Southland towns want to form alliance on Oak Lawn water
This post was posted in: Water on July 1, 2009
Taken from the Southtown Star:
When it comes to buying drink ing water from Oak Lawn, five Southland towns are hoping to find power in numbers.
Tinley Park, Orland Park, Oak Forest, Mokena and New Lenox will vote in the next few weeks on a proposal to band together and hire a consultant to represent their combined interests when negotiating new water contracts with Oak Lawn.
The five municipalities, which make up 80 percent of the Oak Lawn water system’s customer base, have contracts with Oak Lawn set to expire in October 2011.
With Oak Lawn looking at a $193 million overhaul to its aging system and corresponding rate increase for customers in the 13 towns it serves, local officials say they owe it to their residents to bring in a knowledgeable source for negotiations.
“We want to look at all our available options and make sure our constituency is served,” Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said.
The five communities are downstream from Oak Lawn, which made their alliance a logical choice, officials said.
“Each town has its own particular issues, but we have more in common than not,” Oak Forest city administrator John Marquart said.
The towns are looking to hire consultant Bill Balling, former chairman of the Northwest Water Commission in Des Plaines and Buffalo Grove’s former village manager. Balling now runs the municipal consulting firm WRB.
“Bill’s well-known, and he’s unique in the sense that he has awfully good knowledge of water utility,” Orland Park village manager Paul Grimes said. “He’s reasonably priced, and we think we’ll get some pretty good perspective.”
Each town would pay for a percentage of Balling’s estimated $60,000 fee based on the percentage of water it’s expected to be using in 2030, according to a draft agreement.
Orland Park would pay the most at 33 percent, followed by Tinley Park at 28, New Lenox at 18, Oak Forest at 11 and Mokena at 10.
Balling will look at several options for the towns, including the possibility of forming a water commission or water purchase group, according to the agreement. Both of those options would give the five communities a greater say in how the water system is run, a change some officials feel is timely. Right now, Oak Lawn makes all decisions about the system on its own.
“It’s not adversarial, but the system has graduated into a new phase, and we have an awful lot of growth,” Grimes said. “Before we go to our taxpayers and ask them to pay the costs (of system updates), shouldn’t we have a seat at the table?”
Oak Lawn officials say they have no problem working with a consultant on the upcoming contract negotiations.
“We actually encourage that to move the process along,” village manager Larry Deetjen said.
However, Oak Lawn has made it clear that it won’t change the water system’s governance without a significant financial investment from the towns.
“The position of the (village) board is very, very united that we intend to operate a customer-oriented system,” Deetjen said. “The mayor said if you’re willing to pay for the value of that system to taxpayers, certainly you could. … This is a tremendous asset to our community, and it has a price tag.”
Elisabeth Kilpatrick can be reached at ekilpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-5983. Elisabeth also blogs about Homer Glen and Homer Township at blogs.southtownstar.com/homerglen.
Kuspa needs to do homework on annexation
This post was posted in: Mayor Kelly, annexation on
Letter from Former Mayor to Southtown Star
The article June 22 about the meeting with 167th Street residents quoted Oak Forest Mayor Hank Kuspa as saying he needed to listen to them, then talk with the council. It surprised me he did not make it a priority to talk to Adam Dotson and the attorneys who have been managing the annexation process and have been successful defending the city in court.
Kuspa says he wants to make people happy and stop spending on legal fees. He should know it is impossible to make everybody happy all the time. There would not be any legal expense if the 167th Street residents had not filed a lawsuit against the city and, after losing their case, filed again in appellate court. The city council cannot pick and choose which residents pay property taxes. There are many state requirements for pre-annexation agreements and tax increment financing districts. There are ordinances that regulate tap-on and other infrastructure fees for city water and sewer.
The expense to bring water and sewer to that area is impossible to manage without the help of a major developer. Potential developers have decided that the project is cost prohibitive, and Archon, the original developer, estimated the initial investment at a minimum of $30 million.
Time spent complaining at council meetings has been to the detriment of all property owners. I’m not sure what they have spent on their attorneys, but it was money wasted. These residents are not in a position to ask the city to waive 15 years of property taxes (estimated cost to Oak Forest taxpayers more than $200,000) or free water and sewer connections. I’m glad we have aldermen who understand the situation and who will be looking out for all Oak Forest residents living in our wonderful community.
JoAnn Kelly,
former mayor of Oak Forest
Annexed Oak Forest residents want tax break
This post was posted in: annexation on June 23, 2009
Whether the feud between the city of Oak Forest and residents forcibly annexed into the city in 2007 continues is up to Mayor Hank Kuspa and the city council, the residents say.
Residents laid out terms of how the feud could end during a special city council meeting Monday effectively putting the ball in the city’s court.
Residents living in the annexed area just south of 167th Street and Cicero Avenue admitted Monday that going back to being in unincorporated Cook County is unrealistic.
So, they proposed other terms such as not having to pay property taxes to the city for 15 years, entering an agreement to jointly market the property to commercial developers and receiving free hook up to city water and sewer.
Resident Karen Krouse, a frequent critic of former Mayor JoAnn Kelly for going ahead with the forcible annexation, said if the city accepts the terms both sides win.
Kuspa said he organized the meeting to see if a resolution could be reached without either side having to spend any more money on attorneys.
His next step, he said, is to discuss it with the city council. Shortly after the annexation, residents banded together and filed suit against the city, stating the annexation was carried out illegally. In November 2008, Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin ruled the annexation was legal. Residents filed an appeal the following month.
Click It or Ticket traffic enforcement campaign yields 177 citations
This post was posted in: Police Department on June 9, 2009
Next traffic enforcement campaign begins June 19
Oak Forest, Illinois – As part of the 2009 national Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement mobilization from May 15 through May 31, the Oak Forest Police Department issued 177 tickets
to motorists who were not wearing their seat belts.
“Locally, we’re at 89 percent seat belt compliance,” said Lieutenant Michael Shaughnessy. “While that number is good, there’s still room for improvement. We’ll continue to
work toward 100 percent compliance by participating in high visibility campaigns such as Click It or Ticket.”
The city’s seat belt campaign was the third in a five-part program, funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Integrated Mini-Grant Enforcement initiative, to promote traffic
safety by conducting saturation patrols in pre-assigned areas. The next campaign, which will run from June 19 through July 6, will involve saturation patrols seeking speed, restraint and
impaired driving violations.
Dwayne Fox has a New Job
This post was posted in: Dwayne Fox on June 1, 2009
Will the residents of Oak Forest be as outraged as Treasurer Dwayne Fox is about the $447,000 workers compensation bill, when they learn of Mr. Fox’s new job?
Treasurer Fox who has run unopposed in the last three elections has recently taken a job with the Village of Worth. It has been confirmed by Oak Forest Watch from both the Village’s website and by placing a call to the Worth Village offices that Dwayne Fox is now the new Finance Director/Treasurer for the Village of Worth.
With the news of Mr. Fox’s new job coming just days after we learn how poor of job he and the city have done budgeting for worker compensation claims, one must ask, “has the time come for Mr. Fox to resign his post in Oak Forest”?
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