"Behrend said he was unfamiliar with Ellis’ record specifically". That would make it kind of hard to judge a person's value than, wouldn't it. I know Mike Ellis professionally & personally. This guy lives and breathes Grayslake. Take a look around our beautiful town. It has his fingerprints all over it. We are also financially debt free. What other towns do you know that can say that? You want the best, you pay for the best. And Rahm Emanuel is grossly underpaid!!

How you can say anyone making over $200,000 a year is grossly underpaid is beyond me! As a 35 year resident of Grayslake, I personally think it has always been a nice place to live, long before we had village managers makeing almost $260,000 a year. What is that, 4+ times what the average Grayslake resident earns?

Ah! This may explain why we pay almost $10,000 for taxes, are charged an additional $3600 for our son to go to full-time public Kindergarten, and then are denied because there are too many kids that want to pay to be in that program and not enough room. Refreshing to get an (at least partial) explanation as to why! sigh.

Homer agrees with his friend Tim. And Kristen, I am sure you are a nice person but...
Grayslake village government has no debt and is one of the smallest charges on your tax bill. Schools are one of your highest charges on your tax bill and have nothing to do with the Village manager. If the schools were operated has well as the village, I am sure you would see these programs available and at a reduced cost. But, is that not the point? Well run government operations are few and far between. The village is well run, I get value for my money and the Village Manager is worth every penney! Thanks Mike! As a 47 year long resident, Homer appreciates your dedication to our community!

Were I come from, doing a great job allows you to keep your job ! This is just proof that people like Tim who dips thier pen in company ink are in favor of allowing "friends" to get paid this well. Mr Ellis needs to take a pay cut, fire his landscaping company (mow his own lawn) and tell his wife to go out and get a good paying job like the rest of us hard working tax payers. The cronyism in our village dates far back, and will not be gone until there is a house cleaning, both on the board and the administration

Hence "partial". I'm not blaming the school situation on him - but It all adds up. Just curious how other villages manage to do it on smaller budgets is all. Seeing people leave Grayslake because they can get better value (obviously "value" is different for different people) for their money elsewhere is sad.

Homer has trouble understanding mean spirited personal attacks. Where I come from, Grayslake, doing a good job means keeping your job and getting paid for it. Cronyism has nothing to do with it. And why attack his wife? Homer has trouble understanding the meaness of GL Resident. Homer has no trouble understanding the ignorance!

GLOBAL Resident, how do you know what Mrs Ellis does for a living? Haw do you know they don't cut their own lawn? Correct me if I am wrong Tim or Homer, but hasn't Mr.Ellis been employed with the village about 25 years or so? The Village is debt free and employees are mostly part time? That reduces cost and reduces pension liability as well. You get what you pay for people. I wonder what his starting salary was. Why is it that nobody is complaining about the average CEO salary of 9.6 million? They drives up you every day costs too!

Mike may be doing a great job, but let's take this in context. We are a small village, and if managers of much larger villages can do the same on less salary, why are we paying more? In business, we compare our salaries to like companies to determine competitive salaries. Grayslake should perform a similar study and report to the tax-payers. If Mike's salary is justified by comparison to like villages, great! This article will upset many people, so the village might want to perform the analysis.

@GL Resident ... Maybe if you worked as hard at your job as you do stalking Mike you might get paid well at your job. How creepy and inappropriate your comment is. WEIRDO! Get a life!!

If you'd like to help bring more financial stability to the D46 schools come to the meeting of For Our Childrens Future on Friday at 7 pm.

Panera Bread
254 East Rollins Road
Round Lake Beach, IL 60073

Nearly every taxing body (school district, village, park district, library district) in IL has a spending problem. The Village of Grayslake, District 46 and District 127 are all examples of this problem.

Brad, seems like you have some anger management issues trying to intimidate people to prevent them from trying to work together to build a better community. Everyone is welcome to come join us Friday night to ask questions. Learn more at out website http://ForOurChildrensFuture.com and see you Friday night to learn how we can help the local school districts.

