NWH Herald Editor Has Doubts about Spending $100 Million to Widen Randall Road

Is it possible the relentless logic of Lakewood bond analyst Steve Willson is getting through to the Northwest Herald?

Northwest Herald Editor Dan McCaleb expressed his doubts about widening Randall Road on Friday.

Northwest Herald Editor Dan McCaleb expressed his doubts about widening Randall Road on Friday.

Willson has written critiques of the project as stand alone articles and comments under Randall Road articles.

Here’s a comment from Friday’s article about the Friday Committee of the Whole meeting of the McHenry County Board:

The issue is NOT,

“Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if Randall Road were wider.”

The issue is,

“Should we spend $100 million to widen Randall Road.”

Here are some facts:

1) The main cause of backups on Randall is the single left turn lanes at Algonquin Road; this issue is to be addressed.

2) The proponents of this project estimate that after $100 million is spent, the average rush hour driver will save ONE MINUTE.

3) The proposed cost is a multiple of the average cost to add lanes in the urban parts of Illinois — not the average for Illinois as a whole or rural downstate Illinois, for the URBAN parts of Illinois.

4) The cost per trip for each benefited driver would be a multiple of the cost of using the Illinois Tollway.

5) Traffic hasn’t increased on the parts of Randall to be widened in over ten years.

The handout of the opponents of the Continuous Flow Intersection at Algonquin and Randall Roads.

The handout of the opponents of the Continuous Flow Intersection at Algonquin and Randall Roads.


Comments

NWH Herald Editor Has Doubts about Spending $100 Million to Widen Randall Road — 31 Comments

  1. Local 150 Operating Engineers, highway construction contractors and right of way negotiators are the driving force behind the expenditures of MCDOT.

    Add that to the incompetence of signing contracts from more salt than is required, and you have a REAL burden created for the taxpayers.

    An unnecessary burden which could be avoided.

  2. To the County Board:

    There is an objective and simple method for determining if a road should be built.

    1) Determine how many vehicles per day the road can handle, usually measured per lane.

    2) Count the number of vehicle using the road per day.

    3) Divide #2 by #1. If the number is generally below capacity, STOP!

    4) Examine the construction cost of the road versus the cost of similar roads. If the cost is dramatically higher than the average, then the road is too expensive. STOP!

    5) Determine the annualized cost and divide by the number of benefited drivers. (Only drivers during periods when the road is beyond capacity will benefit, not all drivers.) If the cost is a multiple of the cost of using the tollway, then the road is too expensive. STOP!

    6) Determine the time savings to each benefited driver. If it is only a minute or two, STOP!

    If the presenters to the board did not explain this methodology and provide the factual answers to these questions, then they were attempting to mislead the board.

    Ask these questions and demand the answers.

    Remember:

    your job is not to ratify staff recommendations, it is to verify staff recommendations.

    Staff will ALWAYS push for more spending.

    It’s YOUR job, board members, to push back, to be the taxpayers’ advocate, to be watchdogs — not cheerleaders.

  3. Well put Steve Wilson !

    Please continue putting facts out along
    With common sense perspective.

    This is not a cost effective project & that
    Info needs to be restated every time Cal
    Brings it up on the bloh

  4. The NW Herald is not the only one that is torn.

    The sales pitch – I mean Committee of the Whole brought up more questions – than answers.

    – It was stated that the improvement suggested would only improve the intersection from a grade of F to a grade of D.

    – There is no timeline

    – “$10 million for property acquisition” but I did not see the properties in question

    – If this is so important to business then why do we have to pay a premium to the businesses that will benefit from this?

    – None of the board members I spoke to were given a copy of the sales pitch before the Committee of the Whole.

    Finally – and I am saying this as politely as is humanly possible for me – we are doing our jobs.

    Those of us who are new to the board do not have history of this project from a board point of view.

    But more importantly – and why many of us “newbies” were elected – is our bovine excrement detectors pegged when the CFI was almost rammed down our throats buy a few people.

    So please, forgive us our skepticism when we say that we do not have faith in what some inside the transportation committee and their lobbyists are proposing.

    Forgive us when we feel like we are set up to approve something with very little advance notice.

    Forgive us if we want to take our time before we sign off on a capital project.

    We are just doing our jobs.

    Respectfully,
    Andrew Gasser
    County Board District 1
    Overall Nice Guy

  5. Love it, Andrew.

    How much clearer can it get?

    This is not about the many.

    This is all about the few fleecing the many.

  6. Gator, I believe your chain of reasoning is as follows:

    people from Harvard are stupid so the Randall Road project makes sense. If I’m wrong, please explain how your comment adds any value to the discussion.

    Then, as I said in a prior posting, please respond to the specific and evidenced objections I have made with data of your own — REAL data, not a singular questionable anecdote.

