Look at the post card I received from the rural opponents of the McHenry County SportsPlex a lot of whom tried to convince the McHenry County Board not to extend its Federal Stimulus Package bonding authority to the end of this year.
It came mid-week and appears to be trying to raise opposition to the approval given in just one night by the Lakewood Village Board.
Addressed to
“Taxpayers of Lakewood!”
it asks,
“Are you about to be robbed?”
There are three points made on the address side:
- The Lakewood Village Board has already spent approx. $90,000.00 in legal fees for the proposed McHenry County Sportsplex.
- The Lakewood Village board has committee $5,000,000.00 to bring sewer and water to the site (or look at other costly options).
- Total cost incurred/anticipated by Lakewood Village Board for Sportsplex is $544,000.00 to date.
- Lakewood Budget 2009-2010 shows a DEFICIT.
On the other side is this message:
The McHenry County Sportsplex was approved by YOUR village board in order to reduce the burden of property taxes for Lakewood residents. Is this another Redtail Golf Course, an ill-conceived project that is lilkely to add thousands of dollars to your property taxes? IF the people come as projected, MC Sportsplex has stated that tax revenue to Lakewood would be $5,630,000 over the next TEN YEARS.
That’s only $563,000 a year.
$5,554,000.00 has already been incurred/anticipated by the Lakewood Village Board. Where do you think the money will come from?
Join your neighbors and get information on this project. Contact us below.
For more info visit www.stopmcsportsples.com
Email stopmcsportsplex@hotmail.com or
call 815-382-7836
This is a warning . . .
DIG DEEP for the facts!! DIG DEEP for the truth!
Remember the Lakewood Golf Course (RedTail) purchase in 1991?
That purchase was done egregiously when the purchase price and the Village’s issuance of General Obligation Bonds exceeded the Village’s bonding power. Bonding power for a municipality was by law limited to a percentage of the Village’s assessed value, I believe 10%.
The golf course purchase price was and bonds were issued in the amount of $4,300,000.
The Village’s assessed value at the time was under $40,000,000, somewhere around $38,000,000, for 1991.
Bonding power would have been at or about $3,800,000, below the purchase price / bonds issued.
But, no one asked the right questions of the Village Board during purchase considerations and the failure to meet bond payments from golf course revenues in its first year of operation (1992) later stung everyone living in the Village in the form of a huge assessment to cover the bond payments, for years!!
I found these facts after being elected to the Village Board from 1993 to 1999, and while Chairman of the Golf Course Committee for about 4 years.
And, the Village Board did not make it known that the entire transaction could have been stopped by a residents’ petition for the purchase to be stopped.
I just saw signs of opposition to the Sportsplex while on 176 this week, and it all came back!
Bill Montgomery
Lakewood residents BE WARNED!
You have and will continue to be lured into a false sense of security unless you find the REAL FACTS.
This stopmcsportsplex group did not accept what they were told but did their homework, have you?