Susan Handelsman Criticizes Proposed TIF Agreement between Lakewood & D200

Susan Handelsman, the woman who brought the issue of Woodstock School District taxpayers being forced to subsidize children living in future low cost housing in Lakewood’s Tax Increment Financing District near Routes 47 and 176, has penned a critique of the agreement scheduled to be approved by both Lakewood and District 200 tomorrow night.

Susan Handelsman’s Statement

Tomorrow night Woodstock d200 school board will sign an agreement written by-and-for benefit of Lakewood tif.

This agreement will waive all of our rights to protest this improperly formed tif, for the next 35 years, no matter what Lakewood does.

The agreement was written weeks ago and not publicly disclosed.

When details were discovered through FOIA, glaring deficiencies in the agreement were made known to school board members and to the Superintendent.

Nevertheless, the document contained in agenda packet is the same as weeks ago, so apparently  D200 board deliberately declined to suggest any changes which might have corrected the one-sided language which favors Lakewood as if it was entirely written by Lakewood’s attorney.

This Woodstock D200 school board will make statements which are factually inaccurate, such as that this intergovernmental agreement protects Woodstock D200 taxpayers from the costs of educating Lakewood tif children.

The Woodstock District 200 School Board.

The Woodstock District 200 School Board.

The agreement does NOT protect us from being burdened with those costs.

Another factual inaccuracy this board will assert is that it spares Woodstock D200 taxpayers expensive legal fees.

The expensive legal fees will instead need to be incurred in future years.

D200 claims legal fees are high today, but are deliberately neglecting to say how much higher the fees will be in inevitable future litigation over improper tif PILOTs, due to the peculiar loser-pays clause contained in this agreement.

This school board has already resisted FOIA demands for complete disclosure of communications between school board chairwoman, other D200 board members, Lakewood President, other Lakewood officials, and D200 attorneys.

The closed session discussions this school board conducted are supposed to be taped and released to the public, and this board will resist such disclosures.

After the intergovernmental agreement is signed there can be no pending litigation, because this board will have waived all rights to protect this community from the predatory, improperly-formed Lakewood tif.

Instead of acknowledging that this waiver renders all secret communications neutralized and so benign for public scrutiny, the school board will incur costly legal fees using public taxpayer money in efforts to keep the secret negotiations, and advice of counsel, secret. And they will fail to see the irony.

Once this school board exercises its perceived authority to sign away this community’s rights in order to benefit Lakewood managers, Woodstock citizens can only turn their attention toward discovery of the motivation of such irrational behavior by this school board and school Superintendent.

Finally, a source citation:

this school  board has exhibited other behavior which shows contempt for transparency and truthful public disclosure, as evidenced by the well-documented medical clinic misinformation disseminated in the interest of advancing this board’s desire to place medical clinics within D200 schools.

This is a similar pattern to school board behavior exhibited in the 12 month calculated stalling of this Lakewood tif litigation culminating in its signing a secretly crafted, irrational (from Woodstock’s standpoint)  intergovernmental agreement based upon undisclosed motivational factors.

The Woodstock D200 school board meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday night 7 pm at Clay Academy Woodstock.

Simultaneously, Lakewood will have its Village meeting at which it will approve this luscious gift from Woodstock D200 board.

(Lakewood taxpayers may want to keep their champagne corked, because THEY do NOT have any PILOT agreement in the event the tif property is successfully detached-annexed into Lakewood schools. Woodstock D200 board cannot sign away that right on behalf of its citizens, though it assiduously avoided attempting this obvious and equitable  self-defense of its own citizens.)

We will document the future activity within this tif and its effect on Woodstock D200 school finances and/or school board members’ fortunes, and make FOIA’d documents public after fighting for them in court.


Comments

Susan Handelsman Criticizes Proposed TIF Agreement between Lakewood & D200 — 9 Comments

  1. If the intersection of Route 47 & 176 is eligible for a TIF, what percentage of the county is eligible for a TIF?

    What percentage of future development will be a TIF in the county?

    How do taxing districts generate increased property tax revenue to meet hiked costs of collective bargaining agreements and such, other than hiking taxes on existing development, if a good portion of new development goes in a TIF?

    By hiking property taxes outside the TIF.

    A TIF freezes property value in the TIF district.

    The Taxing Districts are allowed Extension hikes up to CPI or 3% (whichever is less) + bond debt service (principal and interest) + new growth outside of the TIF + a few extra miscellaneous items.

