Long Grove’s Village Board began the discussion of its 2016-17 budget during a meeting Tuesday, and one of the key items of the early session was trustee Michael Sarlitto’s proposal to host a series of open houses regarding Route 53.
The budget is months away from final approval, but at the moment, its outline contains a $50,000 “placeholder” — as several trustees termed it — for publicizing informational nights, renting facilities, and maybe even catering them.
The Illinois Tollway has mounted a concentrated effort in recent years to extend Route 53, sending it north of its Lake Cook Road terminus to a reconstructed Route 120 in Grayslake. Supporters and critics agree that a final vote of its fate is years away, and all sides estimate its price tag tops $2 billion.
Sarlitto, who won his first term on the board last year in part by lobbying heavily against the Route 53 proposal, said in plain terms that he wanted to use the meetings — and the taxpayer dollars that would fund them — to galvanize public opinion against Route 53.
“We’ve all run campaigns before, and we know what they cost,” Sarlitto told the other trustees. “This is a campaign to save our village from something that’s bad for us.”
Fellow board member Lori Lyman questioned the need for informational nights. As she noted, the idea has already spent years in public debate, and the next round of new data — a study of what kind of environmental impact the current design could have — is probably more than a year away.
“Where do you intend to get your information, and what do you intend to debate?” Lyman asked Sarlitto during the meeting Tuesday. “How are you going to know what to debate, if the information isn’t even there to debate?”
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Long Grove is one of several villages in the new route’s path that are rallying against it. In 2015, both Long Grove and Hawthorn Woods held public meetings at which crowds of more than 200 people listened to elected officials decry the costs, possible environmental damages, expected loss of local control and more.
For both of those meetings, though, the hosts donated the spaces, and no public funds were spent on the presentations, which were rather one-sided. At the meeting in October, for example, Lake County Board President Aaron Lawlor, a supporter of the extension, told a crowd he would not be treated like a “punching bag” by the gymnasium full of Route 53 opponents. Long Grove Village President Angie Underwood had to ask the crowd to stop berating Lawlor.
In his proposal, Sarlitto did not suggest venues to rent, or offer dates — but if Village Hall were to rent a facility, Underwood and Sarlitto agree, the session would have to include speakers from both sides for a more balanced approach.
Also during the Village Board meeting, Sarlitto suggested that the $50,000 could be used to rent buses to drive residents down to Springfield, to lobby legislators in person. The day after the discussion, Sarlitto was asked for specifics of what he would organize, if his open-house placeholder is included in the final budget.
“That’s a good question,” he answered. He then suggested having a panel discussion, with six or eight Long Grove residents who are well-informed about the subject debating its merits and drawbacks — three or four on each side.
But he said something has to be done to ensure that everyone in the village knows about the new road that could be passing through.
“They are dumbfounded that there has not been more orchestrated communications to them by the village,” Sarlitto said. “There’s editorializing that goes on, by the village president.”
The day after the meeting, Underwood said that Sarlitto’s suggestions took her by surprise.
“I was trying to get a sense from the trustees, ‘What would you use that money on?'” Underwood said. “He suggested catering these events. I thought that was,” she paused, “interesting. That’s not something we had discussed.”
The trustees are scheduled to have several more budget discussions this winter and spring. Its fiscal year begins May 1.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer