In 1994, rapid growth threatened to swallow up several McHenry County communities.
Hamlets such as Ringwood and Greenwood had a well-rooted sense of community, having been settled in the mid-1800s. But because of their small size, they had never established a local government.
Faced with the choice of being absorbed into neighboring towns or forming their own municipalities, a group of Ringwood residents in 1994 worked with local legislators to pass a measure designed to make it easier for communities in high-growth areas to incorporate.
But four years after the law was passed–and three years after Ringwood and Greenwood were incorporated–the two villages could be on the verge of coming apart. Incorporation hasn’t brought the hamlets together but divided them, as officials and residents talk of dissolving the towns.
That is the course already taken by one McHenry County community. Six months after forming in 1995, residents of Barnard Mill voted to dissolve.
In Ringwood, the biggest blow to unity came earlier this month when a petition signed by 59 percent of the village’s registered voters called for a referendum on dissolution in November.
Supporters of the petition drive say they don’t like the way village officials are trying to control development and believe the village was less than upfront about plans for restricting growth.
“Ringwood seemed to have everything going for it,” said former 63rd District state Rep. Ann Hughes, a sponsor of the legislation. “The community was solidly behind it. It just seemed like the most likely candidate of all of them to succeed.”
Although they acknowledge the issue is serious, some Ringwood residents said the referendum could be healthy. Trustee Kevin Bauer said some signed the petition so they could vote in favor of the village.
“What I heard was, `Let’s vote on it and beat those others and settle it once and for all,’ ” Bauer said.
The dairy community settled in 1837 seems to retain much of its small-town charm. With the anti-Village Board faction absent from the annual town picnic on a recent Sunday, it was a bucolic scene. Residents threw horse shoes and shared roasted corn on the Ringwood Commons, a property in the center of town purchased and beautified through volunteer work.
Though some skeptics predicted financial ruin for the new community when it was first incorporated because the village had no tax base to pay for services, that hasn’t occurred. With a $37,000 budget and no paid staff, the village has paved its roads and spruced up the community. The village contracts out some services such as police protection.
The town of about 600 has $200,000 in the bank, and a like amount in assets in the form of land donated by developers.
But political issues, not financial ones, endanger Greenwood and Ringwood. Local officials, residents and policy experts say the combination of land-use issues and the lack of population results in some matters becoming personal grudges.
In larger suburbs, a divisive issue can be battled out in council-room chambers after which the warring parties go back to their far-flung neighborhoods. After divisive meetings in Ringwood and Greenwood, opposing local officials have little more than a wide lawn to separate them.
At first glance, board sessions in the small villages seemed to have a New England town-meeting charm to them. Several Ringwood land-use plan hearings had levels of participation that would have been the envy of most governments. Members of as many as half of the households in the village attended, deeply engaged in the debate over how much development should be allowed in Ringwood.
J. Dixon Essex, a Northern Illinois University professor of public administration who is studying rural-growth issues, said bigger communities often have a large pool of citizens only moderately engaged in issues, and that actually can be politically healthy.
“I think they can kind of be a moderate majority for the two warring sides,” Essex said. “If you have no group in the middle, then there’s either no one to broker a consensus or form a majority that can impose one.”
Barnard Mill was formed to protect residents on the northern tip of Wonder Lake from growth pressures. But fighting began shortly after the incorporation vote was approved in April 1995.
Six months later, the first elected trustees of the village couldn’t take their seats because in the same election, a referendum proposal for dissolution had been approved.
Greenwood and Ringwood have allowed residents to disconnect from the villages, including a former Ringwood trustee, Mike Hogan, and George Rasmussen, a former Greenwood trustee.
Both had fairly large holdings of farmland in or abutting their respective villages and both objected to land-use policies that would have restricted development.
Evelyn Nash, the plain-speaking village president of Greenwood, said no petition for a dissolution referendum has been presented to her, but she said board members in recent months have talked about the prospect.
She said she is not in favor of dissolution because of what started the whole idea of village government in the first place: a chance to have a say in the very land issues that often roil her Village Board.
“I don’t think anyone likes any of it right now,” said Nash of the conflict. “It’s 10, 20 years down the road that we’ll be thankful for it,” Nash said. “Right now, it’s a pain in the butt to everyone.”
