Kane County pushes Stearns Road, gets hopes up for capital bill
Two major undertakings were the focus of discussion on the Kane County Transportation Committee Monday. One task has had many months of planning and is already becoming a reality. It's called the Stearns Road Bridge Corridor. The other task has been a casualty of budgets and personalities in the Illinois General Assembly for the last decade. It's called a capital bill.
Stearns Road is, and has been, the county's No. 1 transportation improvement priority for years. The project will bring a new roadway from Randall Road to the DuPage County line and a new bridge over the Fox River. The bulk of the $122 million project already has funding. The county hopes to secure about $49 million through President Barack Obama's stimulus plan to ease the local funding requirement of $33 million and include a widening of Route 25 into the project.
Most of the initial stimulus money will go to so-called "shovel ready" projects that can go out for bid as soon as possible. That means simple patching and roadway resurfacing projects will eat up much of the initial cash Illinois will receive.
However, Kane County is pitching Stearns Road as one of the very few major projects with regional impact that is indeed "shovel ready." Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay sent a letter to Congressman Bill Foster just last week emphasizing that point. The first major contract for the project, which includes the construction of the Fox River bridge, is set to go out for bids in April. That's well under the 120-day deadline Illinois has to use up the first batch of stimulus cash or risk losing it to other states.
If fully funded, the county estimates about 3,000 people will be put back to work by the remaining construction needed to complete the Stearns Road project.
If the federal funding falls through, or perhaps in addition to that funding, Kane County is already getting its hopes up that the state may see its first capital projects bill in almost a decade. The county's Springfield lobbyist, Frank Cortese, told the committee Obama's stimulus package has basically forced the state to pass a capital bill to administer the stimulus funds that come along with addressing long-dormant transportation funding requests held up by the Blagojevich administration.
"We just have to keep it real," Cortese said about expectations and projects. "We just have to make sure everybody knows what our shovel-ready projects are. When you compare this year to the past, we have a real chance at getting a capital bill."