Mapping out the past, present and future with Phil Bus

Batavia's Phil Bus is a man who sees the past -- and the future -- clearer than most.

It's why he gets excited about the Kane County 2040 Plan, which is still in the works. The planning document will not only look ahead to what the county will be like in 30 years, but it also will take stock of 200 years of settlement, dating back to the first year Kane appeared in the U.S. Census.

County officials recently dug up a map from 1840, Bus says, and residents would still recognize some of the roads that existed then, including Wilson Street, Campton Hills Road and Bliss Road. The map also shows wetlands and forested areas that, in more recent decades, were preserved for future generations. It's something Bus is proud of.

"Things change, but then they don't," says Bus, a tall man with a white beard who looks like he would be more comfortable wearing a tool belt and hardhat than suit and tie.

Bus has spent 37 years with the Kane County Development Department. Since 1981, he has served as its director, and in that role he helped fashion the county during its most prolific growth spurt. At the end of November, he'll call it a career.

I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Bus in the coffee shop of the Batavia Public Library. I wanted to pick his brain about the future. But retirements are occasions to look back, so I started by asking who he enjoyed working with the most over the years. He named two people, both well-known politicians, neither a surprise. Except that they were mentioned in the same breath.

The first is Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay. Bus admires her leadership on transportation issues, water-supply planning, farmland preservation and growth. The second is former Board Chairman and Forest Preserve President Phil Elfstrom. He brought us the Kane County Cougars, his namesake stadium, Settler's Hill Golf Course and the Fox River Trail system.

Back in the day, the two were archrivals. In fact, it was McConnaughay's attacks on Elfstrom that brought her into the public eye some 20 years ago.

"I'm not saying they'd want to be in the same paragraph," Bus says. But "I was proud to work for both of them.

"They were both leaders who believed in good government ahead of good politics," he adds. "There's a price to leadership."

Elected officials make the big decisions, but they are dependent upon the work of full-time staff members who go about the day-in, day-out business of running the county. As development director, Bus has been a central player.

During his time with the county, he witnessed its population double, to 500,000 people. He saw the land grabs among communities, while doing his best to establish the ground rules for sensible growth and to challenge those who veered from the course.

Years ago, when crafting the 2020 plan, Bus wrote that the county needed to be "bloodthirsty" in its open space preservation efforts. A rare literary flourish in a planning document, the adjective contributed to some calling the county development staff members "green vampires."

It makes Bus smile beneath his white beard.

Bus grew up in Elmhurst, and his familiarity with DuPage County would help him in his career. He had seen the first big waves of development hit DuPage and ripple into Kane. He could learn from our neighbor's successes and its mistakes.

He's most proud of the county's efforts to get communities to buy into open-space and farmland-preservation efforts, as well as the notion of the Fox River being a tremendous resource.

"We have a real river," he says, noting that most Kane communities along the Fox now boast river walks.

Though he doesn't mention it in our talk, Bus received a national award recognizing his work in the area of historic preservation. Kane was the first county in Illinois to have a historic preservation plan, and the first with a rustic road program.

But there are some things Bus wishes he knew nearly 40 years ago. Randall Road, in particular, "could have turned out better."

"I wish I had known how fast and intensely Randall Road would grow," he says. Of course, its expansion was harder to stop than a semi at 65 miles per hour. Most of the growth along the Randall corridor resulted from decisions by municipalities, made in the name of economic development.

It's good from time to time to assess the past, but Bus also is uniquely qualified to talk about the county's future. And cooperation between towns, he says, will become more important than ever as challenges get bigger in coming decades.

Bus sees transportation issues becoming "significantly more complex." He hopes the future will include a bus rapid transit system for Randall Road, where buses would use car-pool lanes or shoulders.

"It's like light rail but on rubber wheels. It's more flexible and affordable," he says.

But for such a system to work, land use along Randall will need to evolve, he says, with a mix of housing, commercial and employment centers. People need to be able to live close to where they work.

What other issues will the county face?

Housing needs will become dramatically different, Bus says, as baby boomers age and household compositions change.

"Nuclear families will be a thing of the past," he says. "Seventy-five percent (of households) will be different."

Other issues he foresees include drinking-water sustainability, which will require more active aquifer management. The best communities will become "more walkable communities," while the trend toward local farmers' markets will expand, with more consumers wanting locally grown food.

Walkable communities, where people live near their jobs, where water is a prized resource, where food is grown in the back yard -- sound familiar? That's how it was back in the day, when Kane County first became a blip on a U.S. Census map.

Things change, but then they don't.

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