The Barrington Hills Observer

 Audio recordings from the January 9^th Special Meeting of the Roads & Bridges Committee have been posted to the Village website.  To access the main menu of recordings edited by agenda topic, click here.

 Representatives from Enbridge and their contractors attended the meeting and answered questions involving an upcoming petroleum pipeline maintenance project in Fox River Grove, which will begin the week of January 16^th.   The project will take place along Algonquin River Road (between Church and Braeburn Roads) on the northern border of the village.  Expected to last several months, construction will impact local traffic and motorists will likely encounter prolonged lane closures on River Road during the height of the work. 

Directly impacted residents should receive notification about the project from Enbridge, and the Village also expects to send out community alerts as needed.  Click here to listen to the Enbridge discussion.  

The committee was also updated on the Longmeadow Parkway (LMP). Kane County has started tree removal in conjunction with the project, with the Barrington Hills portion included in the early phases. However, the Village had notified Kane County that Autumn Trail is a private road, and not a village road and had suggested that Kane’s Resolution to assume maintenance responsibility of the portion of Autumn Trail affected by LMP be revised to clarify this. Review of the approved resolution showed that no changes had been made by Kane County to reflect the inaccuracy.

The last agenda item was an unnecessarily protracted discussion of the terms for the dedication of an easement to the Village for landscape, drainage and/or utilities on the western edge of the proposed HARPS facility located at the corner of Church and Chapel Roads in unincorporated McHenry County.  Nearly 45 minutes of the meeting was devoted to the topic, with several tedious questions by Trustee Gohl.  He questioned why the Village would have to grant the landowner any permitted easement at all.  He was informed by the village engineer that this same access permit process would be required of any property owner wishing to create a roadway entry point for anything more than a typical single family residential use (e.g. a new subdivision or an accessory driveway), due to the increased impact to the road, the multiple access points, wider required access points, etc.

And once again, the father of the former village president, who is also a representative of Barrington Hills Farm, once again attempted to insinuate that the village was intentionally dragging its feet in approving the easement, thus delaying the start of construction of the entire project.  However, he did admit that it was the trust’s own decision not to proceed with the other aspects of the project.

The Board of Trustees is expected to approve the agreement at their next meeting on Monday January 23^rd.  The full discussion of the easement matter can be found here.