Kill Longmeadow tollway debacle

Kill Longmeadow tollway debacle

Taxpayers can only hope that Kane County Board Chairman Chris Lauzen will take his own advice that "we need to live within our means without asking for more" and help kill the zombie Longmeadow tollway boondoggle.

See March 25 Daily Herald article by James Fuller, "Taxes, fights and funds." This project keeps rising from the dead, line a zombie, refusing to expire when it should have been stopped a long time ago.

Taxpayers simply can't afford to be on the hook for the $135 million tollway that bisects the $40 million Brunner Forest Preserve and absolutely destroys the quality of life for hundreds of residents along the corridor. The tolls will never pay for construction or maintenance costs of Longmeadow and the project is admittedly being built to serve McHenry County.

The environmental destruction from the tollway can never be mitigated and the project is so clearly against the public interest that it's amazing this monstrosity is still being pursued. What happened to Lauzen's promise to have a referendum on this issue? Who killed that idea? Perhaps it was the certainty that taxpayers would never approve a six-mile long construction project that damages public lands and will hurt our local businesses, scenic views, the environment and our residents.

Kane County officials keep giving the spiel that construction will be funded from "several" sources without being forthright that most of the money will come from bonds guaranteed by taxpayers. Now that one of those "several" sources of funding, the broke state of Illinois, can't insure funding $40 million toward the project, which doesn't even pay a third of the ridiculous cost. Let's hope taxpayers rise up and demand that this project be buried, once and for all.

Billita Jacobsen

Carpentersville