There is a question on your ballot this November about township roads. It is worded in a way that is hard to follow. Here is what it means, in plain English.
Bourbonnais Township and the Bourbonnais Township Road District are two different governments, even though they share a name.
The Township has a Supervisor, four Trustees, a Clerk and an Assessor. The Road District has one elected official, the Highway Commissioner. He takes care of the township roads outside the villages: plowing, patching, ditches, paving. He has his own budget and his own piece of your tax bill.
In April 2025 you elected Jason Diaz to that job. It was the only township race on the ballot with more than one candidate.
A yes vote gets rid of that office. The roads, the equipment, the money and the taxing power all move to the Township Board.
“Shall the Road District of the Township of Bourbonnais be abolished with all the rights, powers, duties, assets, property, liabilities, obligations, and responsibilities being assumed by the Township of Bourbonnais?”
In plain words: should we shut down the road district and hand everything it has to the township board?
This is the part most people are surprised by.
Illinois law says the change takes effect at the end of the current Highway Commissioner’s term. Diaz was elected in 2025 to a four year term. That term runs to May 2029.
So a yes vote does not put anyone new in charge of your roads this winter, or next winter, or the one after that. It keeps the same person in the job for about two and a half more years, with no election left for him to run in.
The biggest piece of the road tax is something called the Permanent Road Tax. It is about $1,294,000 a year, roughly 78 cents of every dollar the road district collects.
Voters created that tax in a separate election years ago, and only another separate election can end it. This November’s vote does not touch it. The money simply moves to the township board.
Once the money moves, there is no rule in the law keeping it separate from the township’s other spending. It becomes the board’s to budget.
If the road district goes away, somebody still has to plow and patch. The two obvious candidates are the county and the Village of Bourbonnais.
We asked both of them, in writing, for any record of being approached about taking on this work. The county answered that it has no such records. The village answered that nobody asked. Neither has been approached at all.
The township has told people this change could save $500,000 to $600,000 a year. At the September 21 board meeting, a neighbor stood up and asked where that number came from and whether anyone could show the math.
He asked whether the numbers were written down anywhere. The answer was:
“They’re not on paper somewhere. No.”
Said by a member of the township board, answering for the board, at the meeting on September 21, 2026. The meeting was recorded and the recording is public.
To be fair about it: not written down does not mean wrong. The figure could turn out to be close. But it is being printed under the township board’s name, and when someone asked to see how it was worked out, there was nothing to show. We have filed a public records request for any worksheet behind it, and we will print whatever comes back, including nothing.
This did not come out of nowhere. The township board and the highway commissioner have been fighting for most of a year, mostly about bills. Both sides have a case. Here they are.
Some of this may end up going against the commissioner. Bidding rules are real, and whether six invoices are six jobs or one job is a fair question. Our point is narrower: none of it is settled, and none of it is what this ballot question decides.
Everything above this line is reporting, and you can check all of it. This part is our opinion, and we are telling you plainly that it is.
What you lose is an official you pick yourself. What you are offered in return is a savings figure the board says is not written down.
If those bills are wrong, they are still wrong on November 4. Lawyers, auditors or a judge sort that out either way. Shutting down the office does not resolve a single invoice.
About 78 cents of every road tax dollar keeps coming regardless. The work still has to get done and paid for by somebody. The one sure saving is one salary.
If you do not like the job he is doing, there is an election for that. Getting rid of the office takes your vote off the table for good.
Putting the roads, the money and the spending decisions all under one board leaves you one fewer official who answers to you directly. Bringing the office back would take another referendum.
If you believe the commissioner has overspent and gotten around bidding rules, then putting the roads under a board that votes in public on every bill is a reasonable way to stop it, and four trustees watching each other may be better than one person acting alone. That is a real argument. We just do not think it holds up once you know the office does not actually go away until 2029, and that nobody can show you the savings.
The road district question is on the same ballot as everything else. It is a binding vote, which means the result becomes law. It is not a survey.
For where you vote, early voting dates, or voting by mail, call the Kankakee County Clerk. That office runs the election and is separate from the township.
The quotes come from recordings of the September 21 and August 17, 2026 township board meetings, posted publicly by the road district itself. We transcribed them in full. The recordings use automatic captions that do not label who is speaking, which is why we say “a member of the township board” instead of naming a person. We will not put a name on that quote until we confirm it on video.
Dollar figures come from the township’s own investment report handed out at a public meeting, from the budget the board adopted, and from county records. The $521,000 paving figure is what the commissioner reported at a public meeting and we have not yet matched it against the county’s own paperwork. The laws referred to are 605 ILCS 5/6-134 and 605 ILCS 5/6-601.
If you think something here is wrong, tell us. We will check it and correct it in public.
Whether the question was properly certified to the County Clerk by the August 27 deadline, and the exact wording that will appear on your ballot. We have asked.
Whether the $500,000 to $600,000 figure is accurate. We are saying it is not written down, which is a different thing from saying it is wrong.
Whether the township is mailing its information sheet to households, and what that costs. We have asked that too.