Com Ed Electric Line Sparking on Route 14

Right near the north end of the Virginia Street TIF District (you know the place, just look for the two $16,000 stone monuments) in front of the Crystal Lake Motel, high winds have snapped an electric line maintained by Commonwealth Edison.

Crystal Lake Police set up traffic cones to block Route 14’s rush hour traffic at Dole Avenue. Detours through Lakewood to Route 176 via Briarwood were impossible because the intersection is being improved this week.

In this case, it was not any of those nasty trees within 20 feet of a power line that “Chainsaw Jack” Franks wants to have cut down.

Two of Crystal Lake’s $16,000 Virginia Street Tax Increment Financing District pillars can be seen in this shot of the closed Route 14.  The line can be seen burning the grass in the lower left hand corner of the photo.

In fact, there were no trees near the line break.

The electric line was sparking on Route 14 in front of the Crystal Lake Motel.

The following notice was sent out by the Crystal Lake Police at 4:43 PM:

Temp Road Closure, All lanes Route 14 from Northshore Dr to Dole Ave are closed and being re-routed, down power lines

Police and fire equipment were there when I arrived.

In this picture you can see the heat waves above the flame from the downed Commonwealth Edison power line.

But there were no Com Ed repair trucks when I left to write this article at about 5.

Traffic was being diverted north on Dole Avenue at Andy’s Family Restaurant.


No doubt traffic reports will tell of the big jam on Route 14 in Crystal Lake.


Comments

Com Ed Electric Line Sparking on Route 14 — 10 Comments

  1. Almost great blogging Cal!

    You referenced the CL TIF monument, trees, and Jack Franks all in one article about a downed wire. You missed the opportunity to blog about two train fatalities in McH Cty. and the suicide of Phil Pagano. Come on Cal. You must push your evil agenda forward! 🙂

  2. True enough. There seem to have been two Phil Pagano-inspired suicides.

  3. LuvLuv must not understand.

    The State Legislature has given all local governments a tool box including all sorts of means to rip off the working folks.

    Maybe LuvLuv does not work, if gov supports her, she won’t understand, but TIFs, SSAs, and all the other districts are only created to rip off hard working citizens.

  4. I hope you know just how pathetic and petty your vendetta against Franks has become.

  5. I just want to get clear on this: This article, which repeatedly references Jack Franks and a bill he sponsored to trim trees has NOTHING to do with Jack Franks or those trees?

    OK just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the crazy one.

  6. Does anyone else think it odd that this all happened INSIDE the area cordoned by the monolith monuments?

    Maybe Cal has finally discovered their true purpose.

  7. The true purpose of the “monolith monuments”?

    Those are taxpayer funded “perches” designed especially for the dupa’s of Cal and Gus.

    One old guy watches westbound Rt. 14 (Gus?) and the other guy (Cal?) watches eastbound comings and goings.

    After all of the watching is watched, they will blog about their findings (such as yellow neon signs that appear to be lit when the power is out).

    Gentlemen, man your stations.

  8. I’m pretty sure that Gus would agree that we would rather have a check for the $16,000 each of the pillars cost taxpayers living throughout McHenry County.

    That’s the way Tax Increment Financing Districts work.

    It’s spread over all the taxpayers of all the overlapping tax districts.

    Generally, the closer one is, the more one pay to subsidize whatever the city or village that imposed the TIF Districts wants to spend the diverted money on.

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