NORMAL – Residents in Normal-based Unit 5 School District possibly were anticipating an increase in their tax bills this spring, and they would be right. But, Board members were informed at their Dec. 12 meeting, the increase residents will pay will be a little more than they thought.

District Business Manager Erik Bush told Board members owners of a $150,000 home would see their property tax increase by $37 this spring. At a Board meeting in October, Bush said it looked as though the increase would only be $17. The tax rate for the entire district will go up, to $4.85 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation, up from $4.74 EAV.

Bush told Board members the culprit for the increase is the amount of money it will cost Unit 5 to pay off bonds from its 2008 construction referendum. He explained it will cost the district about $18.75 million in 2013, but that that number could be as much as $20 million in 2014. Bush said should the value of property needing to be taxed be lower than anticipated, then so would the amount of the tax bill.

Board Approves Purchasing New Communications Equipment: Board members unanimously approved purchasing a new two-way communication system from Motorola Solutions. The system will cost Unit 5 $270,000 over a two-year contract. The new radios will improve two-way communication, the district believes, in both day-to-day and emergency situations, Bush told Board members. The agreement also specifies Unit 5 will join Starcom21, the police and emergency system used by law enforcement across the state.

The new purchase was in response to an incident involving gunfire on Sept. 7 at Normal Community High School. Following that incident, district officials met with both Normal Police and Bloomington Police. In those meetings, district officials learned having clear communication between district personnel and emergency workers was a chief concern.

“We feel, at Staff level, this is the most economical system we could buy,” Bush told Board members. “This is the best system we could buy.”

Board member Mark Pritchett commented on the purchase, saying the current system in use by the district “is antiquated and needs to be brought up-to-date.”

Dr. Gary Niehaus, District Superintendent, said the new system “will give us a more instantaneous response to events.”

Board member Gail Ann Briggs asked Niehaus if there was anything the new system doesn’t address. Niehaus responded the district may find that, once the new system is in place, additional radio units will be needed. He said that is different from the concern the district had previously, which was the need for quality equipment.

Possible Redistricting At Elementary Schools: Following the presentation of the district enrollment report to Board members, Niehaus told Board members the district will soon be looking at redistricting its elementary schools, for the time being. Nate Cunningham, assistant superintendent for human resources, told Board members the district had a total of 276 elementary sections for its 6,949 students in those grade levels. That is up from the 6,790 students in those grade levels noted from the one-day comparisons taken by the district on Nov. 30. Those numbers show an increase of 2.34 percent in the elementary population from November 30, 2011.

Two of those primary schools — Benjamin Elementary and Cedar Ridge Elementary – had the largest change in their population numbers, adding 59 students and 45 students, respectfully. Prairieland Elementary School registered the largest drop in population from the same day last year, losing 71 students to have a population of 504 students. Five other elementary schools only had single digit student drops in their populations.

Niehaus said the district is looking at elementary school redistricting for now. He said the district is also looking at the enrollment of schools on the west side of the district. He said a report on redistricting will by presented to Board members by March.

Next Meeting On Jan. 9: Because of the Christmas holiday, the next scheduled Board meeting will be on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at district headquarters, 1809 W. Hovey Ave., starting at 7p.m.

Parkside Elementary’s “Good News”: Parkside Elementary School fifth grade student Abby Naden was honored before Board members by her Principal, Shelly J. Erickson, to be recognized for having entered a STEMfest contest at Northern Illinois University, creating a video demonstration called “Franklin’s Bells.” Not only did Abby win the top prize at her grade level, she also won the overall top prize for all age groups. As a result of Abby winning the top award, Parkside Elementary School will be the recipient of two presentations by an NIU STEM associate. Students in K-2 will see “It’s Not Magic; It’s Science,” and grades 3-5 will enjoy the “Frontier Physics Road Show.”

