When you elected me to be your Algonquin Township Highway Commissioner I made you several promises:
- I would refuse the politician healthcare plan
- I would refuse the politician pension plan
- I would term limit myself
- I would cut taxes
- I would improve transparency
I have kept all of my promises to you. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you all. It is an honor to serve you and it is a privilege that I never take likely, or for granted.
Improving Transparency
We took our website design criteria from the Illinois Policy Institute’s website criteria. We are not at the score we would like, yet. The backbone and frame of the website is complete. The website will be continuously updated and modified to comply with the transparency checklist as well as other important constituent tools.
The old highway department website was outdated, and while it did serve its purpose, the website needed to become much more functional. Last month we rolled out the new website and today we made some more updates. We added electronic forms that work. We made our recycling page much more interactive and partnered with the Environmental Defenders of McHenry County. Our bus service for seniors and disabled folks is now all interactive as well. We will continuously make it better.
Look Up Budgets and Tax Levies Online
From the financial info tab on our home page you can now look up our budgets dating back to 2014-2015 and our levies dating back to to 2014. It is important to note that the levies always tax for the prior year. You pay property tax in 2018 on 2017’s value. The FY 2017 levy is our most recent levy in which we cut the levy five (5) percent across the board.
Our monthly bills were never published online and trying to find the budgets and levies was difficult at best. We changed that at the Algonquin Township and now we have located all of our bills, budgets, and levies online in a single location. At the top of the home page and only taking one mouse click you can find all of our financial information for improved visibility and transparency.
One More Thing…
We know we have many tweaks and additions that we need to make. Thank you to everyone who has given fair and honest criticism as well as positive and negative feedback. We have implemented as many of the comments and ideas suggested as quickly as we could.
This leads me to the naysayers, mockers, scoffers, and political hacks who do not look at how far we have come at the Algonquin Township Highway Department but instead point out what is lacking, missing, or inadvertently inaccurate. It is really a sad commentary on those who make these claims and refuse to acknowledge all the great things we did to get to this point. It is even worse when they make decisions based on my personality and not the reality.
We have cut taxes. We are more transparent than any other township and moving forward will only improve our processes and systems.
The outstanding achievements of the Algonquin Township Highway Department far exceed any website hiccups. Special thanks to Dorothy, Colleen, Ryan, and IA Business Advisors for all of your efforts.
Great work team.
