Darch wins fourth term as Barrington village president

Karen Darch will get a fourth and final term as Barrington village president after fending off challenger Mike Kozel, according to unofficial results Tuesday night.

With all nine Cook and Lake precincts reporting, Darch got 1,627 votes, 72.6 percent of the total. Kozel, who has now been unsuccessful in his bids for village positions three times now, got 615 votes or 27.4 percent.

Accepting victory at around 9:30 p.m., Darch thanked the voters for believing in Barrington's bright future.

"The campaign was a chance to talk about the issues and the good things happening in Barrington," Darch said. "I'm very pleased with the outcome."

In many ways the campaign came down to whether or not voters thought Barrington was on the right track or was falling behind.

Earlier this year, Darch used her state of the village address as an opportunity to lay out Barrington's rosy financial picture including that home values were up in 2016 with a 2.6 percent increase in the average home price, Barrington's retail occupancy was 93.7 percent, and a 5 percent increase in sales tax revenue from 2015 to 2016 is expected.

Kozel rebutted Darch's message and tried to poke holes in the numbers she used to tout the village. On his campaign Facebook page Kozel posted pictures of vacant storefronts around town to dispute the village's occupancy numbers.

Darch said she was looking forward to completing key infrastructure projects in her fourth term including the downtown sewer project which kicks off this year and the Route 14 underpass project.