    We all know some road projects promote growth.

    We also all know many government projects are wasteful boondoggles.

    Therefore each project must stand on its own merits.

    So rather than quote platitudes, please provide us with data and reasoning to DISprove my objections — all of them — and then provide data and reasoning to prove that THIS SPECIFIC project will be a net economic positive.

  7. http://www.publicpurpose.com/freeway1.htm

    McHenry County needs leadership who can embrace the type of vision that Eisenhower had.

    Once we are done with Randall Road we ought to be considering RT. 47 expansion to Woodstock and get this county firing on all economic cylinders.

  8. South Side?

    I see you work for the CDC. (The Cognitive Dissonance Crew)

  9. Gator, citing “purpose”, which you just literally did, and calling it “outcome” is a logical fallacy.

    Heck, if good intentions equaled outcomes, there’d be no poverty in the country and no crime.

    Randall Road is no interstate system; it’s more like the “Bridge to Nowhere”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

    Now that we’ve both listed a web site, let’s get back to the REAL discussion.

    I have agreed that SOME government projects make sense.
    Please tell me that YOU agree some don’t make sense and are wasteful.

    Please.

    Please make that explicit admission.

    If you won’t agree, then what you’re saying is let’s just build any stupid road anywhere because, by your reasoning — no, strike that, by your ASSERTION — it will bring economic growth.

    And that’s just obviously wrong.

    And if you DO agree, then citing purpose is inadequate because each project must be justified on its own merits.

    And that is my position.

    And if that’s the case, then, in order to justify THIS SPECIFIC PROJECT, you must do the following:

    DISprove that traffic on this segment of road hasn’t increased in more than ten years.

    DISprove that the projected savings in time per rush hour driver is only a minute or two.

    DISprove that the construction cost is a multiple of the average for urban highways in Illinois.

    Then PROVE, with real data, that THIS SPECIFIC PROJECT will be a net economic benefit to the community, after spending $100 million.

    I’ve asked you to do this three times.

    Three times you have failed to respond.

  10. 4.6% property tax rate in Woodstock.

    Classical economic strategies do not work under these conditions.

    Property tax rates are double those of Chicago, 300% of national average, 450% of Indiana property tax rates.

    some commercial real estate development is attracted by selective political distribution of tif money,
    This RE-routing of public tax dollars drives property tax rates ever higher.

    But homeowners’ property values are driven relentlessly lower by the anomalous high property tax rate.

    So, economic development and windfall prosperity of a selected few friends of the regime is achieved at the extraordinary destructive cost of the rest of the community.

  11. Where have all the good Republicans gone?

    When people relocate and want to live in to McHenry everyone wins.

    Take the population growth since the original expansion of Randall and multiply it by the average median household income and you will derive your economic growth.

    Although I am guessing the area is much higher than the average county looking at where my neighbors work.

    Traffic is also a quality of life issue and immeasurable.

    Did Otto manufacturing benefit from an interchange at RT 25 & 31?

    Or should we bring back the barges and the donkeys of yester year?

    Maybe we could convert the trail system back to a steam locomotive.

    Get with the program.

  12. The cost to every taxpayer in the county for this project will exceed 1.43% of home value.

    Home prices in this County have fallen substantially in the past 7 years, while the rest of America enjoyed a home price rebound.

    This can be explained by negative capitalization of extraordinary high property tax rates as negative home value.

    There is nothing to indicate that the destruction of residential property value –relative to the rest of the State and Country—will not continue.

    If property tax rates in the County were brought down from over 4% to below 2.5% as in Chicago, perhaps growth might occur.

    But at property taxes above 4%, with far more economical alternative values all over America, there is little logical hope of attracting non-subsidized residents.

  13. “Get with the program.”

    Great comment.

    ‘The program’ has McHenry County taxpayers paying double the property tax of Chicago City property owners as mentioned in another comment.

    ‘The program’ has ALL taxpayers in the State of Illinois paying the highest percentage in the country of their median income in taxes to state and local governments.

    That said, I suspect that the McCaleb opinion may be jaundiced due to his position on the Board of Pioneer Center which is squabbling for ‘their share’ of the tax dollars being harvested from the taxpayers.

    Money spent on road construction is lost for the support of social services.

  14. That’s right questioning and the multiplier is 2x what residences pay in cook.

    Yet they gladly pay because it’s all about the infrastructure/access to interstates.

    Why did they just open two more interchanges in the Golden Corridor if they did not believe it would help fuel the fires of capitalism?

  15. Gator, this is a situation that can be analyzed and philosophized and Cindy and Steve Wilson apparently believe they have the “ABSOLUTE ANSWERS” and they don’t.

