At a time when Long Grove is facing several choices that have the potential to determine the direction of its future, a small minority of its residents are putting whole trust into its leaders, according to a survey commissioned by the village.
Long Grove’s Village Board hired a polling firm to survey its residents on a wide swath of subjects this summer, and just received the results back. Village President Angie Underwood said there were no big surprises, but that having quantified opinions will help the trustees as they update their comprehensive plan.
“I wasn’t terribly surprised,” Underwood said of the outcomes.
But two of the survey’s results showed a lack of faith in village leadership. When asked to rate how Village Hall operates relative to the community’s best interests, only 8 percent gave an “excellent” rating, while 30 percent rated it “poor.” When asked to rate the village’s transparency, 7 percent checked “excellent,” another 30 percent checked “poor.” Around 35 percent answered “fair” to both of those questions.
When responding to those numbers, Underwood took some time to compose her thoughts.
“We tend to hear from the same small group of residents on every issue — those are the ones who show up at Village Hall, those are the ones who send emails,” she added. “The survey gave us the chance to hear from a wider range of voices, including those.”
Long Grove hired the Colorado-based National Research Center to mail a written, five-page packet of questions to 2,462 households. According to the summary the firm sent village hall, it received 1,007 back, including 96 who chose to respond online. NRC estimates its error range at plus or minus 3 percent on any question, and weighted its final results to account for demographics.
Its purpose is to help direct the board as it updates its comprehensive plan for village growth and maintenance, Underwood said. Long Grove is facing multiple large-scale issues these days —how to shape the future of its downtown, how to pay for road repairs, how to gain a municipal water supply and more — and Underwood said the trustees, looking for guidance from the taxpayers they represent, wanted to have their wishes turned into hard numbers instead of anecdotes.
And what they received showed that the village might even be split 50-50 on whether it would like the Illinois Tollway to complete Route 53, sending it from Buffalo Grove up to Grayslake. Fifty-three percent oppose the road, while 47 percent support it.
Without a doubt, though, most residents want Underwood and other officials to remain as closely involved in the project as they can be: 91 percent said they want Long Grove to stay involved in the highway’s planning process.
“I thought that was incredibly high,” said Underwood.
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One question asked “What is the single most pressing issue that the village should address in the coming two years?” The runaway winner was “downtown renovations/rejuvenation” at 40 percent. Other top concerns: road repair, at 12 percent, taxes, at 7 percent, and increasing commercial development at 6 percent. Five percent of respondents said that stopping Route 53 should be the village’s top priority, while another 5 percent said finishing it should.
But the trustees say they intentionally left one of their most important long-range problems out of the questionnaire: What do the people want their Village Board to do about the covered bridge?
The people are going to have their say, Underwood explained.
The Illinois Department of Transportation has declared obsolete the decades-old bridge that acts as the village’s icon. The board may seek federal funding for a fresh, two-lane bridge, but is also mulling the idea of repairing the existing structure, or rebuilding it still with only one lane, and only local money. Underwood said that part of the lengthy paperwork process of going after federal dollars includes documentation of taxpayer input.
“They require that you hold public hearings and stakeholder open houses before they will consider funding it,” she said.
She noted that a covered-bridge question had been in the survey’s original plan, but that the board opted to remove it and rely on the input from public hearings and open houses.
“There’s going to be a lot more going into this decision,” Underwood said.
A new bridge might help, or might hinder, the local economy, depending on who you ask. But most Long Grove residents want something done with the local economy: three out of five respondents gave economic development a “poor” rating — “much lower than the national average,” NRC officials wrote in their executive summary.
Several leaders have said that gaining access to Lake Michigan water could lure in new businesses, and that shift would be popular with the residents, as well. Only 40 percent gave “excellent” or “good” ratings to their water supplies.
But, regardless of road conditions, water and the such, a main reason that people move to Long Grove is, at least in part, outside of Long Grove. When asked why they chose to live here, 89 percent said the school systems were “good” or “excellent” reasons to be there.
“It’s really gratifying,” said Jim Conrey, spokesman for Lincolnshire-based Stevenson High School. “It certainly validates, I think, what we’re doing here.”
Underwood, after considering the survey and all its outcomes for a while, came back to the transparency issue. In her two and a half years as Village President, the community has experimented with video gambling, gone through a heated spring 2015 election, seen downtown storefronts open, shut and open again, and started looking into water, road repair and the bridge.
Those are only some of the reasons why the board commissioned the survey — and that is a lot, she said, for a small town.
“The Village Board has been dealing with, one after another, some very divisive issues, where the board has been split,” Underwood said. “No matter where the board comes out, there’s going to be a set of people who aren’t happy with it.”
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer