Rolling Meadows residents lobby for street repairs

Forty residents of Rolling Meadows' Fairfax Village attended the city council meeting Tuesday to support an appeal for fixing the streets in the townhouse community.

Mayor Tom Rooney said after the meeting that there is a chance the project will get funding as early as next year.

"For one thing they are raising awareness, which never hurts when things have to be done by vote," he said.

Leo Geller and John Golec showed aldermen photos of the deteriorated streets and made a case their community should go ahead of others that also need street repairs.

"Most residents are seniors," said Geller. "We do not have sidewalks, so they have been using streets to do their exercise and to walk their dogs. A safe, walkable surface is more critical to our neighborhood than almost any other."

The community off the west frontage road of Route 53 between Algonquin and Kirchoff roads has at least a half mile of public streets - Asbury and Auburn, with the residents responsible for the cul-de-sacs. Fred Vogt, the city's director of public works, told community representatives at a committee meeting that repairing them would cost an estimated $180,000. Since 2008, the city has budgeted $500,000 or less each year for repairing streets, but aldermen have pushed to get back to the old standards of spending $1 million annually, said Rooney.

"I do believe that the absence of sidewalks is a special case when it comes to prioritizing," Rooney told the residents.

Vogt said after the meeting that the city staff is evaluating streets now, and he plans to bring a preliminary list of ones to repair in 2015 to the council in August.

The city might have extra funds for street repairs because it has spent less than was budgeted on some projects, he said. This includes Meacham Road, a rebuilding the council abandoned because residents protested plans to widen it.