County Board’s Legislative Committee to Consider Bob Anderson’s Advisory Township Referendum

A map of McHenry County showing its seventeen townships, plus municipalities.

A map of McHenry County showing its seventeen townships, plus municipalities.  The boundaries are not quite up to date, especially with regard to Bull Valley in Dorr Township.

Thursday, July 10th, at 8:30, the Legislative Committee of the McHenry County Board will consider advisory referendums.

One was suggested by township abolition advocate Bob Anderson, a Republican Precinct Committeeman from Wonder Lake.

Included in the committee packet is a letter from Anderson which has one interesting argument:

Bob Anderson's July 6th letter to the McHenry County Board.

Bob Anderson’s June 9th letter to the McHenry County Board.

Pointing to Algonquin, Burton, Dorr, Grafton, McHenry and Nunda Townships, he says 80% of the boundaries of the townships have boundaries that are “semi-coterminous” with municipalities.

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Looking at the board members on the committee, I doubt a referendum will be approved.

The following comprise the committee membership:

  • John Jung, Chairman
  • Ken Koehler, Vice Chairman
  • Nick Chirikos
  • Carolyn Schofield
  • Nick Provenzano
  • Bob Martens
  • Ersel Schuster

Comments

County Board’s Legislative Committee to Consider Bob Anderson’s Advisory Township Referendum — 8 Comments

  1. Well Bob, that makes two of us, that are tired of this Township thing, that legions of Gov. wannabe’s have their snouts affixed.

  2. SEMI-coterminous?

    They are either the same or they are not.

    And they are not.

    Nunda twp, for example,has 7 villages (I count) inside their limits.

    At least 3 of those villages extend outside Nunda.

    And that white space is only 20%?

  3. I THINK his point is that the municipalities have 80% or more of their own boundaries within said townships. It doesn’t really look like that’s true for Crystal Lake, and since we can’t see the townships of Kane County, I don’t know about Huntley or Algonquin, but I sort of doubt it’s 80 percent. Still, I think the idea to reduce government is a good one and if townships are really only doing road work why not consolidate that function into municipalities’? (What else do they do?) Maybe having townships deal with roads works better since everything falls underneath them as opposed to towns where there is unincorporated space in between and perhaps rural roads would get neglected. I’m not an expert on this. I just went to my first township meeting a few days ago, but I know that having too many levels of government obfuscates things, makes certain governments want to opt out and get a free ride from others’ work, creates conflict between them, and costs more money by having more people on payroll and facilities to maintain. It’s just sort of outrageous to think we have over 7000 and the next largest has 2100 less. Do the math. That’s a giant percentage difference.

  4. When I think of Townships ……. the following things come to mind:

    1.) Waste
    2.) Unresponsive government
    3.) Rampant Nepotism
    4.) My Higher taxes to pay for the rats
    5.) Corruption

  5. Anyone for the idea of eliminating township governments needs to look at the unions involvement.

    Anytime unions are for something, it’s going to cost more tax dollars to do it.

    If a Dem from Evanston was able to abolish it’s township government, I’ll bet the unions got a sweet deal out of it.

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