Early Voting and Transportation Committee
Early Voting and Transportation Committee
Early Voting Begins this week
Illinois kicks off its voting season this week!! Starting on Thursday, September 29, you can vote at the County Courthouse. Vote by mail ballots will be sent out as well — please keep an eye on your mailbox for those if you applied for one. Reach out anytime if you need help getting to the courthouse or returning your ballot.
Transportation Committee
Another one of the County's 15 standing committees, the Transportation Committee provides oversight of the county-maintained roads and bridges. I recently responded to the Belleville News-Democrat's candidate survey and one of the questions asked my top two issues; my response was taxes and traffic safety are the top two issues I hear about from voters as I am door knocking. The Transportation Committee could be the place I need to be to address the traffic safety concerns in District 2.
This Committee shall:
- Review and approve the annual budget requests and expenditures proposed by the Highway Superintendent.
- Oversee management, construction and maintenance of County highways, including bridges and grade separations.
- Review contracts for major construction and maintenance projects in connection with transportation activities.
- Oversee acquisition and disposition of County Highway rights-of-way.
- Approve the purchase of County-owned highway equipment and rental of equipment.
- Oversee the construction of jointly-sponsored bridges with townships, municipalities and the Illinois Division of Highways.
The work of the Transportation Committee is straight forward, mostly providing oversight of the Highway Department. According to the Highway Department's page, there are "approximately 245 miles of roadways and 65 bridges more than 20 foot in length" in the county. Illinois' townships and municipalities also have responsibility for roads within their boundaries, so it becomes more difficult for residents to know where the buck stops when they need a traffic issue addressed. If the Highway Department is not responsive then the Transportation Committee (members) should be available to mediate. I say "members" because this Committee meets once per year and county residents may find going to the members of the committee to be more effective than waiting until the next scheduled meeting time.
In learning about this committee, I discovered the Highway Department has its own web domain: stclaircohwy.com. As of September 25, 2022, the website it points to is "under construction". If the Highway Department is not using this domain, then it should not be paying for annual domain registration or hosting services with taxpayer money. If appointed to this committee, I will not approve wasteful expenditures of county funds.
