Randall Road Rage

Woodstock Reader Joyce Kunath weighs in with her thoughts on the McHenry County Board’s Randall Road improvement project:

I recently learned that our McHenry County Board has already approved $15 million for just the engineering and public education for the Randall Road Phase II Engineering project.

Randall Road when backed up north of Miller Road in Crystal Lake.

Randall Road when backed up between Miller and Ackman Roads in Crystal Lake.

But the proposed spending for this 3-1/2 miles from Ackmann to County Line Road is over $125 million!REALLY?

Where is all that money going to come from?

Most of you homeowners have already gotten your tax bill and are probably not very happy about the increase.

Though the property tax increase and largest draw from our pocketbooks are mostly due

  • to the increase to fund our stellar (not!) public school systems – don’t forget to add in the separate line item on your tax bill
  • to fund the McHenry County College and the raises the administrators have given themselves –

spending this exorbitant amount of money for this stretch of Randall Road is just another blatant slap in our faces and is enough for all of us to feel road rage.

Yeah, the road gets congested during rush hour, but it does not have the huge potholes in it like so many other roads in McHenry County.

In addition, it is not nearly as congested as Route 47 in Woodstock or 31 in Crystal Lake.

Randall Road Phase II construction will cause huge headaches for all who drive this stretch and will hurt the revenue for the stores that abut it.

So what can we do about it?

Read the CAPA (Citizen Advocates for Public Accountability) position on the Randall Road Phase II Project.

It is easy to read and puts the tax dollars proposed to be spent in perspective.

Then call your County Board Representative and let them know how you feel.

We can make a difference if we just speak up with our voices and our votes.

This is not a project we the tax payers need at this time!


Comments

Randall Road Rage — 7 Comments

  1. Thank goodness for people like Joyce Kunath who pay attention to what’s going on in the community and then speak up about it.

    I hope everyone takes her advice and contacts their county board members.

  2. Phone numbers should be included with this story.

    Will get a lot more action if you make it super easy.

  3. The money will likely come from Federal, State, and Local grants and bonds and be repaid through a combination of Federal, State, and Local taxes.

    Behind the scenes is a sophisticated network of construction unions and those involved in the bond industry working with politicians to get projects approved.

    The construction work will be done at construction union prevailing wage.

    To really figure out what’s going on requires attending board meetings and FOIA documents.

    And because you are not an expert they will have no patience or respect for you and likely try o stonewall you.

    Pretty much you have to know the answer to the question, before you ask the question, which is bviously counter intuitive.

    But if you persist you will eventually figure it out if you don’t drive yourself insane first.

    It’s the lowest paying most difficult job you can find.

    People will say why bother, they are going to do what they want to do anyways.

    Which is why we have ridiculous debt and unfunded liabilities (IOU’s) in this state.

    Assume you will be lied to at some point along the way.

    However long you think it will take to decipher the project, multiply it by 10.

    At least.

    Civics for Adults.

    How Government Really Works.

    What they will not teach you in High School.

    And.

    The best way to understand to put this into perspective is to YouTube the Stepfords.

    Meaning.

    Their goal is to convince you, that the world is nice, bright, and sunny.

    They will smile a lot.

    They will pour on the charm in public.

    Lots of flowery language, impressive slides, hand shaking, congratulations, patting on back, hugging, etc.

    One on one not in public, beware.

    The non public Stepford may rear its ugly head.

    At the end of all this, you may not change a thing for this project.

    But this project is a battle.

    There are many battles in a war.

    Most people are not even aware there is a war.

    But there is.

    The United States Attorney General, Northern District of Illinois (covers the Chicagoland area
    – Cal posts some of their cases) had 1,531 public corruption convictions from 1976 – 2010.

    That’s just the people whom go caught.

    That should qualify as a Public Corruption War.

    They have been fighting battles for decades.

    This is your first battle.

    They have more experience than you.

    But you will gain a lot of knowledge and be able to educate other folks.

    And you can use that knowledge for future battles.

    And then there is Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, the union bible.

    A must read for understanding how they operate.

    Top notch detective skills are a must.

    It’s a crime scene, and you are gathering evidence.

    There may not be a crime.

    There may not be wasteful spending.

    But there might.

    Within all this dysfunction there are legitimate upstanding people, many whom have been lied to and don’t understand all the true facts.

    At the top are the puppet masters.

    Good luck.

    It is fascinating when you learn what is going on.

    Resources:

    McHenry County Blog.
    CAPA.
    Better Governmenet Association.
    Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst.
    United States Department of Justice – United States Attorney’s Office – Northern Illinois District.
    Champion News / Family Taxpayers.
    Open The Books / For the Good of Illinois.

    The newspapers don’t have the resources or expertise to do much investigative journalism, but they do come up with a few.

  4. Mark, is there any way to get ahead of the curve rather than always playing defense (and losing)?

    Where there is enormous amounts of money flowing through few hands, it seems to suggest profit potential for bigger bullies who might be satisfied with taking a lesser portion of public money pie than current bullies seem to demand.

    Shall we beg to be rescued by bigger, non-Illinoisan bullies?

    We may not like the terms of rescue, but relative to the current conditions, what is our other choice?

  5. You pretty well figured the answer to the problem.

    It is not the need for road construction is the need to keep the overpaid union workers working.

    The same problem as building more schools or expanding existing ones.

    There is no need for this either however look at the contractors that get all the work then follow the money.

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