Trustees Approve Cul-De-Sac Snowplow Contract

Those living on cul-de-sacs in parts of the should see their streets being plowed sooner this winter than in years past.

Trustees voted 3-2 with Village President Brian LeClercq also casting a yes vote to approve a one-year contract with Forestview Landscaping for the company to plow a majority of the village's cul-de-sac streets on a per-snow-event basis.

The village will pay the company $3,910 after 2 inches of a wet heavy snow event. Lighter, fluffier snows likely will not bring the company out, Weaver said. Typically, cul-de-sacs are some of the last streets in the village to be plowed as village crews work to clear main roads in the interest of public safety. 

Trustees Terry Michels and Gail Johnson both voted against accepting the contract. Johnson questioned how the village will measure the success of the plan and whether the number of complaints the village gets from those living on cul-de-sac's is enough to justify the cost. 

Michels said Director Jerry Weaver's plan to send the company out toward the end of a large snow storm to plow the cul-de-sacs is something the village should be looking to do itself. He also said that even though residents who live on cul-de-sacs pay the same amount in taxes as everyone, there should be an expectation that those roads will not take priority over main and secondary roads. 

Forestview will plow cul-de-sacs on the west side of the Fox River and south of Wolf Road. The affected subdivisions would be Fox Chase, River Run, Park Place, Gates Creek, Gates Creek West, Blackberry Knolls, Southbury, Lakeview, Lakeview West, Deerpath, Morgan Crossing, Arbor Gate, Ashcroft, Old Reserve and parts of the older section of town. Vilage crews would handle the rest of the cul-de-sacs as part of their normal routes, Weaver said. In all, 147 of the village's 223 cul-de-sacs will be handled by Forestview. 

Trustee Scott Volpe said he's looking forward to seeing how this proposal works and feels a fix for these homeowners is overdue.

"We spent a lot of time approving these cul-de-sacs, but I don't think we spent a lot of time thinking about how we were going to maintain them," he said. 

Village President Brian LeClercq said it will be important to measure the success of the program come spring, and that measure will determine if the program will be used again next winter.