Throughout the debate on township consolidation, proponents have watched opponents dominate every meeting.
Proponents have argued that all but one of the meetings were held during the day when only township officials and their friends could attend, that regular voters were working at such times.
There is no doubt that opponents effectively marshaled their forces.
The question that an elected official (or ex-elected official in my case) sometimes asks, however is,
What does the electorate want me to do?
My job title was state representative.
For those in a legislative branch the tension is always between doing what one’s constituents’ desire and doing what one thinks is right.
Edmund Burke is famous for voting his conscience.
What is generally not know is that after doing so, he lost his next election.
McHenry County Blog decided to ask the question in a scientific poll.
The results were that an overwhelming majority of McHenry County voters want the McHenry County Board to put consolidation of townships on the ballot.
The results are below
Voters in McHenry County want to vote on township consolidation.
82.7% in favor of putting on the ballot; 17.3% on the other side.
When voters are over 80% on one side of an issue or another, most politicians take note.
They know that an opponent could use the issue effectively.
Could this be an issued in upcoming Republican primary elections?
Only if candidates running against those who vote “No” want to make it one.
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The poll was taken by Victory Geek.
Here is the question on township consolidation:
Do you believe the efforts to consolidate townships within McHenry County should the decision of the voters or the county board, if the voters, then should this question be placed on ballot for a public vote?
PRESS 1 if you believe it should be decided by the county board and not on the ballot 1
PRESS 2 if you believe it should be decided by the voters and placed on the ballot 2
PRESS 3 if you are unsure
647 replies are included in the poll, meaning 534 favored the County Board’s putting the question on the ballot.
It has a 3.81% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval with 647 respondents and was modeled to likely voter demographics.
Hey Cal, would you be kind enough to include the question as it was posed in the poll?
Cal, it would seem pertinent to the question to know the following.
What were the actual numbers on each side?
Did Victory Geek ask if the respondent was elected to, employed by or appointed by a township?
Did they ask if the respondents was elected, employed by or appointed by the County?
What percentage of the respondents were from the west side of McHenry County?
How many of the respondents live within a municipality?
If they did ask these questions, what were the numbers in each case.
This sort of information is important in judging the overall worth of the survey.
By the way to answer questions which may come up, I am appointed to the Dunham Township Planning Commission.
My husband and I lived in Crystal Lake for 12 years and have lived in rural Dunham Township for 34 years.
Patricia Kennedy
There’s not enough financial data to make a decision one way or another.
The data needs to be compiled on a spreadsheet and made available on a website so that taxpayers can download the spreadsheets and analyze the data if they choose to do so.
And for taxpayers not interested in spreadsheets the data should be presented in a pdf or powerpoint presentation.
Let me answer the questions I can.
Township employment was not asked. They certainly were not excluded from the voter pool.
Whether living in incorporated or unincorporated area was not asked.
All respondents were likely GOP and mixed primary voters for 2016.
There was no geographic breakdown.
The question that was asked on township consolidation has been added to the article as have been the raw numbers.
How come they didn’t ask if the person just wanted to leave things are they presently are?
I have yet to see or even hear about the legions of tax paying people who are railing against the township part of their tax bill.
For most people it is 3% to 4% of their total tax bill.
As has been accurately pointed out by others in comments in other articles on this blog, the various school taxes (and there are several) are the massive amount of our real estate taxes.
I would also point out here as I did at one of the meetings that was held by the “committee” that after a snow storm our township roads are cleared Way before the County, State or Federal roads are cleared in our area.
And that is accomplished on a very tight budget.
By the way, I was able to be at that day time meeting because I am retired. I do agree that day time meetings do make it very difficult to next to impossible for 9 to 5 working people to take part.
Patricia Kennedy on 09/11/2015 at 2:18 pm said:
Correct!
About 60-70% of a Property Tax Bill goes to the School District.
Don’t believe it?
Grab your tax bill, it is clearly broken down for you on the left hand side.
Oh, and while you were distracted with all of this “Evil Township” talk, District 158 Teachers just got a 7 1/2% raise!
