A press release from the Village of Lakewood:
2015 Lakewood Road/Lake Ave Improvement Project Update
As highlighted in previous Village newsletters and public meetings, the Village has been awarded federal grant funding for constructing bike lanes and resurfacing Lakewood Road from Ackman Road to Haligus Road and Lake Avenue from Huntley Road to the west Village limits.
2015 will see a bike path built in Lakewood in front of West Beach and the Village Hall.
The bid was awarded to Curran Contracting Company, who anticipates the project starting on or before May 1st, with construction to be completed by late Fall 2015.
The construction currently occurring along these same roadways is related to a Nicor Gas utility project to relocate their gas main to allow the Village’s improvements to be completed.
The gas main relocation on Lakewood Road is scheduled to be completed in early May, and the gas main relocation on Lake Ave. should be completed in mid/late May.
Nicor currently is working on both roadways with multiple crews to complete the installations as quickly as possible.
The roadways will remain open to two-way traffic with flaggers to assist in guiding traffic through the construction zone during Nicor’s work.
Protective construction fencing, barrels and cones are being utilized to block off any excavations that have been made, but please still use caution around the work areas.
Open excavations are required for the connection of the new gas main to the existing, and should be filled in soon after connections are completed.
All installations and work is occurring in the public right of way, and Nicor has hired a surveyor to mark these limits to eliminate any confusion.
A bike path will also be constructed along Lakewood Road from Haligus to Lakewood Road, project that Village President Erin Smith has long sought.
The Village’s road construction project that will commence on or about May 1 includes widening the existing pavement 3’ to 4’ on both sides of the road and resurfacing the entire pavement.
Pavement markings will be used to delineate 4’ bike lanes and 10’ travel lanes, as well as reflective markers along the curves on Lakewood Road.
No changes to the alignments of the existing curves are anticipated.
The addition of the bike lanes will require that the existing ditches be regraded, and/or filled in and replaced with parkway inlets and storm sewer.
Restoration will be performed at the conclusion of the project and will include the replacement of eleven trees.
A guardrail will be installed on Lakewood Road where the culvert crosses under Lakewood Road to minimize the impacts to adjacent wetlands.
The Village expects this project will also assist in correcting the low spot at the far west end of Lake Avenue that floods regularly and causes standing water on the pavement for extended periods, as well as correcting other nuisance drainage problems.
There will be much construction activity during this time.
However, the roadways will remain open to two-way traffic, by using flaggers to guide traffic through the construction zone.
There will be short periods of time when access to and from properties located adjacent to the construction site will be limited.
The Village, contractor, and/or the Village’s engineering consultant will attempt to provide notice prior to these access restrictions.
For regular status updates throughout the project or for further information, please visit the Construction Projects page of the Village’s website, village.lakewood.il.us.
Exhibits have been made available for download on the website and are also available at Village Hall.
Residents with an interest in being emailed with construction updates are encouraged to forward their email address to dheinz@village.lakewood.il.us. Any additional questions or concerns can be directed to Deputy Village Manager Shannon Andrews at (815) 459-3025.
I hope everyone realizes that someone is paying for these bike paths that are all over the county and rarely used.
The bike paths located near populations are much used, actually.
Older people and families with little ones especially avoid roads and use the paths.
A village that does not video and audiotape board meetings and post them on its website, and does not post a board packet before board meetings with all the documents that are available to the board members in the open section of the meeting, should concentrate on that before the bike paths.
Remember the Village of Lakewood outside the Lakewood IL Route 47 and IL Route 176 TIF, had lower EAV increase than the TIF itself, over the cumulative 5 year period in the taxpayer paid consultant’s TIF study.
That indicates the value of IL TIF Laws.
IL TIFlaw is not designed for taxpayers, it is designed for thosespecial intwresrs that benwfit from thw TIF.
Bike paths are great if the village can has the funds to build and maintain them, has manageable debt, is operating transparently about all expenses, and the paths are supported by the majority of residents.
The smart phone typos sound out like Elmer Fudd.
Too many governments in Illinois have been operating like some sort of cartoon.
The US constitution gives lots of leeway to states and IL has abused that to create unsustainable salaries, pensions, retiree healthcare, and bond debt.
Good luck to kids graduating and to graduate from college and high school, they will bear the brunt of paying for debt incurred under previous voters.
What will parents be telling those kids in 5 and 10 years.
Not to worry, there is always an excuse and seemingly endless hide and seek and kick the can.
One thing about a crises, they are really hard to predict when they will happen and how severe they will be, so it pays to have a contingency plan.
If someone or something is not telling the whole story, that is usually not to your advantage.
Oh well, nothing too drastic has happened so how bad can it be, right.
Our last crises was a bond (mortgage bonds grouped and transformed into fancy investments) crises with lack of transparency a major issue.
Sound familiar?
In our current situation in IL, the most at risk may well be the property owner.
If there is a run, how fast can you sell your house.
How high can those property taxes go?
There is the Laffer Curve which says taxes only go so high before you get a diminished overall return because people flee.
Well if you flee you get nothing for your house, but at least you do not need to pay the property taxes.
What is probably more likely at least in the short term is the puppet masters will pass laws that make people mad.
One thing to know is that in past municipal bankruptcies such as Detroit bonds have had more severe reductions than pensions, but retiree healthcare has faired worse than either of those two.
But in the IL Supreme Court case Kanerva vs Weems, the Court said that retiree healthcare is protected by the sentence added to the 1970 IL Constitution.
And the story goes on and on.