Monday evening, during the Village Board meeting, Trustee Messer shocked many, but none more than Roads & Bridges Trustee Patty Meroni, when he stated our roads “suck.” That’s rather pejorative considering Messer was Meroni’s running mate in 2011 and she is now running for reelection. Nonetheless, she does need to answer why our roads are in such decrepit condition.
A brief review of the background of this issue is in order.
In 2005, the Village Board established a plan to maintain Village roads every ten years based on a rotating schedule of resurfacing. This meant resurfacing approximately 3.2 miles of roadways per year to achieve that goal. This road maintenance goal was cited as a reason for multiple tax levy increases.
However, it was recently revealed that just four years later in 2009, the plan was in the hole (or pothole as it were), by 3.26 miles of backlogged road improvements.
Why? Because the levy increases were not earmarked for roads, and millions of dollars were squandered in legal fees for ill-advised litigation from 2005 through 2013. We’ve covered that road before in a recent editorial, so we needn’t travel it again now.
What’s concerning to us is ever since Gewalt Hamilton reported last year that we were nearly 5 miles behind in road maintenance, they also reported a significant percentage of roadways that are either in poor or very poor condition. Why didn’t they report the deficit in road resurfacing back in 2009?
Think about who was in office at the time, and you’ll find the answer.
More concerning is we’ve paid Gewalt Hamilton millions of dollars since 2005, and over $400,000 last year alone and for what?
Since last year’s telling report, Meroni has obfuscated the real roadway issues by bringing up the Cuba Road bridge project and the unanticipated expensive patching of Healy Road.
The Cuba Road bridge replacement has been in the works since before her term in office. It’s no surprise to anyone.
The decimation of Healy Rd could easily have been prevented had Meroni lowered the weight limit on it when Penny Rd was being resurfaced. Why didn’t she or Gewalt Hamilton realize dozens of fully loaded gravel trucks used Healy to bypass Penny Rd lane closures daily for months? Our local roads are not engineered for that amount of stress.
Aside from her repeated smokescreens about such projects, Meroni seems unphased by the significant investments it will require to fix our roads in the next few years and the prospect of higher taxes to do so. As a matter of fact, at the last Monday’s Board meeting, she said that she believes residents are willing to pay more in taxes.
Perhaps she should run that by Cook County residents who will be writing checks this weekend to pay their first installments of property taxes due on Tuesday. We doubt they would agree with her, and they’d likely tell her the prospect of higher taxes “sucks.”
– The Observer
If Ms. Meroni is so sure that the residents of Barrington Hills are so eager to pay more in taxes, why didn’t she include taxing the Commercial Horse Boarders when she took away our personal property rights in exchange for our subsidizing expanded commercial horse boarding in Barrington Hills? Every issue that has come up on Ms. Meroni’s watch she has claimed was a surprise. Isn’t it her job to pay attention to so that the Village can avoid expensive surprises. The only surprise is that she is running again for Trustee. Where are the millions of dollars Ms. Meroni was already entrusted with to maintain our roads? Why should I pay more taxes because Ms. Meroni did not use our prior tax dollars earmarked (budgeted) for road maintenance and repairs to actually fix the roads. I don’t know about my neighbors but I am sick and tired of being lied to by divisive political candidates in my Village . Patti, please tell us what you did with our tax dollars. You clearly have not spent them on our roads like you promised!
Meroni goes nowhere without her boy toy, Dan Strahan of Gewalt Hamilton. This $400k is a HUGE and unwarranted expense that should be invested elsewhere, like ROADS since Meroni should be “pothole trained” by now after 4 years, so no more handholding!
I highly doubt we even spent $400k in legal expenses last year, but then again, Meroni has voted not to pay those even though she asks for opinions from Patrick Bond all the time. Same goes for Selman, so any of the SOS Party vendors providing them with services should beware. Get a deposit first and perform the work second!
BHO makes the insightful comment that:
“The decimation of Healy Rd could easily have been prevented had Meroni lowered the weight limit on it when Penny Rd was being resurfaced. Why didn’t she or Gewalt Hamilton realize dozens of fully loaded gravel trucks used Healy to bypass Penny Rd lane closures daily for months? Our local roads are not engineered for that amount of stress.”
BHO I have another insight which you may have overlooked and that is, are our local roads engineered for the amount of stress an increase in the number of agriculture trucking resulting from passage of Anderson II? As BHO readers might not be aware, trucks carrying hay and other agriculture material are exempt from VBH weight limits and permitting. In other words, VBH will not even know “how many” or “how heavy” these trucks are driving on neighborhood roads.
You would think R&B Meroni prior to casting her “pre-ordained” vote for Anderson II would have at least “faked” concern about this issue asking maybe one question regarding the impact current and increased large scale commercial boarding activity might have on VBH local roads.
BHO I might add further by saying tax revenue promised for roads not only went to pay Burke-Warren and Kelly to slay mostly windmills for Abboud with BOT oversight, but also to try and cover the police pension debacle which by my estimation will cost VBH taxpayers @10 Million Dollars when factoring in the time value of money.
This is why on SOS website, readers are asked to “Consider the Horse” and are directed to look at colorful scenic pictures; because if SOS provided the reader numerical information on how Selman, Meroni and other “Save 5 Acres” BOT managed this Village these past 10 years, you would hear screams of horror and witness readers pulling our their hair. YES FOLKS, IT IS THAT BAD AND IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO REVIEW ANNUAL BUDGETS AND ANNUAL AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FROM 2005-2014, THE NUMBERS ARE ALL THERE AND DO NOT LIE. Start with legal fees and pension contribution, then make your way to roads and bridges.
could it be that the last two winters have been exceptionally hard on all road surfaces throughout the northern Illinois area. mmmmm maybe that’s it.
mmmmmmmmmm……. Don’t think so!
If residents are waiting for Trustee Meroni to account for road spending expenditures; past and present they will be left waiting a very long time. Her empassioned pleas always begin with “something suddenly came up”. For the last ten years, apparently something came up alright. Residents should demand more from a department which controls a sizable portion of the actual budget. Now that these meetings are open to the public, I think I should attend. It is necessary to uncover the source of the mismanagement. In fact, I did listen to a most recent recording of a meeting. A resident suggested that our village shoud investigate the idea of securing a 10 yr bond for the work done!
Can you imagine, a bond? Mr. Kosin wasn’t too pleased.
Accountability is a joke, and she criticizes Marty as to spending monies to launch an investigation into illegal political contributions. Rather than take the blame, she continues to play dodge ball with the taxpayer’s money.
If she’s a proven leader, we are in deep trouble. For sure!