Seems they got you while your back was turned!
All this tells us it that given the choice between us voting on the matter vs. the county board deciding for us, we’d rather vote on it ourselves.
What is lacking here is a third option of shelving the idea entirely and leaving things the way they are.
I am vehemently opposed to my very well-run TWP being consolidated with another, but given the options in this poll I would have voted with the 82% had I been called.
I wish effort like this was regarding something that was actually very important like the State Of Illinois and/or the United States budgets… not state townships. Their costs are actually like a small crumb in a large pie.
What I still can’t understand is when our new governor started to take action to control the state budget people that are affected actually loudly complain about how they will be effected. Could it be that a single parent family of 6 on food stamps, free healthcare and all the other freebie from taxpayers that they are able to can get be a problem?
The township reduction could be a vary slight savings but pick on something important that really means something like the school districts. Why not look at something important?
If one wanted to leave things as they are now, wouldn’t one have said they didn’t want the County Board to put the question of township consolidation on the ballot?
GOOD NEWS!
No, Cal. Shawn green is right. The folks don’t trust the the board at all.
Remember the Question was:
Do you believe the efforts to consolidate townships within McHenry County should the decision of the voters or the county board, if the voters, then should this question be placed on ballot for a public vote?
PRESS 1 if you believe it should be decided by the county board and not on the ballot 1
PRESS 2 if you believe it should be decided by the voters and placed on the ballot 2
PRESS 3 if you are unsure
If you press 1 you are saying you believe the County Board should decide.
If you press 2 you are saying you want the question placed on the ballot.
Press 3 and you are unsure.
Either 1 or 2 is saying you believe action should/must be taken on the question of township consolidation.
There wasn’t an option for someone who wishes the township boundaries to remain as they are.
I believe this was a survey to create the impression that “The People” wish to take action or to see action taken to change township boundaries.
There wasn’t an option for people to express that they think the whole township consolidation effort is a foolish and wasteful endeavor.
Still the politician with an agenda right Cal! CL/LW township, then we/Cal could vote it out!
The Scientific poll indeed, Political partisan poll with an agenda is more like it.
How about a poll asking people if they have the proper numbers and facts to make a educated vote on to consolidate or not?
It makes sense.
Voters will choose to choose, probably *every* time, if you poll them.
Not many people are going to say “No, I wouldn’t like to have a choice.”
So is this thing going to pass the County Board and get to voters or not?
Does anybody know?
Next time add Press 4 if you want more information.
Feel free to run such a poll.
Cal, based on your comment: “All respondents were likely GOP and mixed primary voters for 2016.”
Do you know who paid for the poll?
Your comment indicates it was driven by a Republican registered voter list.
Vote NO signs for Township Consolidation are already appearing in the northwest section of the County.
These “survey” questions sound kind of like asking someone “when did you stop beating your wife (husband)?
Sorry Cal, you got the results you wanted…
Get me a photo, please.
McHenry County Blog contracted for the survey.
You people had better learn real fast what they are really up to with all this nonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K6CACOGdEM
For years Bob Anderson has been ‘hammering’ on Townships.
His latest effort to Consolidate Townships is guaranteed to increase property taxes.
Was this his real goal?
Get the ‘dumbed down’ voters to vote in favor of Consolidation under the guise of lowering property taxes and then come back with:
It better be on the ballot WITH THE EXACT INCREASE OR DECREASE in taxes that each merger will trigger.
Because the Task Force itself admits that these “consolidations” will make “winners and losers” out of taxpayers – voters in the larger township will see a decrease in taxes, while voters in the smaller, leaner township that it’s absorbing will see an INCREASE in their taxes.
Want to bet the political insiders behind all this will do everything in their power to keep those numbers OFF the ballot..?
I think we need consolidations.
It’s not for every area but for this area in Marengo, Union, Riley etc we have so many different small townships and multiple school districts all with Superintendents with big pay checks and lots of benefits.
Put it on the ballot let the voters decide.
I am really sorry but I have not seen a lean small township.
I see a great deal of waste and little services to show for it.Put it on the ballot.