Largest county board to shrink

The Kane County Board, the largest of its kind in the area, will have 24 seats come the next election as board members voted Tuesday to trim two districts via redistricting.

What the 24-seat board actually looks like is yet to be decided.

The county’s redistricting task force has worked to create new districts with 24 seats in mind for several weeks following multiple nonbinding votes to trim the board. Tuesday’s vote means the sample maps being created with that 24-seat vision won’t be a wasted effort.

The vote, however, didn’t come without protest.

County board member Deb Allan put forward a last-minute plan to keep the existing 26 seats. The most recent redistricting maps would put her in a fight for her political life by forcing a race between Allan and fellow Elgin resident Jeanette Mihalec. Only one of them would have a seat on the county board if the current sample maps don’t change. Allan produced a plan that keeps all 26 board seats mostly by adding 3,000 residents to each current board district.

“I just wanted to have something in front of us so we knew a 26-seat map was possible and, I think, desirable,” Allan said.

In the final vote, only three other board members shared Allan’s taste. Bonnie Kunkel, from Aurora was one of those three. She argued taxpayers save more money with increased representation than with less.

“If you can’t save the county $25,000 a year by being on the board, you shouldn’t be on the board,” Kunkel said. “We’re here to look after the money. We should be saving the county much more than the county is paying us. Overall, I believe that we are doing that.”

County board members Myrna Molina and Monica Silva, both of Aurora, completed the “no” votes. The reduction to 24 board seats passed by a 21 to 4 vote.

“We have asked our employees to do more with less, and we, as board members, have to do that as well,” board member Tom Van Cleave said in casting his vote. “We’re all going to have to work harder and represent more.”

Any discussion of increasing board members’ salaries for that extra work would come as part of the county board’s budget process, which begins in a few weeks.