Blackberry Township roads: Keep on patching, in wake of tax-hike loss

Blackberry Township Highway Commissioner Rodney Feece walks down a stretch of Alexander Drive in the Mill Creek subdivision and stops at a spot where the road is crumbling.

Noting the road surface is an inch lower than the curb, he points out that allows water to sit on the roadway, instead of draining to stormwater sewers.

The water then degrades the asphalt. Cars, snowplows and garbage trucks drive over it and kick up fist-sized chunks of the road onto the parkway.

It's what happens when you don't put new asphalt on a road for 22 years.

But Tuesday, for the fourth time, township residents decided they didn't want to double their property taxes to pay for road repairs and maintenance. They were asked to raise the tax rate 14 cents per $100 of equalized assessed valuation, to a limit of 32 cents. It would have cost the owner of a $200,000 house another $93 a year.

And so, again, the township will fix only about 1½ miles of its 52 miles of paved roadway this year, even though an engineering report says that 33 percent of those roads are in poor condition. On a scale of 1 to 100, Blackberry Township roads rated an average of 51, the engineers said. Typically, engineers aim for an average score in the 70s.

“We had to try it,” Feece says of the referendum. At least this way, he says, he can give a reason in three or four years when people ask, “Why are the roads in this condition?”

“I was really hoping it would pass, but it did not surprise me that it did not pass,” he saad.

According to unofficial results, 55 percent of the voters said “no.”

In April 2013, 65 percent of the voters refused the tax increase. Voters also rejected the tax increase in 2004 and 2003.

The township road district received about $842,000 in property taxes for the road fund in 2014.

It had to turn over some of the money, collected on properties that lie within the limits of Elburn and North Aurora, to those villages.

It also receives about $85,000 in motor fuel taxes, according to a 2013 report from the state.

The road fund is used for fixing roads, buying equipment and supplies, including salt, and paying township workers.

Feece says he will discuss the referendum results with the township board at its meeting Tuesday. But he doesn't think he will try another referendum “until we get some people approaching us to help.”

“We would definitely need some cooperation from the community,” Feece says.