The executive director of the Kankakee River Basin Commission gave the Starke County Council and Starke County Commission members an overview of changes coming to the Kankakee River Basin Commission.
Scott Pelath noted that the 24-member board will shrink to 9 members from counties within the basin area and they plan on focusing efforts on cleaning up the Kankakee River and Yellow River.
“Bank stabilization, getting the banks to stop caving in, channel reconstruction, acquisition of land for flood storage, construction of levies, sediment removal and sand traps, and tree removal and construction of access roads,” commented Pelath.
In order to fund these improvements, Pelath said the Public Law passed on the matter, the capital use dollars will be gathered per parcel located within the basin as defined by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“That’s $1 per farm acre, $7 per residential parcel or $3.50 per tax bill, $50 on developed commercial parcels, and then utilities and industrial parcels that some in some counties obviously contribute a lot, a $360 annual assessment.”
The county has several options on how they want to handle funding. The county council members could do nothing and the assessments Pelath mentioned would be put into place. Pelath said another option would be to pay with existing funds within the county budget.
“If a county does that, they only have to pay 90 percent of what otherwise would be gained from the assessments. If that happened, there would be no assessments. The county would simply supply those dollars with its own dollars.”
The council could adopt a different assessment schedule along with providing county funds, or adopt higher assessment and keep the difference. The last option is highly unlikely, but it is written as an option.
The council did not make a funding decision Monday night for the newly formed Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission.
The entire presentation can be heard during the Kankakee Valley Viewpoints program this Sunday, June 23 on K99.3 FM WKVI.
