Crain’s Chicago Business is reporting the Census Bureau says that each of the six Chicagoland counties lost population between 2010 and 2013.
The McHenry County Board’s Continuous Flow Intersection at the corner of Algonquin and Randall Roads is based on the assumption that population is growing.
Population figures being used are outdated ones from CMAP, short for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. The McHenry County Board was told new figures were not due to be adopted until October.
Yet, an April 7th publication by CMAP shows “the six Illinois suburban counties increased in population by just 20,000 collectively.”
From the graph below, McHenry County does not seem to be one of those growing.
The resolution of the graph is not good, but it appears that McHenry County lost population over the last three years.
20,000 is not much, compared to the 500,000 population increase over the first decade of this century.
Seemingly contradicting Crain’s data is that published by CMAP on April 7th.
Part reads,
The lackluster growth of the Chicago region is of great concern to MPC and to the metropolitan area’s economic vitality.
The population growth trends of the past three years suggest that each of the seven counties on the Illinois side of the Chicago metropolitan area are growing far more slowly than predicted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) in 2010.
Population projections have been drastically reduced by the planning agency that has significant influence on the distribution of Federal highway dollars.
If the region’s counties continue to grow at levels similar to those of the most recent data, the seven-county population in 2040 will be just 9.2 million, up from 8.5 million.
CMAP projected a population of 11 million, a 1.8-million-person difference.
It should be noted that CMAP is in the process of updating its forecast and will have new estimates later in 2014. [Emphasis added.]
Meanwhile the McHenry County Department of Transportation and the McHenry County Board continues to use the faulty 2040 CMAP projections to justify the Continuous Flow Intersection at the busiest intersection in McHenry County–Algonquin and Randall Roads.
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I guess Yogi Berra was right when he said, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future!”
A request was made by a commenter for contact information for the County Board members. That has been added in the comment section.
You can almost smell the Special Interest in the air…
Obama cooking the books tactics right here in McHenry County.
Time to clean up the county board, too.
Dear CMAP:
“Dropping” means a minus sign; “growing” means a plus sign.
The area counties aren’t “growing much more slowly”, they’re getting smaller.
If you can’t even get the sign right on your growth projections, if they were that far off even before the ink was dry on them in 2010, why should the County (and MCC) plan so spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded expansion to deal with this phantom future growth?
And why are local taxing bodies paying YOU for projections when, to date, they have been so wrong?
Sincerely yours,
A. Taxpayer
Actually it was Casey Stengel, not Yogi Berra, who said: Never make predictions, especially about the future.” http://www.brainyqoute.com/quotes/authors/c/casey_stengel.html.
Mike, I think you’ll find that quote attributed to Stengel, Berra, and a host of others, including Niels Bohr. And they probably all said it.
Who said it first, no one seems to know.
If every student in local schools costs roughly $20,000 when you add in pension and benefit costs and debt for facilties, Mchenry county can never experienced growth again.
If 20% of population is school aged, then the per household cost of supporting education becomes an insurmountable obstacle for creating any new living quarters.
And remember, school funding is only 70% of a homeowner’s property tax bill, there needs to be funding for government, and police and roads.
Special interest of Operating Engineers and gravel companies!
Drive around the county and it is visibly apparent where the new houses are being built: Huntley.
With the additional ramps off the Interstate, expect more retail growth on Hwy. 47 – NOT Randall.
When the Algonquin bypass opens later this year and the Long Meadow Parkway open at some point in the future – traffic on Randall will be reduced.
It appears the MCDOT wants to get the CFI built before the taxpayers realize they have funded another ‘golden toilet’.