Lake County Motorist

From the Columbus Dispatch: Road budgets falling behind need for repair.

Fortunately, so far it appears that Lake County has been able to fund key projects and even escalate others as their need has increased. Money has even been spent on projects whose purpose I don’t fully understand (such as 2007’s Wilson Road resurfacing).

When I contacted the Village of Gurnee regarding the widespread construction planned for that area this summer, Director of Community Development David Ziegler indicated the importance “for each entity to move forward with their project while the funding is available.”

Having lived most of my life in the City of Chicago and watched construction projects drag on for years (particularly on the south side), I’m impressed by the efforts Lake County takes to add capacity to its roads. Sure, there’s always room for improvement and urgency (at least in individual motorists’ minds), but the little green signs with the picture of the bulldozer and Comic Sans font indicating “improvements in progress” are more than I used to see further south.

Of course, we pay for this with higher tax rates. My guess is that the addition of new taxpayers via population growth hasn’t hurt the tax coffers, either.

I don’t know what the future will hold for highway funding as I haven’t studied the budgets, but I hope infrastructure improvements won’t fall behind the pace of population growth in Lake County. Is residential and commercial growth enough to fund expansion without digging deeper into the pockets of the residents already here? Can we optimize what money is available without continually asking for a tax increase?

The discussion is still open…