Susan Handelsman Reacts to D200-Lakewood TIF Meeting

From Susan Handelsman, the woman who started the Woodstock School District 200 opposition to the Lakewood Tax Increment Financing District:

Lakewood TIF Litigation

Evidently the Chairwoman of school district 200 board [Camille Goodwiin] has unilaterally decided to negotiate with Lakewood, and has reportedly announced she  will be getting papers and reports ready for Lakewood sometime after the holidays.

As an attorney, she must know this action/lack of action will run out the clock, or nearly so, for filing timely suit.

What is Lakewood offering in return for Woodstock D200 tabling lawsuit against its improper tif and fetching papers and reports for Lakewood?

We only know what the Illinois TIF Statute ALLOWS Lakewood to ‘offer’ , and the statutorily-described strings attached:

  • Woodstock would receive at worst zero dollars per student, at most a tiny fraction of the cost per student charged by D200 annually to Woodstock taxpayers.
  • Woodstock would be required to sign away all rights for judicial review and protest of the validity of the Lakewood tif.
  • Woodstock may damage the rights to seek detachment-annexation procedure in order to shift the students of the tif (along with their heavy cost burden) into school districts which now receive all Lakewood property tax dollars.
  • Lakewood is saying that they have intentions to seek ‘senior independent living’ for their resolved 100 unit low income housing project, which must balloon to 124 units in order to remain newly compliant with Illinois Affordable Housing Act if Turnberry luxury condos are built….and the statutes make no mention of how to enforce ‘desires and intent’ of current elected officials or Woodstock D200 recourse for a different outcome should the desires and intent of Lakewood managers turn out to be unenforceable when faced by a low income housing developer’s anti-discrimination lawsuit.

Where is the County in all this? County taxing bodies stand to lose millions of dollars over the 35 year lifespan of this tif. All the inflationary property tax revenue over the next 35 years will be routed to the tif managers to spend as they desire. The County will have to survive inflation by shifting tax burdens to a smaller and smaller group of citizens.  And those beleaguered citizens will be forced, by law, to provide free services to tif residents and properties (school, fire& rescue, County support, roads, fair share of contributions to MCC and MCCD, libraries,  police).

Lakewood TIF with buildings 12-14

Lakewood TIF District map with buildings showing.

How much tif coverage can the County afford?

Chicago has a huge percentage of (otherwise) taxable property in TIFs.

Can McHenry County survive 35 years of inflation given a limited ability to raise taxes on only 2/3 – 1/2 of its own EAV?

Because if the County turns a blind eye to one illegal, invalid tif it will surely have a harder time  objecting to the next one or ten.

Is Chairwoman of District 200 Board acting as legal counsel to D200 Board when she unilaterally and without transparency ‘negotiates’ in their behalf?

All other D200 Board members have different alternatives to  handle this inexplicable behavior by their Chairwoman:

  • Vote YES on the motion to initiate litigation with the published or an amended complaint. This preserves Woodstock D200’s rights in a timely way. The complaint may always be withdrawn, and minimal attorney fees incurred (NOTE that legal fees far in excess of what this suit would cost in its initial stages are recorded on D200 books, for questionable areas of law relative to the benefit of D200 citizens and taxpayers.)
  • Voting NO on the motion: WHY? Based upon WHAT information would a board member vote NO to protecting its citizens, parents, children, employees who have entrusted each Board member to individually investigate and understand the ramifications of their actions?
  • Not show up. Then you can claim you are ‘not accountable’ for having missed the vote. If the tabled motion cannot be voted upon, it hangs. Shame on any Board member who would shirk duty entailed in an office which the board member sought.

Chairwoman may need to bring a motion of her own in order to achieve her apparent goal of squelching all rights of D200 citizens to bring suit against Lakewood’s illegal and invalid tif(according to attorneys who crafted the complaint contained in the last school board meeting agenda packet).

Will she protect each individual board member when Woodstock D200 taxpayers’ only recourse is to sue its own school board in order to defend itself from a  camel-back-breaking tax burden in order to pay for Lakewood Illinois’ rightful tax obligations?

School Board Members: If you don’t have enough information about what is a tif, the devastating financial impact it will have on the taxpayers of D200, or any other aspect, then realize you are not qualified to vote NO to the motion to initiate litigation to invalidate the Lakewood tif  at the December 30th special school board meeting.

Thank you for your attention.


Comments

Susan Handelsman Reacts to D200-Lakewood TIF Meeting — 9 Comments

  1. God bless you Susan!

    When fighting the good fight; we often stand alone.

    As another fighter, standing alone in my efforts, my only wish is that we could crack the nut that would motivate folks to get fired up enough to join us.

    Your persistence and determination on this Lakewood TIF/D200 issue is very much appreciated.

  2. In typical Ersel fashion, she congratulate someone by putting the spotlight on herself…hopefully the voters will let her “stand alone” at home after the election.

  3. When Pioneer Center screwed up their finances, the NWH published several articles.

    None of which mentioned that their editor, Dan McCaleb is on the Board which administers the Center.

    How come no one at the Herald is helping Susan who has spent hundreds of hours attempting to educate the property tax payers in her district as to the impact of Erin Smith and her Village Board on future property tax increases?

    Maybe if Dan McCaleb served on a school board we would get some ink used to help Susan.

    I for one am not going to hold my breath.

    BTW Is this the same Erin Smith who is married to the guy who is now the Chairman of the MCC Board?

  4. A prominent current feature in the Lakewood State Route 47 & State Route 176 TIF are the Crystal Woods and Craig Woods golf courses.

    The unfairness to taxpayers is that these golf courses are currently open for business.

    They are not closed businesses.

    Many people know that since the 2008 financial meltdown, many golf courses had difficulty turning a profit.

    How much tax revenue (property, sales, income) have these golf courses generated per year over say the last 20 years?

    Is this TIF a way for the owners of the Crystal Woods and Craig Woods golf courses to unload their business with taxpayer assistance?

    Exactly how were working golf courses able to be designated TIF eligible – the answer is in the TIF eligibility study on the Lakewood website.

    There is a lot of data used to prepare the TIF eligibility study that is not presented to the public and that should be presented to the public on the Lakewood website, including detailed parcel / PIN data.

    The TIF eligibility document should be supplemented to the public with the research data behind the document, if board members wanted to be open and transparent, rather than simply providing what the Illinois General Assembly and Governors require in their TIF laws.

    How many if any structures in these working golf courses are declared blighted for TIF eligibility purposes, for example?

    A chronological list for each parcel / PIN of which criteria was used to determine TIF eligibility.

    A map indicating each parcel / PIN by PIN number.

    A better long term solution would be to straighten State Route 176 so it does not overlap with Route 47, creating one intersection at 176 & 47 instead of two.

    There seems to be land northeast of the southern leg of the intersection to do that.

    Of course that would be a much more expensive and longer term project.

    The overlapped intersections slow down traffic, such as State Route 47 and US Route 20, which is to the south of the aforementioned intersection.

    And State Route 47 and State Route 72.

    The Route 20 and Route 72 intersections with Route 47 have the railroad tracks to contend with.

  5. Knowledge, yes it’s the same Erin Smith who is married to the guy who is now the Chairman of the MCC Board.

  6. Thank you Susan for your dogged attention to this issue.

    TIFs are complicated in many ways, but simple in this way… they take money from taxpayers and give it to developers.

    That’s a fact!

    I, as a taxpayer am NOT in favor of anymore of that and I encourage our local government officials to do whatever is in their power to end this ridiculous corporate welfare.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *