Elburn Herald
May 2, 2002
Kane County Board Chairman calls beltway "fiscally irresponsible.
by Susan O'Neill
The Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University has invited key elected community leaders from Kane, Kendall, and Grundy counties--mayors, municipal and county representatives and chairpersons--to attend a series of meetings to give their feedback on how the Center plans to conduct its study of the Prairie Parkway project. These meetings, although they are open to the public, are not for public input.
The meetings are part of the Center's study of the proposed Prairie Parkway, also known as the outer beltway, the 33-mile-long proposed highway that would connect Interstates 88 and 80. The proposed highway includes a 400-foot-wide corridor that would run through Kane, Kendall and Grundy counties.
The $200,000 study was commissioned by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) in January to examine the impact the proposed highway would have on land use and economic planning and development along the highway's proposed corridor.
Part of the process includes creating an advisory group made up of representatives from a broad range of organizations and local municipalities, agricultural groups, environmental experts and the private business sector to provide input on the road's potential regional impact.
Individuals and organizations will be selected to join the committee over the next two weeks, associate director of the Center John Lewis explained. The group of a couple of dozen people will hold its first meeting about six weeks from now.
Over the next year, the Center for Governmental Studies hopes to develop guidelines for regional cooperation regarding land use, transportation, economic development and the environment, while respecting the local autonomy of the divergent communities.
Mike McCoy, Kane County Board chairman, said he plans to go to the meetings and give his input, but he wonders if, with the current financial woes of both IDOT and the Tollway system, the idea of actually moving forward with building this highway isn't "pie in the sky."
With the state of disrepair of many of the already existing roads, he said he feels that at some point someone will recognize that spending money to study this type of project is somewhat "fiscally irresponsible."
What he would like to see come out of this study is the creation of a management council whose members will work together to ensure that everyone shares equally in the revenue side of such a project if these types of corridors are to be sited.