Former form of government works

I drive about 3,500 feet to my home improvement outlet. However, the village of Fox Lake and Grant Township maintain parts of my short street. My first turn is to a Lake County road, and then to a state highway. To reach the parking lots, I use a village of Volo entrance road.

My little trip does not take me outside the township of Grant or county of Lake. But I have used a road of the township, roads of two villages nestled inside it, and roads of the county and the state -- five governments in less than five minutes. All of these do road services. If there were a fire, a sixth, an independent special taxing body would do the work. Fox Lake police, county squads and state troopers patrol this one intersection.

Grant Township assesses the property of the village of Fox Lake, some of the village of Volo and Round Lake and some of Lakemoor, a village of McHenry County that extends into Lake County. Lakemoor is planning a thousand condominiums in Grant Township. This will require Lakemoor, Grant, state, road changes in two counties.

What to do about our home communities? Our forefathers simply made themselves corporate property owners of their town! They met annually to elect workers to do tasks. The workers suggested a budget for maintenance and improvements. The people, the corporate owners, studied the workers' proposals and they voted for what they needed and wanted done. Thus they recreated the open town government of Athens that was suppressed centuries ago by tyrants by Roman Caesars, and finally by divine monarchs, dictators and military rulers.

These first American states have assumed responsibility for the major highways, for universities and colleges, for the court and penal systems and other intra- and interstate systems. Counties and their huge costs have all but disappeared. Towns alone contain all public service -- all of it -- or the people vote to combine a service with an adjacent, neighboring town or with a city. The towns contain no villages.

The answer is simple. To eliminate inefficient, duplicated and unnecessary layers of government, we should return to the American ideal. We should meet together to voice our needs and opinions and then to vote to make one government, the one we want, for the community we wish to have for ourselves and our children. This system has served America well and has improved for 378 years since 1629.

Charles L. Joly

Ingleside