Willow Springs expects to tackle video gambling at July 25 meeting

By Bob Rakow
Southland Savvy

On a recent week night, a handful of patrons gathered at Judy’s Friendly Tap in Willow Springs. The dearth of customers is a significant concern for Judy Meissner, the bar’s longtime owner.

“It’s terrible. It’s just awful. We are a dying breed,” Meissner said.

Meissner has owned her establishment at 8240 Archer Road for nearly 39 years. But she’s worried about the bar’s future if Willow Springs officials don’t approve video gaming.

Several bar owners insist they need video gaming machines to remain competitive with taverns in nearby communities such as Justice, Burbank, Countryside, Stickney and Summit where video poker has been approved.

Opponents maintain that introducing gambling to the community is an unwise choice for a village that has strived for several years to shed a corrupt image.

The village board is not expected to vote on the matter until its July 25 meeting.

Bar patrons say the proposal to allow video gaming machines has been talked about for nearly a year — a lengthy period during which their businesses have suffered.

Even if the proposal is approved, tavern owners may have to wait up to a year before the machines are installed, Meissner said. 

Illinois Gaming Board spokesman Gene O'Shea said the village would have to notify the board that gambling was now allowed. That would open the door to bar owners applying for the state license.

"Licenses are issued first come, first served," O'Shea said, adding there are dozens of pages of pending applications listed on the agency's web site.

"Once they file an application, they go to the back of the line and have to wait," O'Shea said. "There's no way of knowing how long it might take to be approved."

Chuck Stroh, owner of Connie’s Grove Inn at 8258 Kean Ave., said a friend who owns a restaurant and bar in Brookfield makes about $8,000 a month on five video poker machines. He said the addition of the machines has led to an offer to purchase the establishment. 

Another friend, who owns a restaurant in Crestwood, also takes in about $8,000 monthly, Stroh said.

Stroh can only imagine what he could do with $8,000 additional revenue each month.

“That’s my mortgage, salary. I could expand or remodel,” said Stroh, who’s owned his bar for 14 years. 

Stroh cannot understand opposition to the poker machines.

“It’s a no-brainer. I personally cannot understand it. They’re tying my hands,” said Stroh, whose business has declined by 25 percent in the past year.

Vicky Stadtler, owner of Ashbary Coffee House at 8695 S. Archer Road, said she’s frustrated with the village delaying a vote on the proposal.

“We just keep getting pushed forward with every kind of excuse,” said Stadtler, who’s owned the coffee house for seven years.

“We’ve given (village officials) so much information. We don’t understand what the holdup is,” she said.

Stadtler has owned the coffee house for seven years and knows what it’s like to struggle. Additional revenue would help her increase employees’ salaries, make improvements to the business and pay bills, she said.

“We’re so day-to-day, bill-to-bill,” she said.

The village would receive 5 percent of gaming proceeds, which officials estimate at $30,000 to $45,000 annually, Mayor Alan Nowaczyk said.

The money would go into the village’s general fund. Officials said they will not discuss how the money would be used until they vote on the proposal.

Business owners and gambling distributors each get 35 percent of the proceeds while the state receives 25 percent.

Illinois enacted legalizing video gambling in 2009 as a way to generate new revenue, but allowed municipalities to opt out of the program.

O'Shea said 805 communities in Illinois have approved video gambling, 217 have prohibited it and 41 are considering whether or not to approve it.

"There are 412 communities that haven't even addressed it, yet," O'Shea said.

Indian Head Park Congregational church celebrates 170th anniversary

Parishioners line up to receive Holy Communion
as Lyonsville Congregational United Church of Christ celebrates its 170th anniversary.

By Phil Arvia
Southland Savvy

Hazel Sharp doesn't recall the first time she entered Lyonsville Congregational United Church of Christ.

 
After all, it was sometime during the Hoover administration.

"I was carried in," Sharp, 84, said.

Slyly, she waited a beat before adding, "I expect to be carried out."

It is a circle of life that Sharp may be in no hurry to complete, but it is also one the Indian Head Park church has seen navigated dozens of times in its 170 years. In fact, Sharp's great-great grandfather, Joseph Vial, was one of the 18 original members of what is now the oldest Congregational church in Cook County, and markers bearing the name "Vial" dot the Lyonsville Cemetery, which sits on the hill behind the church.

Two churches, actually, occupying the corner of Joliet and Wolf roads.

Overlooking Joliet Road is the original building, finished in 1858 at a cost of $1,800. An addition built in 1949 makes the connection to the current sanctuary, erected in 1961.

On days when church is in session and the curtains in the sanctuary are open, the view is of the cemetery.

"It's really quite beautiful," said Patty Haigh, a 30-year church member who also sits on its Buildings and Grounds Board. "And comforting, when you stop to think how many of our congregation have family there."

There are 15 Civil War veterans, killed in action, buried on the grounds. It is a fitting resting place, considering the role the original church played in the War Between the States.

