College officials seem convinced that a minor league baseball stadium will generate two-thirds of the revenue to pay back $35 million in debt that its board is about to impose upon us taxpayers.

Without a referendum.

But MCC officials won’t tell us taxpayers how that financing will work.

Freedom of Information requests have been repeatedly filed for the financial details, but those details have been repeatedly denied. (The first time was March 19th. March 16, McHenry County Blog published the details of the cash flow analysis contract with Equity One Development Corporation’s Mark Houser. Houser not only got that no-bid consulting contract, but he also was awarded a $400,000 no bid contract to oversee and coordinate, but not manage, the construction of the complex.)

All MCC has coughed up is the baseball team lease, which talks about a $250,000 per year payment and a lot of 10% of this and that, but in no way could convince a lender to cough up $26 million to build the baseball stadium and fitness complex.

Yesterday McHenry County College again refused to share information on how a minor league baseball team can pay off $36 million in debt.

Here’s McHenry County Blog’s June 7th request:

”A copy of any document or documents, the information in which led to MCC President Walt Packard’s conclusion that ‘revenue from the team will cover two-thirds of the debt to build the complex.’”

That statement in single quote marks was what Northwest Herald reporter Jocelyan Allison managed to draw out of Packard.

And the excuse for continued secrecy?

“…the College asserts that the responsive document is exempt from disclosure under Section 7, paragraph (g) of FOIA (5 ILCS 140/7(g)).”

The same excuse was used by MCC on June 7th in reply to this Freedom of Information request filed May 18th:

“Any memo or other document that explains the document entitle, ‘LEASE AGREEMENT FOR BASEBALL STADIUM’ including, but not limited to how this lease will provide enough money to pay off the envisioned debt certificates or whatever the college decides to call the instrument intended to pay for the new building(s) and baseball stadium.”

An appeal is allowed, of course, but fat chance it would do any good.

Well, at least it only took six days for MCC to reply to this request for information.

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The man smiling, of course, is Mark Houser, President of Equity One.