Baseball in Woodstock by 2012

The headline was "Officials: Stadium will happen."

The first sentence is "City officials remain confident ... despite uncertainty about its financing." I immediately noticed the plural subject in both the headline and the first sentence. City officials! That ought to be at least two, maybe more.

And then the only - the one and only - City official quoted or referred to in the article is Mayor Brian Sager. Sager is quoted as having said, "I am confident that we will have a team playing here. It may not be next year, but certainly the year after."

Presumably, that's based on some fact. Right? OK, folks. Go ahead and take that to the bank. Line up now and fork out your cash for those 2012 season box seats.

But wait. Mark Houser of Equity One Sports said, "Before (the recession), a local lender would have looked at the project and based on the equity in the deal, they would have done it even though it is a unique facility."

Oh, really? If that's true, then why didn't a local lender finance it? And finance it then?

Houser said "We have a considerable amount of equity in the deal - 40 percent." I don't care about the "percent". How many dollars does Equity One Sports have in the deal? If the equity in the deal were $100 and they had $40 in the deal, then they'd have 40% equity. So, how many DOLLARS of Equity One Sports are in the deal and at risk?

This was the deal that got rushed through the City Council so that stadium construction could start in the early spring of 2009, so that Woodstock would have a baseball stadium and season for 2010. Isn't that now?

The newspaper article didn't mention the environmental studies or the wetlands. Where is the mention of the U.S. Corps of Engineers? The Corps' approval should have been in the packet considered by the City Council before approval; it wasn't. Have the environmental conditions now been met?

How many of the 50 conditions imposed on the project by the City Council have been met?

I've been watching the expanding mounds on the north side of U.S. 14 and have wondered whether the City is closely monitoring the boundaries of the mining. I didn't remember from the charts shown to the City Council that so much ground would be devoted to mining.

Maybe next time a "deal" comes to the Woodstock City Council, it will require elapsed-time 3-D drawings. That's a piece of cake for an engineering firm.

What do you think? Will Woodstock really end up with a baseball stadium out of the deal, and will it be successful? Will the McHenry County Fair ever end up off U.S. 14 across from the hospital?