Preckwinkle to visit Palatine council Monday

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is scheduled to attend Monday’s Palatine village council meeting to discuss county services with a group of elected officials that had been among the most critical of her predecessor and recent actions by the county board.

The meeting, which is open to the public, begins at 7 p.m. at village hall’s council chambers, 200 E. Wood St., Palatine.

The village invited Preckwinkle to publicly address the council and Palatine officials about concerns that residents were not seeing enough return on the tax dollars they send to the county.

Palatine also was one of the more vocal communities pushing for a rollback of the county’s 2008 sales tax increase, believing that, as a border community, it would lose business and revenue to neighboring Lake County. At Preckwinkle’s urging, the county board eliminated the 1 percentage-point increase earlier this year.

Many residents concerned with the future of the Quentin Road expansion project between Dundee and Lake-Cook roads also are expected to attend the meeting. They’d prefer the stretch of congested roadway through the Deer Grove Forest Preserve be widened to just three lanes instead of the proposed five lanes, and have urged County Board Commissioner Gregg Goslin to support them.

Preckwinkle spokeswoman Jessey Neves previously said the visit to Palatine isn’t unique, as the county board president had fulfilled her pledge to visit all 17 county districts in time for her 100th day in office last month.

Palatine officials at one time considered the idea of seceding from Cook County, but those talks largely died after Preckwinkle last year defeated former board president Todd Stroger in the Democratic Party primary.