State lawmakers are giving Kane County $17.5 million to help fund the ongoing construction of the Longmeadow Parkway, but that’s not enough to eliminate planned tolls. (Paul Valade | Staff Photographer)
Long-sought state funding for Kane County’s Longmeadow Parkway will help push the 5.6-mile corridor to completion. But it won’t eliminate the toll — yet.
State lawmakers included $17.5 million for the project in a marathon state budget session last weekend. After the bipartisan Longmeadow funding passed, some state lawmakers, such as state Rep. Suzanne Ness, issued statements saying the money “eliminated” the need for a toll on the parkway.
But the money in the state’s 2023 budget is only about half of what county officials sought to eliminate the toll.
The toll became a necessary to help fund the Longmeadow Parkway bridge over the Fox River when, unlike the Stearns Road bridge, not enough federal and state money came through to pay for the project at the northern border of Kane County. County officials sold bonds to pay for the construction and ongoing maintenance.
County board members decided a toll would be the best way to repay the money borrowed through the bonds because, they argued, non-county residents in McHenry and Cook counties using the parkway would pay a fair amount of those tolls. That, and discounted toll rates for Kane County residents, would relieve some of the financial burdens of the toll and repaying the bonds.
But the toll is also the least popular portion of the plan. County board members on the northern end of the county, in particular Chris Kious, have lamented the need to pay a toll to travel from one side of the Fox River to the other — unlike other bridge projects in the area like Stearns Road or the Red Gate in St. Charles.
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