Evans Junior High School’s “Good News”: Karen Bohl, teacher for the Cognitively Impaired program at George L. Evans Junior High School, was introduced to Board members by the school’s principal, Laura O’Donnell. Bohl ensures that her students are exposed to as much instructional technology as possible. She looks for ways to incorporate technology as a way to engage students, enhance their instructional experience and support the students so that they can complete tasks that are aligned to the general education curriculum. Additionally, Bohl has embraced the district’s literacy initiative. Bohl’s students created a video showing how her students were able to incorporate technology to further their understanding/comprehension of the text Schooled, which was the team read-aloud during the first quarter. Students created the video, took the photos within the video, and created the text included on the video.

Board members were shown the short video, which included the following students who were involved in this project: Sam Greminger, Jamie Fox, Patrick Haynes, Xavier Brown, Eric Grice, Jenny Garcia, and Frank Ramirez. There were guest appearances by Officer Shad Wagehoft, and Larry Kotowski, teaching assistant.

Chiddix Junior High School’s “Good News”: Members of the Chiddix Student Council were honored before Board members for having raised over $1,500 for the United Way of McLean County during the Council’s “United We Are Chiddix” campaign. The students created a “theme week” where the student body could purchase passes to participate in each theme day. The Student Council also set three monetary benchmarks for the school to achieve: $400, $600, and $800. At each benchmark, Chiddix staff members had to participate in various activities. The $400 benchmark saw staff members sing songs at each lunch for the students. The $600 benchmark had the students vote on outfits for selected staff members to wear – including two staff members getting Mohawk haircuts. The $800 benchmark saw numerous staff members, including the school resource officer and both administrators, get pies in the face at an all-school assembly.

Chiddix Student Council members are: Jonathan Boudreaux; Cassie Parent; Kim Halm; Kaleigh Higgins; Maggie Peters; Mya Davis; Jake Jacek; Jacob Hughes; Jaiden Goeke; Annika Hiredesai; Clay Fitzpatrick; Marissa Houseman; Carmen Cornejo; David Roegner; Brady Fletcher; John Patten; Dewitt Scott; Arianna Scheltens; Jake Parry; Madison Mason; Michaela Marshall; John Gibson; Rachel Hirschi; Logan Smith; Madison Dong; Ryan Watkins; Landon Harr; and Darci Peoples. Their Staff Advisor is Chris McGraw.

I have done numerous interviews with parents, grandparents, and other relatives of Special Olympics athletes over the years. The interviews themselves reveal how important the program is for their athlete, but almost as critical, how important it has become for the athletes’ families to see their child, grandchild, or sibling succeed at something others may have had doubts about.

Because of the desire to give something back to the community, to show how Special Olympics has helped its athletes and to add another dimension to the State Farm Bloomington-Normal Holiday Classic, held in the days after Christmas, Ron Knisley had an idea.

Eleven years ago, as the organizers of the Holiday Tourney were setting forth their plans for that year’s annual tournament, Knisley broached the idea of having a “tournament-in-a-tournament,” a one-day event where local Special Olympics teams would play basketball on the activity floor of Illinois Wesleyan University Shirk Center.

What’s more, it was suggested Special Olympics teams could play an exhibition at halftime of a couple of the Boys’ championship and Girls’ championship games on the Shirk’s biggest stage – the building’s main gym, where anywhere between 1,800 to 2,100 people could see the skills people with developmental disabilities possess given the chance.

The result and reaction to it were phenomenal, according to Tournament Vice President Dave Oloffson. It was received and accepted by people in the stands of the Holiday Classic’s championship games, and ever since that first Special Olympics tourney-in-a-tourney took place in 2002, The Special Olympics Shootout, as the event became known, has been a regular part of the overall larger event

At the time of his death from cancer on Oct. 13, 2005, Knisley served as Director of Sports and Competition at Special Olympics Illinois, headquartered in Normal. By that time, he was also was a 10-year member of the committee that helped put together the Bloomington-Normal State Farm Holiday Tournament, held right after the Christmas holiday.

After Knisley’s death, the committee that organizes the Holiday Tournament voted to rename the Special Olympics event “The Ron Knisley Memorial Special Olympics Shootout,” reminds Dave Oloffson, vice president of the Holiday Tournament. The Knisley event celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2011.