It seems to me Mr Ellis salary, much like the value of my house, was artificially inflated during "good" times. Unlike the value of my house, Mr Ellis salary remains high. Can someone please explain why government is the only entity not forced to adjust when fiscal circumstances change? Mr Ellis should be paid what managers of similar sized towns are paid, no more, no less.

Local, Lennie & GL Resident,
At what point do you want salaries to stop going up. If you worked for a company for 35-40 years, do you not expect to get some sort of raise every year? Now while I agree, if in a bad economy salaries may go down, that is not always the case. So is it after 20 years? 25 years? 30 Years? Are you complaining abou this salary simply because he is a public employee? If so, please remember everytime you get a raise at your work, it costs your employer more money to operate and 9 times out of 10 it is passed along to the consumer. So everyone pays for your raises just, like we pay for Mr. Ellis's raises. I understand peoples frustration, but everyone needs to look at the big picture.

I haven't gotten a raise since 2007 and only people who patronize my place of employment are directly impacted byraises given to our employees, not the entire community. It just seems that public employees gladly share in the good times, yet rarely suffer through the tough times. I'd be willing to bet Mr Ellis contract gauarantees him a raise every year, regardless of the economic situation facing the general public. Please explain why his salary is higher than ANY other village manager in the entire state? It's no wonder Grayslake has such high property taxes!

Perhaps the other posters are as jealous as I am. Me nor my husband have received raises in the last few years, and we work for a family business! We are happy to be working in this economy though, as I know countless people who have been let go after working very hard for 20, 30 years. They would be happy to be working for the sake of having a job, not having a raise. This is what much of the nation is dealing with right now. Yet, somehow, in the 6 years we have lived in Grayslake and our house value has dropped $90,000, our property tax has gone up $3000, and now we want to leave and can't afford to without just walking away. I wish I could look forward to a raise every year! Then maybe we could afford to get out of here!

Who is Michael Volpe, and how did he get on the Tea Party's press release routing list?

The tea party leader lives in a simple, naive world. Just because a person works for the public, his or her salary is dependent upon the economy? On what planet are you from? Salaries are competitive and as such, you get what you pay for. So, the Village Manager should not get a raise because a few citizens did not get raises. How absurd! So the manager leaves, we hire a new one at a reduced salary and soon we are in debt, the streets go unpaved and the snow does not get plowed. But, we saved a few dollars. See how Libertyville passed a 20 Mil. bond referendum to fix their streets. Why? Because there was no planning. Grayslake has a plan and Mike Ellis did the planning. The tea party has no solutions, only complaints. Homer likes living in Grayslake and our village government is one of the reasons why.

So Lennie, you are saying that no public employee should ever get a raise in a bad economy because they are public servants? Also Lennie, the village of Grayslake is debt free. YES I said DEBT FREE ! so the financial situation in Grayslake is OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE ! The could even afford to go into a little debt to get them through this bad time, but they don't even have to do that. Wait Lennie, do you even live in Grayslake? Did not think so.
Local & Mrs Foote, While I will admit that the taxes in Grayslake are steep, the majority of your tax bill goes to the schools. They have to raise thier funding levels because of costs going up and funding from the state going down. Before Lennie goes on a rant about the pensions, please remember that the pensions are underfunded, mostly due to the State of Illinois being negligent and defering payment to the state pension. If they had done that all along our state would not be in this position. Also, the school districts/union have some blame too. There should be no end of career bumps to artificially inflate thier pensions. Now back to my point, your overall tax bill to the village of Grayslake is something like 5% of your total tax bill. So to use my own tax bill as a reference. 9K*5% = $450.00/year for, the building department, police department, public works and village staff. So all my snowplowing, police protection, building codes are covered for $1.25 a day.

