Aurora absent: Mayor says he will take part in future talks
By Dave Parro
STAFF WRITER
GENEVA ó The leading Kane County opponent of the state's Prairie Parkway corridor plans to present his own eastern
alternative next week.
Kane County Board Chairman Mike McCoy said Thursday he will hold a meeting or press conference to propose a specific
eastern alignment for the highway. The route will not represent the stance of the board, he said.
"I think there's an alignment that can be proposed that can meet everyone's needs," he said after a
joint transportation and development committee meeting Thursday.
One alignment option for the outer belt discussed Thursday would be to run the route south from Interstate 88
between Sugar Grove and Aurora and then west in Kendall County to the Illinois Department of Transportation corridor
that runs between Yorkville and Plano.
McCoy said this could be a possibility because Kane County wants the road in the east and Kendall County municipalities
have passed resolutions in favor of IDOT's corridor west of Route 47. The Kendall County Board has not taken a
stance.
Sugar Grove officials objected to that idea, saying a road that runs west and then east again to Interstate 80
would not function as a true outer belt. The Kendall alignment runs south before jogging to the east and hitting
Interstate 80 near Minooka.
"It's better for a beltway and for contiguity for it to be one alignment," said Scott Buening, Sugar
Grove development coordinator.
Tom Rickert, deputy director for the Kane County Division of Transportation, said an outer-belt highway that
runs west from Kane County to Kendall County could help alleviate local congestion because the daily traffic flows
northeast into Kane and DuPage counties.
Aurora absent
Aurora officials were absent from Thursday's meeting, but Mayor David Stover said the city will have plenty of
opportunity to take part in future discussions.
Stover said neither he nor his staff could make the meeting because they found out about the meeting in the newspaper
last Wednesday and were not able to rearrange their schedules. Stover said he will meet with Kane County transportation
officials in the near future to discuss all the proposed corridors for the highway.
Aurora will not make recommendations, Stover said, because the siting of the road should be left up to county
and state officials. The mayor said he will take part in future discussions in order to be able to coordinate the
city's plans with the highway route.
"I didn't see the need for us to rush on this because they'll change the plan 20 more times before the final
agreement," he said. "It's wasn't necessarily imperative for us to be there (Thursday)."