This year’s event features 14 teams, including four teams from the group known as Special Opportunities Available in Recreation, or SOAR, sponsored by Bloomington Parks and Recreation. The four SOAR teams are: SOAR Pink Panthers, SOAR Purple Monsters, SOAR Orange Crush, and SOAR Green Machine. SOAR’s teams either have members who are all teenagers or have teens mixed in with older adults. They will square off against other Special Olympics teams from Peoria, Pekin, Champaign, and Springfield, and Jacksonville, Ill.

Knisley Tournament games will run on Saturday, Dec. 29, starting at 9:30a.m. on Shirk Center’s ground floor activity area. At the halftimes of three of the Holiday Classic championship games are played on that Saturday, three of SOAR’s squads – Purple Monsters, Pink Panthers, and Orange Crush – will take to the court to give fans a halftime exhibition.

“We’ve increased the number of teams over the years to get as many to participate,” Oloffson said the number of teams that will participate this year and have in the past. “It gives them a venue where they can get some games in, helping them as they get ready for Special Olympics’ State Basketball Tournament.” That tournament is held in mid-March in facilities at Illinois State University and Shirk Center.

Oloffson called the Knisley Shootout “one of those hidden gems of our tournament. You know, it’s not that just that we put together a 64-team varsity basketball tournament. This is probably – if you ask anybody on our committee – probably their most favorite part of the four days.”

“It’s a great way to wind up four days of being in gyms and watching basketball,” Oloffson said. “You know, to see these athletes out on the court in front of a packed house at Shirk Center, and the fans aren’t heading for the concessions. The fans are sitting there, watching them and cheering them on.

“That just provides for an unbelievable atmosphere, and I know the athletes appreciate it,” Oloffson said. “The athletes are excited about coming back every year. It’s just one little way that our tournament can give back to the community that we play in.”

I can attest that Oloffson is right about fans not leaving their seats during the exhibitions. They cheer and encourage the players. And during the Knisley Tourney on the activity floor, there may be small crowds, but the players give their all because, for them, too, getting wins and making it to State becomes important to them, just as it is for any other athlete – disability or not.

If you have not seen the Knisley Tournament, stop down and check it out. You will be amazed and you can’t help but feel the need to cheer these athletes on, even if you do not know them. They will inspire you.

We may all be hustling and bustling to get our Christmas gifts purchased and bought for loved ones right now, but the other big gift this area receives at this time of year – at least if you are a basketball fan – is not far behind either.

That’s because as soon as the day of family fun and gift giving and sharing is over, the next four days – Dec. 26-29 – basketball fans can unwrap their present, the 34th annual State Farm Bloomington-Normal Holiday Classic.

Games for The Classic will be held at Normal Community High School, Normal Community West High School, U. S. Cellular Coliseum, and Illinois Wesleyan University’s Shirk Center.

One of the changes folks will notice is how the brackets are named. In recent years, for both boys and girls, the teams were divided by classes, either Class 1A/2A or Class 3A/4A. But beginning with this year, the classes will be divided as Small School Boys and Small School Girls; and Large School Boys and Large School Girls.

“For the longest time, we tried to mirror what the Illinois High School Association was doing as far as their enrollment classes and how they bracketed their teams come State Tournament time,” explained Dave Oloffson, Tournament vice president. “But because IHSA reclassifies schools every year, there are actually, probably six or seven Class 3A schools that are in our small school bracket.

“The reason we kind of changed the name for those schools is because we’re not really going to mirror according to the IHSA brackets anymore, just because it is too tough to keep track,” Oloffson explained, citing IHSA changes classifications for those schools almost from year-to-year.

Also, Oloffson, adds, “what we’re trying to do is keep those schools that are traditionally looked at as small schools – ones that were Class 1A or Class 2A – as our small school teams.” Schools once considered large enough for Class 3A-4A will go into the “large school” category, he added.

