bids are being reviewed. That review will be concluded in the next month or two.

We will be comparing services, capabilities and price. We also have negotiated with our police to have the ability to hire part-time officers to support our current full-time officers who remain fully staffed in the field.

The part-time hires will cover vacation time and injured officers who are recovering. We will also be looking to hire additional officers for full-time positions in 2017 as we began taking applications in the Fall of 2016.

We expect these new patrol officers to take place in April 2017. These new hires will be replacing retiring officers. One area where we may consider adding to the budget is public safety video technologies which can increase the areas that officers can monitor as well as personal cameras which can protect our officers, the public, and decrease legal costs.

Q: What is one good idea you have to better the community that no one is talking about yet?

Iacovelli: Reinstate the Communications Committee and broadcast all village board meetings, as well as community announcements, on a local government-access television (GATV) cable TV station.

McLaughlin: After a year of planning and work with my communications director and an outside marketing company, we have just rolled out a new village website, which is innovative in its design and structure.

This will become an invaluable resource for our residents. It is much more than a government website. It was designed to be a “virtual main street “ a place where you can easily find permit applications and government records or locate an event calendar where citizens might be gathering for a creek restoration project or a Sunday trail ride.

We have crafted this communications platform to provide significant information easily to the user. We have added links to area schools, equestrian clubs, social services, park districts, forest preserves, conservation groups, and even philanthropic organizations.

This site combines the services local government must provide like records and FOIA request reports with services and links that people usually never have combined and assembled in a single web location.

The village has met with area realtors who are extremely excited about using the lifestyle section and property freedoms section as a way to highlight and promote what living in Barrington Hills can be like for potential homebuyers.