Kane board candidates disagree on much
Drew Frasz contends current Kane County Board District 26 representative Jan Carlson is out of step with what the people of the district want.
But Carlson believes he has been effective at serving them, although perhaps in ways that weren't obvious.
Frasz, of LaFox, and Carlson, of Elburn, face each other in the Republican primary for the seat Feb. 5.
Carlson, 71, is a longtime county politician, having been circuit court clerk from 1964 to 1996 and a county board member since then.
Frasz, 51, owns A.E. Frasz Inc. construction firm. He is vice president of the LaFox Civic Organization and is a member of Concerned LaFox Area Residents.
CLAR organized in 2001 to fight a development called Grand Prairie, which would have added up to 2,000 houses and townhouses on 1,200 acres near LaFox, between Route 38 and Keslinger Road. At one point the developers wanted to annex it to St. Charles. Residents of that unincorporated community first tried incorporating to protect it and, when that failed, started working on their own with developers to come up with a more acceptable plan, now called Settlements of LaFox, with about 1,275 homes.
"During that whole process, we were not pleased with the representation we received," Frasz said in an endorsement interview Thursday, while acknowledging that the county did work with them.
Carlson said, however, that Frasz is presenting "revisionist history." After he researched Grand Prairie, he determined early on that it would never be brought to a vote for the Kane County Board, and he learned from St. Charles officials that Grand Prairie's plans didn't stand a chance of being approved.
He also says that he helped suggest the idea that LaFox residents work with the developer to come up with a better plan, leaned on the county development staff to go along with this and would intervene, when asked, when there were impasses.
"Why would I involve myself if there was not a problem?" he said.
Another big issue for the district, which is in the southwest portion of the county, is the proposed 37-mile Prairie Parkway expressway that would connect I-88 to I-80, west of Route 47.
Frasz called it a "billion-dollar pork project" that violates the county's own 2030 land-use plan and would spur development in the designated agriculture zone west of Route 47. He is endorsed by Citizens Against the Sprawlway, an anti-parkway group, and believes the District 26 representative should follow the wishes of the voters of Kaneville and Big Rock townships, who overwhelmingly rejected the highway in an advisory referendum in April 2007.
Carlson, chairman of the board's transportation committee, said he figured there were more than enough people protesting the parkway. He believed there was a need for a "Plan B," in case the highway were approved, by participating in the planning to protect Kane County's interests. That includes limiting interchanges in Kane County.
"If we had to have this thing, we wanted it to be the most environmentally friendly," he said. He also says there is a lot of support for the highway in District 26.