“Doing this, overall, will make for a more competitive tournament for us, the fans, and for the teams,” Oloffson said. He added that, although the Tournament committee has not formally set this in stone yet, the committee is looking at classifying a school with a student population of roughly 700 or fewer students as a small school; Schools with populations of 701 or higher would be classified as a large school.

In past years, teams from states like Ohio, Arizona, and Indiana have played in The Classic. They usually played because, if The Classic started on Dec. 27 (because of what day Christmas fell on that particular year), they could travel on Dec. 26. But because the Classic started this year Dec. 26, Oloffson said the tournament committee decided to limit having any out-of-town teams so players and coaches could spend the holiday with their families.

“We had inquiries from teams from Alaska, Arizona, and New York who all wanted to play here this year,” Oloffson said. “And my question back to them was about traveling Christmas day. But none of them blinked. They all said, ‘we don’t mind traveling. We’d love to play.’”

“My personal thought is, I just hate to tear kids and coaches away from their families to travel here,” Oloffson said. “This year, we purposely didn’t have any out-of-state teams.”

But Oloffson, said, “2013’s Classic event may be a different story. “Next year, again, we do start on the 26th and I think we do have at least one out-of-state team,” he said. That team will be the boys’ team from Mesa High School in Mesa, Ariz., a team that has appeared at The Classic previously. “They assured me they didn’t have any problem with traveling on Christmas or before,” Oloffson said.

Of this community’s boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, the only two fans will not see are the boys’ teams of Normal Community West High School and Bloomington High School. That is because they go to other holiday tournaments. Normal West makes a daily drive to the Pekin Holiday Tournament, while BHS goes to Pontiac’s annual post-Christmas event.

Regionally, both boys and girls teams from El Paso-Gridley will return to the tourney and the girls do so as returning champions from last year.

In the Small School Boys division, Bloomington Central Catholic is seeded 15th and will face second seed Rock Island Alleman in a first round game at Shirk Center on the Illinois Wesleyan University campus. That game will be on Dec. 26, starting at 2:30p.m. Also in Small Boys, El Paso Gridley is seeded ninth and will square off against eighth seed Rock Falls. That game will be on Dec. 26 at 4:30p.m. at Shirk Center.

University High is the top seed in the Large School Boys division, and will face 16th seed Grayslake Central on Dec. 26 at 9p.m. at Normal Community West High School. Normal Community High School’s Boys are seeded 11th in Large Boys division and will face sixth seeded Calumet City Thornton Fractional North High School. That game will be played at Normal West, starting with the 1p.m. tip-off.

In the Small School Girls division, El Paso Gridley is seeded fifth and will face 12th seeded Rock Falls. That game will take place Dec. 26 at NCHS, starting with the 7:30p.m. tip-off. Also in that division, Bloomington Central Catholic is seeded seventh and will play 10th seed Downs Tri-Valley. That game will be played Dec. 26 at 11:30a.m., also at NCHS.

Finally, in the Large Schools Girls division, Normal West is seeded 15th and will face second seed Belvidere North. That game will be played Dec. 26, starting at 7:30p.m. NCHS is also competing in Large School Girls division. They are seeded 14th and will face third seed Rock Falls at 7:30p.m. U-High girls are seeded sixth in the same bracket, and will play 11th seed Springfield Sacred Heart Griffin. That game will be at 4:30p.m. Bloomington High School is also in that bracket. They will face Springfield High School Dec. 26, starting at 10a.m. All of the games in the Large Schools Girls bracket that first day will be played at U. S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington.

Brackets can be found at the event’s website, www.theclassic.org.

NORMAL – Representatives from Harlem Irving Properties and Tartan Realty Group gave Normal Council members a glimpse into the future of what the Uptown One project could become during a Council work session prior to the Council’s regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 3.

In a conference room across from Council Chambers, Council members sat through a presentation from the developer which proposed a hotel and upscale apartment building, the front of which would sit on the east end of the Uptown Circle.

Council members were informed that while the project had a $32 million price tag attached to it, the Town would only have to be responsible for $7.35 million, which would come in the form of $2.7 million from tax increment dollars; $1.7 million from sales taxes; and $3.6 million from the Town’s hotel/motel tax. Those three sets of revenue would help pay for a 20-year general obligation bond the Town would issue to pay for their end of the project.

