MCC Trustee Summers Won’t Say How Baseball Team Would “Defray” Stadium Costs Nor Will Trustee-CPA Miller Tell Why “All Figures Are in Order"

Again McHenry County College offers up a BIG NO to McHenry County Blog’s request for documents that led its board to think receipts from a minor league baseball team will to pay off $35 million of public debt.

Here is what I requested:

a copy of any documents upon which the following MCC Trustees’ comments at the April 26, 2007, meeting were based (quoted parts from page 4 of minutes MCC previously provided):

  1. Trustee Summers conclusion that “…we are defraying the public expenditures with private money…” and
  2. “Ms. Miller(‘s) refer(ring) to her CPA standing and stat(ing) that all the figures are in order for us to go ahead with this.”

The excuse this time?

The same as before:

With regard to your first request, the College asserts that certain documents responsive to your request are exempt under Section 7, paragraph (g) of FOIA (5 ILCS 140.7 (g)). Notwithstanding said exemption, the College has identified the following document as responsive:

Letter with attachment re: the Health and Wellness Complex, Feasibility Study Construction Cost Review from Robert Brown, PMA Consultants of Illinois to Dave Penoyer, Director of Business Services, McHenry County College.

The FOI reply goes on to point out that I have already received this document, which is true.

The problem is that the so-called responsive document merely deals with construction costs.

It gives no clue as to how revenue from a minor league baseball team will pay off all or even two-thirds of the $36 million for which MCC taxpayers will soon be committed to repaying, which MCC President Walt Packard asserted June 7th.

I filed my Freedom of Information request on June 13th and, amazingly enough, this reply came two days later.

At least the college is improving its turnaround time.


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