    So outside the TIF, given the EAV, tax rates are adjusted to arrive at the Taxing District Extension requests.

    Thus TIFs often result in tax hikes for property outside the TIF.

    So now Woodstock Schools, which already have their fair share of low income students, need to come up with revenue to educate Lakewood TIF low income housing students.

    Lakewood TIF low income housing students for which they will receive, by definition, no new property tax revenue.

    How much Federal and state revenue will the district get to educate these low income housing students?

    Enough to offset the cost to educate the children?

    Woodstock District 200 being a lower property tax rich district than Woodstock District 200.

    This is the result of a municipality which annexes property yet the school district boundaries remain the same.

    The District 200 boundary didn’t change with the annexation.

    The Crystal Lake High School and Elementary school district boundaries didn’t change with the annexation.

    But the Village of Lakewood boundary did change with the annexation.

    So the low income housing in the TIF produces no new property tax revenue, because that’s the definition of a TIF, property value is frozen.

    While the majority of Lakewood students attend Crystal Lake schools which are more property tax rich than Woodstock schools.

    All so so Lakewood can meet Federal guidelines for minimum 10% low income housing in Village boundaries (the law apparently ignores school district boundaries).

    There is apparently no Federal guidelines for a fair resolution of such an inequity.

    Meaning a municipality meets Federal Low Income Housing guidelines by placing the low income housing in a school district which already has a greater percentage of low income housing students.

    Only a Federal demand that Lakewood produce more low income housing, totally ignoring which school district the low income housing students attend.

    So Federal guidelines are dumping more low income housing students on Woodstock schools which already have more low income housing students than Crystal Lake schools.

    Has anyone read the Federal Low Income Housing guidelines to be sure the amount of low income students in a school district does not have to be taken into consideration for a community to meet its 10% low income housing mandate.

    There is probably no such adjustment.

    Perhaps the Federal law needs to be changed to consider such a situation.

    Future legislation wouldn’t change this situation, unless the low income housing is build after such legislation is passed.

    Apparently the Village of Lakewood, Woodstock District 200, Crystal Lake High School District 155, and Crystal Lake Elementary District 47 are all OK with this situation.

    If they can get a job, many Chicago parents would be more than happy to escape CPS schools for a new low income housing and Woodstock schools.

  2. Should be Woodstock District 200 being a less property tax rich district than Crystal Lake High School District 155 and Crystal Lake Elementary District 47.

  3. It absolutely matters.

    This improperly formed tif will be allowed to stand without objection, and for the next 35 years will divert all property tax revenues away from all the taxing bodies which ordinarily would be entitled to those tax payments in return for services provided to the property owners.

  4. back all the way up to the forced annexation of all this property and some digging sure shows Lakewood could be in deep if someone with deep enough pockets could challenge what went down!!!

  5. 34 years and unless something is built this year (not likely) it will be 33 years.

    There are improper TIF’s all over this State.

    Until people care enough to vote and we have representatives of the people back in Springfield it won’t stop.

    One TIF and a bunch of what ifs aren’t going to matter.

  6. Jason, it certainly will matter!

    TIFs rob from schools for up to 23 yrs. regardless.

    Secondly, Lakewood’s Village President who is pushing this, can lie and SAY “it’s going to be Senior encouraged Housing” but they don’t have to enforce that!!

    Hell, if the development doesn’t fill these up with seniors, they’ll just switch on a whim and make it open to everyone!

    This is low income housing where a belief in ‘the more kids you have, the more money you’re entitled to from the government’.

    Trust me, there will be kids.

    Kids that impoverished Woodstock will have to foot the bill for!

    Come to the D200 Board meeting TONIGHT (Tue 1/26) and raise holy hell on D200’s board that is allowing this ILLEGAL TIF!

  7. Wouldn’t there have to be a development proposal for the property before anyone could lie about anything?

    Not to mention the fact that senior only housing is getting built everywhere right now and filling up as fast as they can build it.

  8. The statute of limitations to act against this improperly formed tif is looming.

    There is no way to protect against future development of residential units in the future without action now.

    There is a proposed TIF WAIVER which D200 school board intends to sign tonight, which signs away all Woodstock citizens’ rights to protect ourselves from this illegal tif and assigns 35 years of Woodstock taxpayers legal obligation to pay education costs in excess of Lakewood PILOTs.

    A very simple solution has been ignored: detachment-annexation of tif area into Lakewood school districts.

    Who could argue with that?

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