Salaries are not competitive between private and public sectors. Public sector employees almost always make considerably more annually than their private sector equivalents. What planet do you live on Homer, "a few citizens did not get raises"...really, a "few". Most people I know haven't had a raise for several years, but I personally know three village workers (not Grayslake) and they have gotten performance and cost of living increases every year....all paid for with OUR TAX DOLLARS!! Then to assert that if we were to hire a manager at a lower salary that "soon we are in debt, the streets go unpaved and the snow does not get plowed", has to be the most ridiculous thing I've heard lately. As if it's the salary that makes the man? I'm not questioning the job he's done, I simply think it could be accomplished just as well by someone making significantly less.

Lennie, how do you expect public employees to pay their bills, if you continue to provide no raises? Are they supposed to live a life of struggle and poverty and never get ahead in life? Everyone is quick to blame the public employees and teachers for their own problems. Nobody forced you to purchase a house you can not afford. Now also that being said, nobody could predict the housing market to tank and stay low like it has. I have seen many of my friends purchase homes way beyond thier means, and now are really struggling. (Shady lending Practices). I am proud to say, I am not underwater. Why? I did not purchase the $400K house that I was told I could afford. Why? because I knew how much money was coming in and I knew if something happened to my income I was screwed. So I purchased a mid level home for about $250K and lived within my means. Now even with the economy tanking, the housing market tanking, I am struggling to make ends meat, but I am in no danger of losing my house. It is still worth more than I paid for it and I owe less than it is worth. The people I blame is the politicians, they caused this mess by horrible spending practices, shady deals, and two wars that they put us in. Note, Dems and Republicans are both at fault. Starts with Clinton Policies on lending, Bush II policies on Taxes and Two Wars and Obama Health Care. Bing Bam Boom your Screwed !

Okay Jim, where do you get you're facts....from Homey by the sound of it.

Several analyses of average wages and benefits in the public and private sectors show that state and local government workers earn more than private sector workers. According to the most recent Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of December 2009, state and local government employees earned total compensation of $39.60 an hour, compared to $27.42 an hour for private industry workers-a difference of over 44 percent. This includes 35 percent higher wages and nearly 69 percent greater benefits.

Grayslake has changed over the years and I don't think it's for the better. The schools were significantly better 10 years ago with better teachers and a more professional feel. Now we have teachers who don't seem to be motivated in their job and a definate dumbing down of the curriculum. I also think Mke Ellis pulling in a QUARTER OF A MILLION dollare salary is ridiculous. So what if he balanced the budget....It's his job to do that. I'm not that impressed with some of the decisions made by this village either. Good people have moved away from Grayslake and will continue to do so because this village lacks quality vision. I seriously never understood why the citizens of Grayslake were not more vocal in expecting our schools and village to do a better job. Mediocrity seems to be what we get here.

It is a shame when village affairs and school affairs are mixed up. Then generalized complaints about vision. Grayslake is a great community because the budget is balanced and there is no debt. If you look at nieghboring communities with higher incomes, they do not have balanced budgets and they have debt. Libertyville is the clearest example. Their roads were deteriorating because they have no deferred maintenance program. They had to ask the citizens for $20 mil. in bonds to fix the roads. Driving in Grayslake this week, it was good to see good planning and newly paved roads by the post office and the library.

I'll be more clear Homer. I would rather have crappy streets and great schools. We seem to be fixing streets here in Grayslake that don't even need to be fixed. We are forever repairing the stamped painted concrete disaster they put in the downtown intersection. That never made any sense to me. That is an example of poor vision. If you want to talk roads please tell me why Grayslake has let the 120 mess remain the way it is for so many years. You cant even get out of Grayslake to get to work. The extra slow commute on 120 gives me a chance to really see the monstrous new Low income housing going up on 120.....just feet from the road. It's larger than life and Grayslake voted almost unanimously for it. Benefits no one in Grayslake by the way and makes me think our village is not acting in the best interest of its citizens. Yes Homer I probably mix in the schools with the village but to be honest one affects the other. Decisions our village make directly affect the kind of people who move here. Many good people and families are leaving and that's the truth like it or not.

