded various angles of the concept dotted the year’s calendar, filling meeting spaces from Libertyville to Downers Grove. The existing road is owned by the Illinois Tollway, which has devoted funding in its 2016 budget to studying the environmental impacts that the current proposal would likely have, if the Tollway can amass the funding and support to build it.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer