Editor’s note: This is one in a series of stories looking at contested races in the Nov. 3 general election.
The race for a seat on the Kane County Board in District 2 in the Nov. 3 election features Democrat Ellen Nottke and independent candidate Kelly Burke.
There is no Republican on the Nov. 3 ballot for the District 2 seat.
Nottke, 72, of Batavia, said that voters in the district are concerned about taxes, affordable housing and safety.
“Taxes – the property taxes are number one and the problem I keep hearing is that people don’t understand their tax bills,” she said. “That’s a big problem. Less than 5% of their bill pays for the county services – police, circuit clerk, health department – all those things come out of your 5% tax bill. When you look at it almost 70% goes to the schools and the county can’t do anything about that.”
Affordable housing, Nottke said, “is something people are concerned about.”
“We can only hold developers to the criterion that we place,” Nottke said.
In regards to safety, Nottke said residents are concerned about local law enforcement response time, specifically “how much time it takes for the Sheriff’s Office to get to their house.”
She said about half of the district is unincorporated and residents “worry about the time it takes for the sheriff to get there. The further out you go, it takes longer to get there. We’re restricted by the number of employees we have.”
If elected, Nottke said her goals include limiting data centers, improving transportation to rural parts of the area and working on the issue of unfunded mandates.
“I’d like to see data centers and solar fields slowed down a bit because I think we’re moving too fast on these centers and not looking at the long-term problems,” she said.
Nottke said she would like to see “more transportation options out to the rural parts of the county because that is an issue here.”
Nottke adds that she’d “also like to see the mandates that are placed on all of us – the municipalities and the county – we need to do something about those.”
“I would support lobbying in Springfield that would work to rescind or reduce those,” she said.
Burke, 35, of Elburn, said the top three issues voters are talking about include data centers, infrastructure and energy, and development and open space.
“With data centers, people are asking about what the impact will be on the community – are they safe, the ground water and the noise,” she said. “Most people have never experienced it and seen them up close and there’s all the concerns you see online. It’s all over the internet and the news.”
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Regarding infrastructure and energy, Burke said voters are talking “about these major developments.”
“I’m in Kane County and located where suburbia meets country and we’re in a growth sector. There’s a lot of agricultural land and sort of in that area where a lot of development is poised to move into undeveloped areas,” she said. “With that being said, I think these developments that have been proposed or could be in the future are a concern – who’s moving in, what’s the impact on the neighbors, flooding, local businesses.”
Agriculture, she said, “is woven” through the area, saying that its “an ecosystem here and this is agricultural land that is being approached and farmers haven’t really seen profitability in the standard grow crops for a few years now.”
“There’s been four years of corn and beans and not making money and each farmer is faced with: Do I sell the family farm? Do they sell to a solar farm or a big developer,” she said.
If elected, Burke said she wants to focus on limiting data centers, energy issues and economic development.
“When you talk about data centers, the impact is the entire community’s energy bill that will be impacted because it’s a huge consumer of energy,” she said. “What’s that mean when we’re in a time where we’re cutting down the coal plants that were powering communities and their production is being limited. We have to come up with new solutions. I’m a big proponent of waste-to-value and evaluating what the community has and how potentially something could be a revenue stream.”
Burke also spoke about “the next generation and I’m big on economic development.”
“I’m a business owner and I own agricultural and commercial property and am a resident in Kane County and all of my properties are unincorporated and in this growth mode and growth sector,” she said.
“But, at the end of the day, I’m an entrepreneur and I want to be involved,” she said.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.