Forget the roads!!!!! That's not the point. What I'm saying is I'm paying a ridiculous amount of taxes and my return is a below average grammar school and a village that lacks vision and evidently common sense when it pays Mike Ellis over a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLAR salary.......it's insane

I’m calling for the immediate review of everybody in Grayslake that has the power to help lower taxes. If I’m doing a bad job at work I get a review and put on probation. If I don’t improve I get FIRED. I think we should all do a social experiment and go to our bosses and say I want more money because I can’t manage my personal spending. I would love to hear the responses. Tell them you want more money and that you want to give them less work. It sounds ridicules when you say you out load
I am confident if there was more pressure on Grayslake they could find a way to EARN more money. The Illinois (Grayslake) motto is just charge more and blame the other guy. That seems the easiest way not to get anything done. I feel sorry for the people defending the ridicules taxes that have lived here their entire life. It’s not like this in most other states. Over 10% percent of a person’s income should not go to property taxes! I have lived in much nicer places that have much much lower taxes. How do they do it??
Grayslake is debt free I could be debt free if made my boss give me $100,000 that I lost on my house or I can cut cost and try and EARN more money. That seems logical to me instead of demanding more money for less work.

Grayslake schools – I am so sick of teachers complaining! I have 2 close friends that are teachers. The both make $85,000 a year, they have summer off, great vacation, pension, and great insurance. I have to work in the summer no pension and $5000 insurance deductable. Maybe teacher should be required to get a job in the real world so they can see how most people live. It’s harder to work for a company that has to earn money rather than state that can just demand more money. If teacher have it so bad here I say leave. Illinois is rated as having the highest paid teacher in the country so good luck its funny that they are not rated to have the best schools. I think another experiment should be to go to your boss and ask for more money and if he says no tell him that you’re going to protest. Good luck in the unemployment line.

Last point- I love that I pay all these taxes and I still have to pay $3500 to send my child to kindergarten. Maybe if the teachers took a 1.5% raise instead of 3.5% my child could go to kindergarten full time. I forgot to mention that my child didn’t get into kindergarten in Grayslake because it’s full and based on a lottery. The two teachers in my neighborhood kids got in. That is convenient isn’t it?
I guess it is what it. I am stuck here so I just have to deal with it. Grayslake and Illinois will continue to be a joke to the people I know. The taxes at this point is laughable and have become a shock topic for out-of-towners. As my home value drop and taxes rise and schools start cutting programs I will sit back and absorb it. I will continue to work hard and make more money so I can keep up with the village of Grayslake and it school employees standard of living. Eventually, people will have nothing left to give. Then what? Good luck to all that live in Grayslake. I hope you can keep funding this craziness. I know my goal is to get out as fast as I can!

GL Resident- Really? You honestly think Mr. Ellis and his lovely wife are the ONLY Grayslake residents who have a lawn service?? I have one! And I bet some of your neighbors do too! Obviously you haven't had the pleasure of getting to know the Ellis' during the 25+ years he has been working for our village. Or maybe you just didnt get the memo that Grayslake is one of the very few towns that is DEBT FREE!! Yes, DEBT FREE! Are you debt free? Mr. Ellis doesnt work 40 hours a week.. He works 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week! Like Tim said, he lives and breathes Grayslake.
Local- yes, Homer was right. Some people get raises, some dont. Unfort, we are all lucky if we have a job.
Homer- thank you for the additional FACTS. I read the article a few weeks back about his salary... And to be honest, didnt think much about it. Yes, he brings home a nice salary... But you know what else he does?? Makes me proud to live in Grayslake!
Mr. Ellis deserves his salary, just like any other hard working man who has dedicated his entire adult life to the village my family calls "home"
Oh! And BMF- you really think His salary is solely responsible for the harsh decline in our economy? Of course it isnt. But hey, he obviously brings home more than you, so let's blame him! Feel free to head on over to round lake, or perhaps waukegan? I'm sure their taxes are much lower... But take a guess at the kind of education your kids will get...

