How Can the High School Sue the Village of Oak Park?

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Permalink Reply by Byron Lanning on March 4, 2010 at 9:10am

About as goof as it gets -- the village has shown negligence in paying out TIF money and OPRF doesn't need the money.

If you live in River Forest, you are not biting the hand that feeds you. River Foresters pay taxes to the village of River Forest. They will pay only for the legal costs of OPRF. I wonder how many OPRF school board members live in River Forest.

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Permalink Reply by Jassen Strokosch on March 4, 2010 at 8:11pm

@Byron - I am pretty sure there are three River Forest residence on D200's board. Jacques Conway, John Allen and Amy McCormick.

But to answer Becca's original question, the issue, regardless of which side you take, is that they are separate taxing bodies. The Village, the Park District, D97, D200 and so on all get a cut of locally generated taxes. D200 suing the Village is no different than them suing, say, D97 or even Cook County.

Contractually the District is owed money by the Village, nobody disputes that. What everyone disputes is the amount. If you think about it from D200's standpoint, the board is elected to represent the interests of D200, not the Village. If they in fact believe they are owed a certain amount of money and the Village is disputing the amount, you can see how they might end up suing for the money. This is compounded by the Village having a history of paying TIF money to both district very, very late in the past.

My point isn't to defend D200, just bringing up that fact that there is a lot of issues involved and the Village is far from blameless in this. I think we all would have hoped that D200, D97 and the Village could have worked this out in negotiations but not having been in on those conversations, I will be curious to see what the official statement is from D200.

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Permalink Reply by Becca on March 4, 2010 at 8:59pm

Sounds complicated.

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Permalink Reply by amy bernstein on March 7, 2010 at 11:08am

And how much money is now going to go to lawyers fees over this ....

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Permalink Reply by Ernie Morales on March 7, 2010 at 7:37pm

I was just discussing the Attorney fee subject with some friends. It looks like we'll (Tax payers) be paying for both sides.
Only in Oak Park!

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