Infrastructure maintenance and traffic congestion aren’t too far from the minds of Barrington Area officials.
The issues were frequently mentioned when village administrators and village presidents were asked about their concerns and agendas. Here is a look at the top two issues each village will address in the coming year. The Barrington Area Council of Governments (BACOG) also weighs in with its top two concerns for the region.
Barrington
1. The village has been pursuing the redevelopment of its downtown since the mid-1990s and will continue through the next several years, said Denise Pieroni, director of administrative services.
“We have a historic downtown, and we have a lot of very good retailers,” she said, “but we feel the downtown does need additional retail business so that you have more of a synergy there and things for people to do once they get there.
“We want people to have a lot of op-portunities to eat and to shop.”
Redevelopment got a kick-start in July when the village announced that an upscale Italian restaurant signed a lease at the Cook Street Plaza development at Cook and Station Streets downtown. Francesca Restaurant planned to break ground this month; construction will take about 15 months. The plaza is expected to include 18,000 square feet of retail space.
The village also is working to develop an acre of land it purchased on Hough Street downtown, with hopes of attracting some type of entertainment venue, Pieroni said, such as a restaurant that would offer music.
And it will continue to try to draw more people to the downtown with activities such as the summer farmers market.
2. A program to improve infrastructure will continue in the next year with reconstruction of about 1/20th of the village’s streets and the addition of new sidewalks, particularly around schools, Pieroni said.
The village has earmarked $1.4 million for street improvements and $100,000 for sidewalks. Another $500,000 will be spent to update the sewer system.
An upgrading of the public-works facility is on the drawing board.
“We’ve done some initial planning on it,” Pieroni said. “We’ve been using a trailer for office and meeting space, and it has deteriorated.”
The facility also needs increased space for equipment.
“A lot of equipment is left outside,” Pieroni said, adding there is no timetable yet for the project.
“We have money set aside for facilities generally, so we’re hoping to use some of that to do the design and site work that would allow us to move forward.”
Barrington Hills
1. The village needs to address disconnection laws, which allow landowners with 20 or more acres on the edge of the village to disconnect from one town and connect with another, Village President James Kempe said.
“The law is very liberal and favors disconnection,” he said, adding that Barrington Hills recently was hurt when a landowner with 400 acres disconnected.
“Usually, people disconnect so they can join a more liberal community. We’re low density in Barrington Hills and they want a higher density. We’ve tried to change this legislatively but haven’t been successful. We’ve haven’t thought of a new technique yet, but it’s some-thing we have to address and will be looking at.”
2. The village will spend roughly $700,000–out of a budget of $3.5 million–to repave roads during the next year, Kempe said. “This is a substantial amount for us,” he said. “It’s probably twice what it used to cost, because we’re putting down asphalt now, which will hopefully last longer.”
Deer Park
1. Traffic, particularly on Rand Road, is an ongoing concern, Village Administrator Kari Diesen-Dahl said. Rand Road is a state road, so it’s the state Department of Transportation’s job to find a solution to the congestion, she said. “We wish Route 53 could be extended, because that would relieve some of this problem,” but plans to do so have been stalled for several years.
“We need help from the state to solve this,” said Diesen-Dahl, who hopes to begin talking with representatives from the state about the problem.
2. While the village has no room left for residential growth, there are still a few commercial sites to be developed, Diesen-Dahl said.
The village will work in the next year to bring more businesses to the Deer Park Office Center at Lake Cook and Ela Roads, and it is looking at proposals for new stores on Rand Road and Long Grove Road. “We’re developing more as time and the economy permits,” Diesen-Dahl said.
Inverness
1.,2. Infrastructure improvements for roads and drainage are the issues the town will address in the next year, Village President John Tatooles said. About $900,000 will be spent improving these two areas.
“We’ve been very aggressive in the last several years in regards to infrastructure,” he said.
Poor drainage areas are being improved.
“We go out when it rains, see where trouble spots are, and take care of it,” Tatooles said.
All residential roads have been or will be resurfaced.
Inverness is spending 27 percent of its annual budget of $3.3 million on these improvements, he said.
Lake Barrington
1. “We want to maintain our semirural atmosphere, and we have so much traffic,” Village President Dorothy “Connie” Schofield said. “That’s our biggest problem.”
The intersection of Kelsey Road and U.S. Highway 14 is particularly bad, she said. It’s difficult to make a left turn onto U.S. 14, so the village has been working with IDOT, Lake County and the Union Pacific (there are railroad tracks near the intersection) to find a way to ease the congestion.
IDOT has agreed to change the timing on the traffic lights at the intersection in the next few months and the village is hoping that will take care of the problem. “We want to get it done as soon as possible,” Schofield said.
2. The village is looking at the continuing development of the Lake Barrington Business and Industrial Park on U.S. 14, in the village’s southeast section.
“We’re looking for good businesses to come in that will be an asset to the village,” Schofield said. “In 1993, we brought in water and sewer to the business park and a lot of interesting businesses came in over the last 10 years. There are still a few parcels left.”