You have changed my mind. I agree I can’t wait to see our tax bill next year. I love spending more money and getting the same crappy results. Let’s pay people in Grayslake more! 25 years of service and crazy taxes. Thank you MR Ellis! Can we 25 more? Illinois the state of no accountability. You have to love it.

Grayslake - the town that puts families into debt... so that it can be debt free. Woohoo!!! Yay us! And don't worry - plenty of families certainly are moving out for cheaper taxes. And they (at least the ones I know -feel free to add to this discussion cases of people you know who have moved and miss it here) are plenty happy.

Guess what folks, you get what you pay for! I live in a village that is NOT DEBT FREE, where the schools are now in a boat load of trouble, and the roads, well let's not go there. Yes the value of my home has decreased and taxes keep rising. I wish we had a Village Manager that could bring business into our town to ease our tax burden. I wish we had a Village Manager that wanted to stay for 25+ years, but that would mean we would have to PAY him/her so they weren't always looking for the next step up the ladder. You don't think he's worth it? You have no idea how good you've got it. I'm pretty sure no where in his job description does it require a 70 to 80 hr. work week. Sounds to me you got off cheap. If Mr. Ellis would like to leave Grayslake I will gladly welcome him to my town at any price!
To those crying over the school district, and I might add rightfully so, please understand that your school district is a separate entity from your village government. Mr. Ellis and his salary have no bearing whatsoever on what is happening there. Get up off the couch and go to a school board meeting and voice your opinion, it won't change until you do.
Finally, to the ignoramus who brought Mrs. Ellis in to this discussion, SHAME ON YOU!! Just when you think people can't sink any lower, they do.
Residents of Grayslake, please appreciate what a value you have before some other thown steals him away: on second thought, keep it up, your loss could be my gain!

I don't plan on it! Pretty sure with what we will be saving in taxes (and the schools where we plan to move rate better than here, so no worries there), there won't be too much regret. But thanks for your concern. Hopefully more residents don't go the route we are though - very sad to think what would happen to taxes/home values if they did!

Non-Crazy 15 Year Resident

To all who are attacking Mike, do you know him or his work ethnic? In the way you are attacking him, I would say no. If you did, you would come to the realization that its making you look like an idiot. There is no reason for the attack of his pay or family. Do we not appoint people to worry about where our money is going and where how it is being spent. Everyone in Grayslake approved his pay when the people they appointed approved his salary. This has always been public information. If you really have a problem with his salary you would have been bitching along time ago at village meetings. For you to attack the salary of one person without knowing what they are worth and what they do to make this such a great town to live in. Then I think it shows how much of an idiot you are. What time do you go to work every day and what time do you get home? Better yet what time does Mike? Remember its not about what we are paying him but how the village is running. If the people running our village thought that he needed a pay cut they would have given him one. If you do not trust the people running this village (better then any other I've see ) then there are other towns and villages you can go live in.

He’s the highest paid village manager in the state why would he go anywhere else? I don’t think you have to worry about losing him. I would think if you are working 80 weeks you could find a way to lower taxes. The article is about him so that’s why we are talking about him. As far is living in a non debt free town what the difference? taxes are high, schools are cutting programs, home values are way down, and people are scared to buy here because of the taxes. So please tell me what the difference is? Simply saying someone works 80 hours a week does nothing for me.

http://www.villageofgrayslake.com/index.aspx?NID=172. Look at this everyone please.

http://www.villageofgrayslake.com/index.aspx?NID=173. An this. It's good for all to where the money is really going.

Who agreed to Mike Ellis pay? Our board members !!!!!!!! TIME FOR US TO VOTE THEM ALL OUT. I will be.....

Let's not forget that pensions are paid out based upon the trailing 2-3 years of salary. Is Mike planning on retiring soon?

The abuse generally falls into one of these categories:

† Spiking: End-of-career raises that boost pension payments for life.

† Double-dipping: Employees who get multiple pensions from different units of government.

† Tacking: Consultants and contractors improperly joining pension plans even though they’re not government employees.