The apartments would be one- and two-bedroom units, according to Doug Reichl, president of Chicago-based Tartan Realty Group. “We’ve pushed and we pulled and we tried to come up with a package that was financially viable,” Reichl told Council members.

City Manager Mark Peterson told Council members his staff was working on a comprehensive agreement regarding the project and in doing so, could have an agreement ready for approval by the Council’s December 17 meeting.

Both the apartment complex and hotel, a Hyatt Place Hotel, have undergone an alteration since Harlem Irving Properties and Tartan Realty Group first proposed the project to Council at a special session in late February. The proposed hotel will be five stories tall as opposed to the proposed eight stories; and the apartment complex will be six stories high as opposed to the proposed nine stories. The building will wrap around where Broadway St. meets Beaufort Ave.

Reichl said “a portion” of the apartments would come furnished because a demand has arisen for corporate use of apartments.

Peterson said Uptown, in recent years, has become an example of public/private partnership. “We’ve always been entrepreneurial in our projects,” he told Council members, citing the Shoppes At College Hills as another example of that.

“We can have influence on the look of a project and we can do that because we are partners,” with those developing the projects, he explained. Although lenders consider hotel projects to be dicey investments, the developers have received initial approval from a trio of banks for the $17.9 million loan required for the project, Reichl explained.

Construction of the complex has a $27.2 million price tag, with the cost for design adding another $3.3 million.

Town Finance Director Andrew Huhn told Council members he contacted the three bond rating agencies which have all given the Town their highest rating possible to see if the agencies had any issues with this project causing issues for the Town’s rating. Huhn said representatives from all three had no problems with what they heard.

Council member Adam Nielsen was absent from both the work session and the Council meeting that followed.

Community Investment Plan For FY 2013-2018 Approved: During the regular Council session which followed the work session, and lasted about 17 minutes, Council members unanimously approved the Community Investment Plan expenditures for fiscal years 2013 through 2018. The Community Investment Plan is a document intended to assist the Town Council to prioritize major capital investments. Annually in December, Town Staff propose a mix of capital projects needing the Council’s attention over the next five years.

The proposed Capital Investment Plan for 2013-2018 includes 125 capital projects that are to be completed during a six-year time frame, starting in the current fiscal year.

Monies to be spent for such projects have gone up in three of the four categories from which funds are available. In total during FY 2013-2018, the Town has $54,666,026 available to use on projects needing the Town’s attention. That is an increase of 17 percent from the Capital Investment Plan for fiscal years 2012-2017.

Deputy City Manager Pam Reece told Council members projects will be paid for with funds coming from such sources as the Town’s Capital Fund, Motor Fuel Tax dollars, and the Town’s Water and Sewer Funds. She said Capital Funds would be used to help pay for construction of an overhead walkway at Uptown Station to help accommodate loading of passengers onto Amtrak trains, including the new high speed rail service. Capital funds would also go to pay for expanding the parking lot at Champion Fields, as well, the deputy city manager said.

In addition, she added, new Motor Fuel Tax monies would be used to pay for signal replacement work needed at both Vernon Ave. and Towanda Ave.

Omnibus Agenda Items Approved: Omnibus agenda items approved by the Council included:

• Approval of minutes of the 12:30p.m. Public Hearing of Nov. 19, 2012.

• Approval of minutes of the 6:45p.m. Public Hearing of Nov. 19, 2012.

• Approval of minutes of the regular meeting held Nov. 19, 2012.

• Approval of Town of Normal expenditures for payment as of Nov. 28, 2012.

• A motion to approve the Town meeting calendar for the year 2013.

• A resolution authorizing the execution of a contract to approve a three-year towing contract with Joe’s Towing and Recovery.

• A resolution accepting an easement dedication by easement plat (Heartland Community College).

• A conditional resolution partially approving the final plat of Vineyards Outlots Subdivision in the Town of Normal and vacating a utility easement.