Village ignores need for burn restrictions

Barrington Hills has virtually no fire hydrants.

Beginning July 22, 2019, I wrote a series of emails to village President Martin McLaughlin and the six trustees asking that restrictions be made to the landscape waste burning ordinance. For eight months, I didn't receive the courtesy of a response. Fire Chief Jim Kreher's May 7, 2020, email to these officials also advocated restrictions.

President McLaughlin refused to publicly debate me about burning ordinance issues before June 14, 2020, when a Barrington Hills home burned to the ground - despite assistance extinguishing the fire from 33 suburban fire departments. Possibly including yours.

Starting July 20, in an unannounced act of government censorship, residents' emails to officials stopped being posted on the Barrington Hills website. Those already posted were removed.

Shockingly, one day later, July 21, President McLaughlin and four trustees - irresponsibly and recklessly - voted to substantially ease restrictions. The new law permits one unsupervised 18-year-old to build and burn for six hours every day of the year a pile of landscape waste 10-feet high, wide, and long. Imagine: 10 feet high. That's a pile eight times larger and twice the daily time as prior law. The pile can be merely 100 feet from a neighbor's home.

Barrington Hills officials have become more arrogant, abusive, and authoritarian. At trustee meetings, residents may speak for only three minutes and cannot ask questions.

Spouses of a trustee and a police pension fund board member are paid employees of Barrington Hills - egregious conflicts of interest. The funding position of the police pension fund has worsened over the last five reported years, and only 58.4% of the pension is funded - despite President McLaughlin's self-proclaimed pension expertise.

Officials fiddle while Barrington Hills burns.

Richard Michi

Barrington Hills