North Barrington
1. Flint Creek, which runs through several subdivisions, has been a frequent source of flooding, causing headaches for residents over the years. So the village is looking for solutions, Village Administrator Judy Janus said.
The village has received grants for research studies, “looking at reasons why it floods, whether there are beaver dams, if it needs cleaning and a number of different reasons,” she said. “Then we’ll look at what we can do about it.”
2. After watching a growing number of smaller houses get torn down to make way for much bigger ones, the Plan Commission is working on a teardown ordinance.
“We’re trying to come up with something that allows people to upgrade but not change the whole look of the area, because North Barrington is a countryside community,” said Martin Pais, Plan Commission chairman. “We want a countryside look with a lot of open space.”
The village is having public hearings this fall. It hopes to have an ordinance written by January, Pais said.
“We’re not interested in having it be very complicated,” he said. “We want something simple but something that looks” at the size of the house in relation to lot size.
South Barrington
1. Over the next several years the village will focus on The Woods of South Barrington, a 610-acre development. Building is expected to begin next year for 392 single-family homes, Village Administrator David Pierce said.
“This is a property [formerly the Klehm Nursery] that has been discussed by many people for potential development over the years,” Pierce said.
The village will keep a close eye, she said, on the progress of the project, which has been controversial for several reasons, including density.
“They’re just beginning the prelimi-nary engineering at this point. Our major concern is the quality of life [here] and the maintenance of open space and the ambiance of the area.”
The project eventually will include commercial development.
2. Traffic on Barrington Road is an ongoing concern that Village President Frank Munao hopes to address in the coming year.
“It’s a combination of high-intensity commercial and also traffic from Willow Creek Church,” he said.
“For many years, we’ve tried to keep down road construction because more road building means more traffic, but now we have the traffic but we don’t have the roads.”
Munao began talking to Willow Creek Church officials this year about possible solutions. The church hires traffic-control officers to help during busy times, but Munao said it’s not enough.
Barrington Road is undergoing widening and lane additions at several intersections. Once the work is done, “We’ll have another look at the traffic patterns along with a traffic engineer and see what the recommendations are,” Munao said.
Tower Lakes
1. Providing services on a limited budget is the No. 1 issue facing Tower Lakes, Village President Leonard Kuskowski said, so the village is putting a referendum item to increase the tax rate on the November ballot.
The increase would raise taxes about $150 per year for the average homeowner and generate about $69,000 more for the village next year, he said. Tower Lakes depends largely on property taxes for income, plus a small amount from permits and fees.
“We’ve been putting off projects like road paving,” Kuskowski said. “We set aside money every year until it builds up to something we can use, but we’ve been unable to set aside as much as we need. We need to pave roads and we have storm-water issues that need to be addressed, but all we’ve been able to do is maintain what we have. We haven’t been able to make improvements.”
2. A cellular phone company has requested permission to put a cell tower on village property near Village Hall.
“We didn’t have an ordinance to control that so we’ve drawn up an ordinance,” Kuskowski said. The Plan Commission will present the ordinance to the Village Board for approval this fall.
If the ordinance is approved, the company “might go away or they might come back and say, `This ordinance is not correct,’ and ask for a variance,” said Kuskowski, adding there has been quite a bit of opposition already from residents.
BACOG
1. The Affordable Housing, Planning and Appeals Act that was signed into law in Illinois a year ago gives communities until April 2005 to develop plans that meet affordable-housing goals set by the state.
To be in compliance, towns have three options: increase the overall percentage of affordable housing to 10 percent, increase the overall percentage of afford-able housing by 3 percent or require that 15 percent of all new developments be affordable.
“We are unsure, as a region, how we are going to address that act,” said Janet Agnoletti, BACOG’s executive director.
“It has the admirable goal of encour-aging communities to include affordable housing as development goes forward. The difficulty is in areas where land patterns and neighborhoods are already well established, which is what we have. Many of our communities are essentially built out.
“The land values here will make it nearly impossible to accomplish this without major changes in zoning and established land use. We’re uncertain how we’re going to comply with the act.”
Each town must come up with a plan. Agnoletti is unsure what role BACOG will play but said the group will begin discussing the act later in the fall and “consider how we will move forward.”
2. The quality and availability of water is a long-range issue that BACOG has begun to address. The group is conducting research on the shallow aquifers from which private and community wells draw their water.
“We’re not sure how much water there is and if we have enough for sustained development,” Agnoletti said. “There’s not a whole lot known about how much water there is or where it is.
“We’re totally dependent on ground water. We’re concerned about protecting this resource.”
BACOG is working with several state and county agencies to conduct the research. It is using volunteers to measure water levels in wells and to send in water samples.
“The state does its own research, the county does its own research, and we’re doing a smaller-scale version in our own area,” Agnoletti said, adding the project will take years to complete.
There is no water crisis currently, she said. The project is aimed at making sure there is no crisis in the future.