    Besides, Cindy thinks the Government controls the weather and that people die intentionally to control the population.

    She has no credibility.

  16. Gator, the concept that building unnecessary and outrageously expensive roads is the cause of population growth is absurd.

    People aren’t moving out here like they did in your good old days for two reasons:

    (1) population growth in the entire country has slowed substantially, and

    (2) taxes here are much higher than elsewhere, not only in the country but in the surrounding counties.

    As for “where have all the good Republicans gone, what good Republican calls for building unneeded, overpriced pork barrel roads?

  17. Fighting Corruption, yours is an ad hominem attack and unworthy.

    Answers are right or wrong based on the reasoning and evidence, not on who makes them, and personal attacks do not impugn reasoning or data.
    I will consider your arguments and data.

    And if I have a counter argument to make, it will be directed to your data and/or your reasoning — it will NOT be a personal attack.

  18. Fighting Corruption, yours is an ad hominem attack and unworthy.

    Answers are right or wrong based on the reasoning and evidence, not on who makes them, and personal attacks do not impugn reasoning or data.

    If you have an argument to make and data to support it, please put it forth. And if you have a rebuttal to my reasoning or data, please put it forth.

    I will consider your arguments and data.

    And if I have a counter argument to make, it will be directed to your data and/or your reasoning — it will NOT be a personal attack.

  19. There is nothing ad hominem about my words.

    That is what Cindy believes, there are no ad hominems’.

    If that is what you are reading then your words are questionable as well, because it really raises a red flag as to whether or not you are capable of interpreting anything.

    By the way Steve, you are not always right.

    This is a situation to be analyzed and so far you do not have all of the information.

    As far as high taxes, that I do agree with.

    Cindy also said:

    South Side? I see you work for the CDC. (The Cognitive Dissonance Crew)

    NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!

    So keep on topic!

  20. Cindy wouldn’t know what those words mean if she tried.

    She is throwing her own interpretation in and she still thinks the government changes the weather to control the population.

  21. Definition of Cognitive Dissonance:

    the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

    Cindy is projecting and she is the one that suffers from Cognitive Dissonance.

    Therefore, any interpretation she renders is down right scary!

  22. Whoa.

    Now Fighting is making up her own definitions.

    Cognitive dissonance involves conflicting attitudes.

    It has nothing to do with what your apoplectic retort you are pushing.

    Steve!!

    Lighten up, dude.

    You cannot see a joke?

    That was not a good remark you made about none of someone’s business.

    Is it your business if people are dangerous to the point where you are put in compromising positions by their refusal to see what is right in front of them?

    Yes! It is.

    That IS your busines!.

    That is everyone’s business that wants to survive.

    Look how hard Susan is fighting to remove the scales of cognitive dissonance.

    Your arguments are good Steve, but you are coming off as one who believes himself to be superior to others.

    Holier than thou will not get you many friends.

    Please, just drive your points and don’t be condescending.

    We have enough of those on the other side of reality in here.

  23. I said:

    Definition of Cognitive Dissonance:

    the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

    Now I suppose you are going to tell everyone you are a psychology major Cindy?

    You know nothing!

  24. All you can do is present the evidence.

    It is up to the people to interpret the information and do something positive with it, so the end result is that our community is changed in a positive direction.

    There are not, all or nothing answers.

    Even though our Local 150 has a bad history, jobs still need to be generated so our people can work and be productive.

    There are some very unscrupulous members.

    However, not all of them are motivated by corruption.

    Most, are motivated by hard work and loyalty to their families.

    And, we do have to consider the impact on our taxes and whether or not it is really necessary.

    No one, wants an increase in taxes!

    The whole picture!

  25. Cindy: Thanks for the feedback. I

    t’s easy to get riled up as the discussion goes along.

    I’ll try to keep your good advice in mind: flies and honey, not flies and vinegar.

    If I have offended anyone else — Fighting Corruption and Gator in particular — I apologize.

    One of the things I like about this blog is the ability to interact with people about the issues.

    It’s about finding the best solution, not winning.

  26. Steve?

    I know it wasn’t mean spirited but it came off the page oddly.

    No one can hear your voice intonations when you are typing.

    It’s something we all have to consider.

    Many times things are taken in a manner not intended.

    I believe you are straight on into the fray with your posts.

    I consider you one of the enlightened in your posts.

    Thank you for listening to mine.

  27. BTW Steve, Sorry.

    Looks like I mixed your sense of humor in with someone else that has none.

    My apologies for the confusion.

  28. Correction:

    The cost of Randall Road project will exceed 1.43% of EAV (of taxable property in the County).

    The cost to the owner of a $200,000 home will be $953, not $2860 (1/3 of 1.43%, or .48%).

    (Sorry about missing this math error in prior post).

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