My View: Boone County breakup with Belvidere planning department a very bad move

By Cathy Ward

Posted Feb. 20, 2016 at 10:39 AM

The Boone County Board voted 8-4 Wednesday to terminate its decades-old cooperative planning agreement with the city of Belvidere.

This termination ends years of sharing costs, expertise and frank talks among various planning groups and elected and appointed officials on dozens of planning issues.

I consider this divorce a very bad move since Boone County leaders have not analyzed costs, ramifications, reactions or any pertinent details of this breakup.

Chairman Bob Walberg has urged county leaders to trash the plan for months and convinced the majority board members that working with the city on plans that effect all 55,000 residents should end.

Board members voting with Walberg were Jeff Carlisle, Denny Ellingson, Karl Johnson, Sherry Giesecke, Ray Larson, Brad Stark and new board member Cory Lind.

The four opposed, who argued long and hard against the breakup, were Sherry Branson, Ken Freeman, Craig Schultz and me.

Walberg has made no secret of his dislike of the joint planning staff for months, with much of the dislike stemming from the long-debated wind-farm proposal, which Walberg staunchly opposes.

The planning staff has tried diligently to follow only the law.

Little by little, Walberg has filled as many vacancies as possible on boards and committees with anti-wind farm supporters, but since the planning department was currently a joint agreement with the city, he could not fire the two-member planning staff without approval of Belvidere Mayor Mike Chamberlain or former Mayor Fred Brereton. Neither would bow to his plan.

Interim Planning Director Kathy Miller recently announced she is leaving the department and Walberg used her departure as a reason to break up the agreement. He wants a cracker-jack planner to answer to him.

Walberg said most of the work of the planning department has been for the city, which is obviously not true, as the wind-farm debates lingered for years with hundred of hours of county work for the planning staff.

I repeated for months that we need to keep working as closely as possible with our friends in the city, as at least half the people who live in the county live in the city.

Walberg said that once a planner is hired, the city could pay the county for those services. Chamberlain, who was not aware until recently of the vote last week, said that will not happen. He said the city would hire its own consultants.

A divorce of this kind is nonsense. The repercussions will be endless. Why should the city ever contact the county on pre-annexations or any other plans with this breakup in place?

Unless County Board members vote to reconsider soon, this will be a problem of intergovernmental work for a long time.

Cathy Ward is a member of the Boone County Board.

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/opinion/20160220/my-view-boone-county-breakup-with-belvidere-planning-department-very-bad-move