Property owners value SGSD road maintenance program

Kirsten Wisniewski | December 2, 2025

Over the past few months the Cook County Board of Commissioners has heard from the Highway Department several times on the subject of Subordinate Governmental Service Districts (SGSDs). Highway Engineer Robbie Kimmel-Hass and Maintenance Superintendent Matt Nesheim have voiced their support for ending the SGSD program that coordinates road maintenance contracs.

Under the current program, land owners whose parcels fall within an SGSD pay a special assessment along with their property taxes to cover the cost of the maintenance contracts. The Highway Department maintenance crews do not carry out the work, but the work is done by contractors arranged through the department. The roads that fall within SGSDs can fall into a few categories, including private roads and U.S. Forest Service Roads.

Kimmel-Hass has said during county board meetings that the budget for maintaining the program is “a wash.” He has argued, however, that the program is cumbersome for the department and ends up taking up county time and resources, both through the Highway Department, and through work in the Assessors Office and Management Information Systems department. Kimmel-Hass summarized his reason for wanting to end the SGSD program in an email to WTIP, “It’s our opinion that the problem isn’t financial, it’s not capability… it’s capacity. It’s more, should we be involved in neighborhood politics on roads that aren’t ours.”

Bob Safford was the road liaison for the Voyageurs Point SGSD for close to a decade. He told WTIP that the SGSD program is important to property owners in the district. According to Safford, the elimination of the program could leave property owners in a more difficult position when working with contractors, and could impact property values.

Securing contracts without the county

Nesheim and Kimmel-Hass have said that, over time, it has become increasingly difficult to find contractors for the maintenance work on the SGSD roads. This has meant sometimes being forced to accept a bid, simply because it is the only one.

The limited bids for the road work, however, is one of the issues Safford identified as potentially causing larger problems if the SGSDs were eliminated.

“Historically, there often only is one bidder on these things,” Safford said. “But if that’s the case for the county, imagine how much worse that would be if we were trying to contract for it privately. We might not have any bidders.”

Highway Department leadership has suggested that the administrative role they currently play in securing maintenance contracts for SGSDs could be filled by a Property Owners Association (POA) or Homeowners Association (HOA). Kimmel-Hass told WTIP that there are a few associations already established within SGSDs.

Safford said, however, that establishing an official POA or HOA with the state can be prohibitively expensive and complicated. He said not only would all the property owners have to agree to establish an association, but for mortgaged properties, the banks that hold the mortgage would also need to agree.

He also expressed concern that HOAs or POAs could have a more difficult time working with contractors than the county does. Though there are not always many bids for work, Safford said that the county offers more of a guarantee for contractors than an HOA might. He explained, “They know that the monies are being collected through property taxes through an assessment on our property taxes and that the money is there to pay them once a contract is signed.”

Potential impact on property values

Beyond the administrative difficulties of securing contracts without the county’s backing, Safford said the elimination of SGSDs could have a larger impact on land owners. He argued that the elimination of the SGSDs could impact property valuations. He said the falling values could mean more of the levy burden shifting away from those properties and onto the rest of the county.

County assessor Bob Thompson told WTIP that his office doesn’t differentiate between road types, whether it is a county road, a private road, or a road that falls into another jurisdiction, like a forest service road, when assessing properties. He added that the assessors have been compiling information about road frontages, but that at this time the data is purely informational and not used in the valuation.

Thompson said, however, that the potential change in road maintenance status “would likely be captured in the area land rates.” The elimination of the SDSGs would not necessarily cause an immediate drop in values of properties across the SDSGs, but he confirmed that it could impact the sale prices of individual properties, which would, in turn, impact the values of properties in the area.

Moving forward

At the November Committee of the Whole (COW), the county board and Highway Department leadership agreed that before any official decision about the SGSDs is made, engaging the public, both those whose properties are part of SGSDs and those who are not, is important. They agreed to hold a series of public meetings across the county and to communicate directly with the SGSD road liaisons. At the COW, Commissioner Dave Mills voiced his concern over the timeline for the process and whether deciding on the program before the next round of maintenance contracts would need to be secured was reasonable, given the need to hear from the public.

The majority of properties that fall within SGSDs are owned by seasonal residents, which has caused concern from both Safford and the county commissioners about how to communicate with those property owners if they have left the area for the season.

“The process has not been transparent,” Safford said. “It’s progressing without a clear timeline. And it’s progressing with timelines that don’t really accommodate, you know, the seasonal owners that it affects. Most people have now left, and there’s pretty short notice on meetings and things of that sort that make it kind of tough.”

The county has not yet announced dates and times for public meetings related to the SGSDs.

Safford said that as the community and commissioners consider the question of whether to eliminate the SGSD program, he wants them to remember that while the elimination would impact mostly seasonal residents, they are still Cook County taxpayers. He added that if the cost to the Highway Department is not covering the full cost of the program, the county should adjust the fees, rather than ending the program altogether. “We do not have any qualms or issues with paying what needs to be paid to have this management service provided,” Safford said.

WTIP’s Kirsten Wisniewski spoke with outgoing Voyageurs Point road liaison Bob Safford. Audio of that interview is below.