A dog park at the Waukegan Savanna Forest Preserve will have to be built for its original price after Lake County Forest Preserves board members removed a $450,000 add-on from its capital improvement plan.
Randall Seebach, the forest preserve district’s director of planning and land preservation, said the board instructed the district to proceed without the extra money.
Seebach said the $450,000 was added to the initial $1.5 million proposal to meet new American Medical Association guidelines for handicap accessibility. The additional money was also for a traffic study that found two turning lanes were needed near the entrance, he said.
With a $2.1 million proposal in front of them, several board members spoke out against the more expensive plan during a recent Land Preservation and Acquisition Committee meeting.
Board member Bonnie Thomson Carter said the new price tag is too much for the 26-acre park, which has several amenities not offered at other county dog parks.
“I’m sorry, but I think this is like the Hilton, it just feels over the top,” Carter said. “I would challenge you to bring these costs down. We need to figure out what has to give.”
Board member Carol Calabresa, vice chair of the county board, said she is worried people who use the other dog parks will want the same amenities.
“This just kind of mushroomed,” she said.
Board member Tom Weber agreed: “There’s a lot of things we want that are different than what we need.”
A final decision on the allocation of all capital improvement project money remains up for debate, and funding to solve a flooding problem at Rollins Savanna Forest Preserve in Grayslake and for dam removals on the Des Plaines River remain under consideration.
Seebach said the 450-foot boardwalk for the Rollins Savanna will cost about $350,000 and will cover an area that has flooded more 20 times.
The Rollins Savanna trail is mostly crushed gravel, but concrete was used on the lowlands so water could flow over the trail without washing it out, Seebach said. Despite the concrete, the forest preserve is still spending about $2,500 in maintenance costs each year related to flooding.
“It seems like it has gotten worse over the years,” Seebach said. “It’s an inconvenience. You get up to that point and you have to turn around, or roll up your pants and wade through it.”
The district considered other options besides the boardwalk, including moving the trail, Seebach said. The new trail might have to be on part of an Illinois Nature Preserve, but the preserve’s commission would have to approve rerouting the trail. That area was also recently renovated, and more work would need to be done if the trail was rerouted, he said.
Seebach said the cost for both plans is about the same, but building the boardwalk doesn’t involve approval from another agency.
“I’m not saying it wouldn’t get approved, but they cost about the same,” Seebach said.
Construction on the boardwalk is expected to start in 2017, Seebach said.
On the Des Plaines River, two dam removals are still being discussed as part of the capital improvement project. Seebach said the dam removal could have district and state funding, but the district is considering going ahead without the state, which is caught up in the budget logjam in Springfield.
The removal of the small dams at Wright Woods and McArthur Woods near Libertyville and Riverside would cost a total of $690,000, Seebach said.
The district received competitive bids for the project last year, and the contractor has agreed to honor the bid through 2016, he said.
“They block sediment and pollution behind the structures and it affects water quality and fish are blocked from traveling,” Seebach said. “A river with proper riffles will be able to clean itself. We’d probably get reimbursed by the state.”
In addition to the overrun for the Savanna dog park, a $3 million restoration of the upper Des Plaines River has been removed from the capital improvement project. The district and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were partnered on the work, which was slated to be done at the Prairie Stream, Sedge Meadow and Mill Creek preserves in the northern part of the county to improve water quality.
But Congress has not included the funding, Seebach said.
“We just don’t have the money to have that sit idle,” he said. “We will put it on the unfunded list.”
That $3 million can be redirected to other projects. Additional funding will also come from the Ryerson North trail project being $123,000 under budget because of “excellent bid prices and construction management.” Other projects that came in under budget include work at Ethel Woods North Mill Creek, Pine Dunes, the Lakewood dog exercise area and the Millennium Trail.
“It’s always a nice surprise when that happens,” Seebach said.
He said the district has to look at the list closely because they need funding for other infrastructure projects.
“We don’t have funding for some of our roads, parking lots and buildings,” he said.
The capital project plan is expected to be finalized at the Monday finance and planning and restoration committee meeting at the district’s headquarters in Libertyville.
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