McHenry County Blog

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I was reading an article Boone County Watchdog criticizing the Belvidere Township Assessor’s petty cash fund when I ran across the following in a referenced article in the Belvidere Daily Republican:

“In addition, she [Assessor Diann Helnore] said she understands township Road Commissioner Richard Lee has ‘a slush fund, gleaned from selling scrap metal and cans picked up along township roads.

“But [Belvidere Township Supervisor Pat] Murphy said that doesn’t happen anymore. ‘In the old days all the townships did that,’ he said.”

Does anyone know anything about such a practice?

The results for the $1 million were not even close in Dunham Township.

63% of the electorate voted to allow the Road District to borrow money to fix local roads.

The vote, with early and absentee votes outstanding, was 244-143.

A couple of weeks ago news media unloaded the latest attack on township government.

They were working from a Better Government Association report.

Most of the attention was aimed at Cook County townships. That’s where most of the land is incorporated. Only about 2% of the population lives in unincorporated areas.

McHenry County was mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times article in the last paragraph of its November 9, 2010, article.

It concentrated on the road district part of township government and based its figures on 2010 expenditures reported in an IDOT report.

It was in a cost per mile comparison for the six Chicago-area counties:

• Cook – $80,509
• Lake – $63,164
• DuPage – $42,515
• Will – 32,174
• Kane – 30,048
• McHenry – 27,399

I found the Illinois Department of Transportation 2009 study and extracted the following information about McHenry County Townships:

Doing the math yields the following cost per mile figures:

• 

  Townships in McHenry County with incorporated areas shown.

  Alden – $7,240

• Algonquin – $77,945
• Burton – $7,565
• Chemung – $13,729
• Coral – $8,163
• Dorr – $59,278
• Dunham – $7,986
• Grafton – $63,886
• Greenwood – $25,788
• Hartland – $8,726
• Hebron – $7,351
• Marengo – $15,000
• McHenry -$40,701
• Nunda – $40,719
• Richmond – $17,055
• Riley – $5,737
• Seneca – $9,794

Obviously there are great variances with more urbanized townships spending more to maintain roads than more rural townships.

Today let’s look at the cost of maintaining township roads.

As you can see, the cost varies a lot,.

So do the number of miles of roads for which the various township road commissioners are responsible for maintaining.

The townships with the most miles of streets and roads are the largest three, Nunda, McHenry and Algonquin.

The reason is the large number of unincorporated subdivisions in McHenry County.

A ranking of the road miles follows:

McHenry County with townships and muncipalities.

• Nunda – 98
• McHenry – 95
• Algonquin – 58
• Coral – 56
• Riley – 47
• Greenwood – 46
• Dunham – 43
• Hartland – 43
• Hebron – 40
• Seneca – 40
• Alden – 37
• Dorr – 38
• Marengo – 36
• Chemung – 33
• Richmond – 33
• Grafton – 27
• Burton – 13

The amount each township road commissioner spends per mile of road maintained follows:

Dorr Township Garage

• Algonquin -$67,681
• McHenry – $35,862
• Nunda – $33,413
• Dorr – $30,743
• Grafton – $27,134
• Greenwood – $21,582
• Richmond – $14,117
• Marengo – $13,569
• Chemung – $12,135
• Burton – $11,547
• Dunham – $8,745
• Seneca – $6,521
• Hartland – 5,906
• Hebron – $5,488
• Coral – $4,799
• Alden – $4,178
• Riley – $2,889