Sugar Grove flood fix to be part of loan program
It went down to the wire, but money to fix flooding in Mallard Point in Sugar Grove will be included in a Kane County Recovery Zone bond issue Monday.
The village of Sugar Grove, the Rob Roy Drainage District and the county have worked out a plan to split the cost of installing an 8,000-foot-long, 30-inch drainage pipe to connect the subdivision to a creek near Jericho Road, and to install other drains in the subdivision to feed that new drain. The project is roughly estimated at $1.8 million, according to Mike Fagel, a Rob Roy trustee.
The Rob Roy Drainage District taxpayers, in which the subdivision sits, will pick up $300,000 of the cost. The county will pay for part of it. The village will oversee the construction and pay for about $600,000 out of its general fund, and subdivision residents would pay the rest. The bonds would be repaid over 20 years.
The federal government designated Kane as a Recovery Zone and gave it $42 million in bonding authority under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as “the stimulus.” Kane earmarked $17 million for local governments' water-related projects. It expects to sell about $10 million in bonds Monday, according to county board member Drew Frasz, who worked on the Sugar Grove negotiations. Sugar Grove is in his district. The talks have gone on since the spring.
Rob Roy approved its part Thursday night, and the Sugar Grove village board gave its administrators and attorney permission to work out its part of the deal earlier this week.
The federal government will rebate 45 percent of the interest paid on the bonds. The county will share that rebate with the other taxing bodies. The deadline for selling the bonds is Dec. 31, when ARRA expires.
Mallard Point residents have complained for years. Many say that sump pumps in their basements run constantly, even when there is no rain. They've accused the village of improperly inspecting the subdivision when it was built in the 1990s and early 2000s, including missing that a required bypass drainage line was never installed and a detention pond was not dug as deep as it was supposed to be. Inspections in 2009 showed there were broken field tiles, and that dams and sediment had clogged the pond and a wetland. Frasz said one of the main roads was built on 8 feet of stone due to water problems, and that that stone may be damming water.
The Mallard Point project is what inspired the county to think about using Recovery Zone money for water problems in the first place, Frasz said, recalling that the county board chairman said it would be a “perfect use for that money.”
Other agencies borrowing Recovery Zone money next week include Maple Park, the Wasco Sanitary District, Campton Township, Hampshire, Elburn, Burlington, Gilberts, Batavia, North Aurora and Virgil Drainage District No. 3.