Disband Dorr Highway Dept. (and others)? |
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Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
March 15, 2011
At the March 8th Dorr Township regular monthly meeting I asked what the Township's position was on Senate Bill 1811. This Bill would affect townships that maintain less than 100 miles or roads. How many "centerline" miles does Dorr maintain? 32. That's 3-2. Thirty-two miles.
Dorr Township residents pay for a Commissioner, workers, property, vehicles, equipment to maintain 32 miles of roadway.
Now, some might initially protest that that number is not right. The right number is 64, because 64 is the number of "lane" miles. OK, so roads usually have two lanes. What if there were a one-mile section of three-lane roadway? Would that be counted as three miles or one mile?
The purpose of my question was not to assume that the S.B. 1811 was good (or bad) and that the Township Road District should go down the drain. The question was whether the issue should be intelligently addressed and examined.
I understand the defensiveness of the Road District and other Township officials. But it's The People whose interest is served by such an investigation or evaluation.
Townships might be dinosaurs that just don't know The End is coming.
How many townships are there in Illinois? Even Wikipedia.com isn't brave enough to venture a count on its main page. It does say there are 102 counties, and only 17 don't have townships (but they have divisions called precincts). McHenry County has 17 townships; see that little one up in the northeast corner?
On the website of Township Officials of Illinois (http://www.toi.org/) I found (with help from the TOI office) that "Today, 85 of Illinois 102 counties operate under the township form of government and the 1,432 townships serve more than 8 million citizens "
In the 17 Illinois counties that do not have townships, there are 261 precincts, all of which probably have their own little forms of "government" at taxpayer expense. If you are curious where they are, go to http://www.wikipedia.com/ and search for Illinois precincts. (There it says there are 1,433 townships in Illinois.)