McHenry County committee approves Fleming Road IGA and opens wide debate on township bridge funding

A McHenry County transportation committee voted to approve an intergovernmental agreement to transfer Fleming Road to a village and use $4,000,000 from the county's RTA sales-tax fund to fund the rehabilitation work, clearing that IGA to move forward if the budgeted funds are available.

The approval, moved and seconded on the floor, came after staff clarified the $4,000,000 had been budgeted for fiscal year 2026 and therefore did not require an emergency appropriation. "You're taking $4,000,000 from the RTA sales tax fund," an unidentified committee member said. Staff confirmed that the county had budgeted the amount and that the agreement would hand the road to the village "as is" with money for the village to complete the rehab.

Why it matters: the vote was routine compared with the rest of the meeting, in which members and staff spent the majority of the session confronting a larger problem: a near-blank county bridge-match balance and a growing inventory of aging township bridges. Committee members warned that years of shifting levy space and using RTA funds for non-transportation priorities left the county's matching fund essentially depleted and the township bridge assistance program dormant for about three years.

Staff presented maps showing 81 township structures and explained that about 10 are in design or construction, one opened this past year, and roughly 25 bridges are either over 50 years old or have sufficiency ratings below 50 (on a 100-point scale). "We are the only county in the state of Illinois that that does this, except for Will," a committee member said, arguing the county has historically helped townships with bridge projects and that gap funding is now gone.

County staff identified a set of potential tools and constraints. Under Illinois state law, townships that have maxed out their road-and-bridge levy may pursue a "joint bridge levy" (statutory options discussed on the record), and the state's Town Bridge Program (TBP) provides roughly $650,000 a year for township-bridge work. Staff emphasized TBP can be used to start engineering work so projects are ready to compete for federal construction funds; TBP funding is 100% state-funded for eligible township projects, staff said.

Committee members and several highway commissioners in attendance pressed for a short-term financing plan and longer-term structural solutions. Ideas discussed included:
- asking townships to maximize levy capacity or pursue referenda to raise local matching funds;
- using the annual TBP allocation to fund engineering on the worst bridges so the county and townships can later compete for federal construction dollars; and
- forming a small working group of county board members, township highway commissioners and staff to develop prioritization criteria and a cost-sharing program to present to the full county board before budget decisions.

"If your bridge is going to be $7 million in the future and you have no match, what do you do?" a board member asked, urging the committee to identify projects that can be advanced now so they qualify for discretionary or competitive grants when those funds open.

Staff urged caution that many federal and state funding streams require projects to have engineering started to be competitive. "You can't get federal money for construction if you don't have the engineering started," staff said, noting the TBP and other competitive grants are more accessible when preliminary work is already completed.

The committee did not adopt a funding plan at the meeting but directed staff to coordinate with the highway commissioners and Chairman Bueller about convening an expanded discussion and to return with recommendations. Staff and commissioners agreed to identify a small set of bridges to start with using available TBP funds and to work on producing a clear program proposal for the full board.

Votes at a glance: The meeting record includes the following formal actions approved by the committee: approval of agenda item 5.4 related to Fleming Road (mover: Unidentified Speaker; second: Mister Shella; outcome: approved), a motion to enter executive session to discuss land acquisition and impending litigation (mover: Mister Scalon; second: Van Bergen; outcome: approved), and approval of recommendations to forward and release certain executive-session minutes as recommended by the state's attorney's office.

What happens next: staff and the highway commissioners will meet to identify candidate township bridges for near-term engineering using TBP funds and will return to the committee with a proposed program design and funding options ahead of the county's budget deliberations.