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Did you know that the McHenry County Division of Transportation wants to reconstruct rural Alden Road at a cost of $20-25 million taxpayer dollars, plus the cost of land acquisition which could be hundreds of thousands of dollars more? They wish to make dramatic improvements to Alden Road beginning at Nelson Road northwest of Woodstock and continuing it’s entire 7-mile length to the Wisconsin state line, and the initial phase of the project is well underway. The County states that the road is in need of complete rebuilding due to failure of the base, although this is not evident when traveling upon it.

Though one of the primary reasons cited for these proposed “improvements” is enhanced safety, this MCDOT project appears to be aligned with an aggressive vision for the future of McHenry County, aimed at significantly changing and urbanizing the remainder of the open and agricultural areas here in western portions of the county. Look to the southeastern portion of the county at areas such as Lake in the Hills and places like Rakow/Randall Road with it’s gravel pits and over-developed commercial areas. Is this your vision of how you want your county to grow over the next couple of decades? If your answer is no, then we encourage you to join us in our mission to intelligently oppose the excessive scope of the currently proposed version of rebuilding of Alden Road. It seems to be an initial building block in a plan that we feel fundamentally lacks vision and responsibility on multiple levels, and could also be perceived as a misappropriation of taxpayer funding.

While this may seem like some far-off future endeavor, we can’t stress enough that now is absolutely the most important time for you to become involved and offer your input on this project which will have an impact on all of our futures, as we can still affect positive change at this stage of the planning.

Addendum: At the McHenry County Board meeting on August 18, 2009, MCDOT stated that they are going to re-examine the engineering on Phase I of the Alden Road project. We will remain vigilant during the months they state this process will take. Stay tuned for regular updates to this site.