This is one in a series of stories looking at contested races in the Aurora area in the Nov. 5 election.
The race for the Kane County Board seat in District 20 in the November election is between incumbent Democrat Cherryl Strathmann and Republican challenger Silvia Schrage.
The general election is set for Nov. 5.
Strathmann, 76, of Elgin, is seeking her third term on the board and said that issues in the district include immigration, mental health and taxes.
“People are concerned about immigration programs and the ways to meet the needs of the immigrants,” she said. “We have very active Hispanic leadership in Elgin who provide a lot of great services but what I’m hearing is not negative, but let’s get a positive program going that has some parameters and restrictions that we need to help the people that come here and are asking for asylum.”
Mental health is “a very big issue” in the county, Strathmann said.
“Everybody is feeling it,” she said. “Everybody knows somebody who is experiencing something. People are aware that some people are really stressed and aren’t getting services they need.”
Taxes are always an issue, Strathmann said, noting that “people are concerned we’re going to be raising them.”
“They are concerned that it’s not a fair tax situation, both for base income tax and for property tax,” she said.
If reelected, Strathmann said she would like to continue to work on mental health issues as well as her current work on the Jobs Committee and also to create more environmental awareness.
“Mental health, we just bought an existing building in Elgin for the public health department and we’re going to be working on that in order to offer more services in the northern part of the county,” she said.
Strathmann said she currently sits on the Jobs Committee and it “just initiated this economic development plan which is new for the county.” She said the plan is “very exciting and very important.”
Strathmann said she is also concerned about the environment.
“I’m a master gardener and really believe we have overlooked some things,” she said. “We need to take care of our trees, some things with pesticides and overuse of chemicals and protecting our water in the county.”
Schrage, 60, of Elgin, is seeking her first term and said issues in the district include the cost of living, safety and worries about lead in the local water supply.
“People are concerned about the cost of living, the cost of gasoline, their food baskets. Some people are even having to change their diet because they can’t afford what they would normally eat as well as the cost of insurance,” she said. “Water bills – everything is going sky high.”
Safety, Schrage, said, involves a range of things including “the recent increase in panhandlers that don’t make people feel safe.”
“There’s also shootings and places where they have had disturbances before and perhaps there is a little increase in gun activity,” she said.
There are also concerns about lead possibly being in the water, which Schrage said is worrying some residents in the area.
If elected, Schrage said she would like to work on creating a more cooperative board environment as well as monitoring county spending.
“Whatever we do at the board, I would like there to be more cooperation with the city and more integration with the levels of government because there was a very missed opportunity with ARPA funds and looking for how to spend them,” she said. “They should have communicated and coordinated better. We need cooperation between county, township and city with more dialogue and more coordination of ideas.”
Schrage also said that the board needs better “communication with the voters themselves” to make residents “more aware of what the county board is and who the board members are.”
“We need more communicating with the people who voted the board members in,” she said.
Another goal would include “looking at how the money is spent so we can apply more money to infrastructure, and prioritize spending so we don’t spend our reserves.”
“We need to make sure the budget is balanced and we do not spend the county reserves,” she said.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
