Dundee Township residents will get the chance to voice their opinion about the proposed Longmeadow Parkway road and toll bridge by voting on an advisory referendum next year, but Kane County could break ground on the project before the vote.
Hundreds of residents attended Dundee Township’s annual meeting Tuesday with 232 people voting to allow the referendum question on the ballot and 65 voting no.
“It’s like democracy in action,” said JoAnn Fritz, a member of the Taxpayers against the Longmeadow Parkway Toll group. “What we want is our politicians and villages to hear us. There has always been opposition.”
The meeting was moved to Club Royal in East Dundee because of the large crowd that attended.
Members of Taxpayers against the Longmeadow Parkway Toll have been trying to rally opposition against the $100 million corridor, which has been in the works for about 25 years. The 5.6-mile road includes a toll bridge at Longmeadow Parkway that would connect to Bolz Road in Carpentersville and extend to Algonquin Road.
The group got a boost Tuesday night from people affected by the proposed corridor speaking out and a majority vote to place the nonbinding referendum on the township’s March 2016 ballot. Dundee Township residents were allowed to comment following the presentations.
Ken Jacobsen, of Carpentersville, cast his vote early without listening to presentations from Gary Swick, a member of Taxpayers against the Longmeadow Parkway Toll, and Kane County officials.
“The county board keeps saying everyone is for it. It’s not true,” Jacobsen said. His objection is that the toll bridge is funded by Kane County taxpayers but will serve McHenry County drivers.
Swick, an environmentalist and former Community Unit School District 300 teacher, has opposed the bridge since the beginning. He and others opposed plans for the western bypass in Algonquin back in the 1980s and opposed a Bolz Road extension proposed in the 1990s. He thought the Longmeadow Parkway Bridge was dead, he said.
“We thought it was deader when the housing boom came,” Swick said, in answering the question “where have you been” asked to opponents. “We thought it was dead when the Brunner property became a forest preserve.”
Taxpayers against the Longmeadow Parkway Toll’s goal is to get voters educated so they can influence their representatives on the county board, Swick said. A message that needs to be shared is that Dundee Township values open spaces, he said. The county’s project does not meet its own objectives of preserving open space and is not in the best public interest, he said.
The county’s 2002 environmental impact statement is flawed and outdated, Swick said. The area has different social, economic and environmental factors in place than when the study was done and it has lost its purpose, he said.
While the county has spent about $28.5 million so far — on planning, land purchases and engineering — Swick encourages voters to tell Kane County to abandon the project.
“They were saying the deal is done, shut up, go home. Well, we are not going home,” said Ed Egan, a Barrington Hills civil engineer.
Kane County’s Department of Transportation Deputy Director Tom Rickert gave the crowd some background and an update on the project. The bridge will be the first since the Jane Addams toll way extension in the 1950s, he said. Projects like Longmeadow Parkway usually take years and along the process more than 100 environmentalist and engineers have looked at the corridor and found it be acceptable, he said.
Kane County continues getting permits and moving ahead, Rickert said after the meeting. KDOT expects to start bidding for the first phase of the project — from Huntley and Boyer roads to Randall Road — by the fall, he said. After the bidding process — which will take approximately 2 1/2 months — is done, work on the project could begin.
The county is also working on its financial plan as it continues seeking other funding sources to keep the toll rate down, he said.
Through the years, there have been hundreds of meetings and opportunities for people to ask questions and raise concerns, Rickert said. There have been over 100 public meetings, he said.
The corridor will help ease congestion caused by the tenfold population increase west of the Fox River since the 1980s, he said. Additionally, it will help with future growth. The county’s 2040 plan projects an additional 150,000 people will live in the immediate area by that year, he said.
A 2009 feasibility study looking specifically at the toll option gave county officials different scenarios how the amount of a toll would impact traffic on the bridge, but the county continues finding ways to fund the project so the hope is the toll will not be too high, Rickert said.
Ed Egan, another speaker, poured through the county’s data about the project and his professional opinion is the Longmeadow Parkway bridge will not affect traffic based on a traffic forecast study for no-build and toll scenarios done by a consultant. Egan also argued the corridor will lower property values along the route.
“I see no benefits. I see lots of costs,” Egan said.
Local officials, including Algonquin Village President John Schmitt and Carpentersville Village President Ed Ritter, spoke in support of the project pointing to the need to help with traffic congestion. “The traffic is stagnant. It is polluting us to death,” Schmitt said.
Dundee Township residents, however, were not convinced and many spoke about concerns regarding the cost, safety issues for nearby schools and property taxes. Carpentersville Trustee Patricia Schultz was one of the few village officials who spoke out against the project. She said there is no economic advantage for Carpentersville but will negatively affect property values.
Although it’s possible the referendum question will be on the ballot after the county breaks ground, Taxpayers against the Longmeadow Parkway Toll continues their efforts.
“Let’s show the rest of Kane County we do not support this bridge,” Swick said. “Our voices will carry a message the rest of the county will follow.”
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for the Courier-News