Church lore says local soldiers on leave from the Illinois 127th Regiment essentially used the building as a recruiting post, laying out the muster roll on the communion table to fill ranks thinned by injury or death. Church records show 72 locals signed up in what was then called the Congregational Church of Flagg Creek to fight for the North, and 36 of those men were members of the congregation.

 Before all of that, in May of 1843, six pioneer families in the area officially established a congregation with the goal of building a church. The 170th anniversary of that decision was celebrated last month by the congregation, and is being referenced throughout the summer in Pastor Bob von Trebra's Sunday sermons.

On June 23, he recalled an earlier anniversary, when he was new to the church in the late 1990s. At the time, he'd uncovered a book of sermons delivered at the church in the 1800s, and thought he'd deliver one to his current flock.

Editing ensued. Heavy editing. And when he'd cut the sermon by half, it was still long.

"I can still remember the eyes glazing over," he said.

Von Trebra was preaching that morning to a group of perhaps 50 congregants, a far cry from the 449 members the church claimed in 1933, on the occasion of its 90th anniversary.

He dwells not on the size of the group, however, as much as he does the size of the group's faith.

"People will tell you this is as healthy as the church has been in some time," he said. "People are working together. People are feeling connected spiritually to God and what God is wanting us to do."

The church's mission statement contains five points of emphasis:

- Preaching, teaching and living the gospel.

- Sheltering travelers and refugees.

- Feeding the hungry.

- Healing the sick.

- Nurturing new churches and ministries.

Von Trebra noted that in his time at the church, three members of the congregation have gone on to seminary school and the ministry. Three other seminary students have interned at the church on the way to leading other flocks.

"We teach them and send them out," he said. "That is a very powerful thing."

Ultimately, though, the power that has sustained Lyonsville Congregational is in the folks who come back, Sunday after Sunday.

Lois Soehrman, 86, of Westmont, was a 29-year-old resident of Countryside when she joined the church in 1955. Her strong, clear voice is easy to hear when hymns are being sung during services, and one of her favorite moments of the anniversary celebration was joining in on a gospel favorite, "Oh Happy Day."

But her favorite memory of her church goes back decades, to a midnight mass in the old building — a simple Greek revival style rectangle, just eight rows of pews deep.

"My daughter played the flute, and at Christmas Eve service she was up in the balcony," she said. "We only had candle lighting. So many people came up to me and said it was very inspirational — that made me feel good."

Making people feel good is something at which Lyonsville Congregational seems to excel.  No further evidence is required than Sharp's answer when asked what makes a church a church.

"Community," she said. "That connection, here, is inescapable."

Pension reform conference committee embraces prexy college plan

Mike Zalewski

By Bob Bong
Southland Savvy

Lawmakers charged with figuring out a solution to the state's growing pension crisis are warming to a proposal promoted by university presidents to provide full funding for the State University Retirement System as a possible framework for the state. 

"The SURS plan is one which we feel might be something all four caucuses could live with," said state Rep. Michael Zalewski (D-23rd), of Riverside, one of the lawmakers named to the Joint Conference Committee by House Speaker Mike Madigan.

"We all sort of agreed that it was something to look at," Zalewski said Monday before the committee held its third meeting.

The SURS Six-Step Plan, as explained by Southern Illinois University president Glenn Poshard, is designed to provide full funding for the state university system in 30 years. The measure would increase employee contributions from 8 percent to 10 percent over four years, adjust the compound COLA for retirees to half of the Consumer Price Index, place new employees into a hybrid pension system that combines defined benefits and defined contributions, change the way to calculate the effective rate of interest used to determine a range of benefits, refunds and service credits set annually by the SURS Board and the State Comptroller, shift the normal pension costs from the state to the universities at a rate of 0.5 percent per year, and ensure that the state and/or universities make their payments into the pension system.

Zalewski said conference committee members like the proposal because it deals with COLA increases "which are the biggest cost driver of the pension crisis."

He said that savings under the SURS proposal would probably fall "somewhere in the middle" between the projected savings of the competing pension reform bills sponsored by Speaker Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

Poshard called the SURS plan "shared sacrifice," but said it had the backing of every university in the state.

He said that while crafted for SURS, its main components would go a long way toward creating a solution for the state's other pension systems, including the Teachers Retirement System, the State Employees Retirement System, the General Assembly Retirement System and the Judges Retirement System.

Zalewski said the conference committee was waiting for actuarial reports on the projected savings and that he would have a better idea on when a compromise bill would be available once those reports were received.

"We're working as hard as we can on getting those reports back," he said.

Not fast enough for Gov. Pat Quinn apparently.

The governor, who set July 8 as the deadline for a compromise, said Wednesday he would use his budgetary veto powers to hold back paychecks for state legislators until they come up with a solution to the pension crisis.

Zalewski, a staunch supporter of the Madigan proposal to solve the state's pension crisis, said he was mildly surprised to be named to the conference committee.

"I had been doing a lot of work on pension reform," he said. "Maybe somebody wanted me on the committee because I was familiar with the proposals."