Village Board Meeting Briefs: July 18

• Trustees reviewed closed session minutes from the last several years to determine whether they still required confidentiality. Minutes from four sessions in 2010 and 2011 will be made open to the public.
• Trustees approved $6,000 increases in expenditures and revenues to accommodate bids for large water meter testing. Elgin’s Water Services Company submitted the lowest bid to perform the work at $75,790.
  The program is reimbursable.
• KFC/Taco Bell is now clear to operate until 2 a.m. on weeknights, and 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.
• A will be held in Community Park on Aug. 19.

Trustees pulled one item—an operation and maintenance agreement to maintain Navistar Circle, also referred to as Ring Road—from the omnibus agenda. A handful of residents had signed up for public comment, and the board allowed them to express their concerns prior to approving the agreement.

The agreement is located in the meeting information packet on pages 85-90.

Overall the residents felt that one provision of the agreement, specifically 2b in the section detailing its use as a public right of way, would allow Navistar to purchase Ring Road and revert it to private use.

Resident MaryLynn Zajdel took issue with the use of the word ‘irrevocable,’ which she called “a pretty strong word to be buried in the middle of a contract,” particularly when the road in question is a point for nearby residents to access the Danada Forest Preserve.

Trustees accepted a dedication of the land from the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County in October of last year. Since Navistar truck traffic will be prohibited on Forbes Drive, the involved parties found it necessary for Navistar to be able to utilize this road, according to the October agreement.

Zajdel said the provision had no place in an operating agreement, and asked trustees to remove the text from the agreement. Other speakers addressed the road's importance for recreational activities.

“No one’s going to put up with this,” Brian McClure said in reference to residents who live near and use the road currently. “These things can’t get buried…. We’re all a team here; we’d like you to start acting as a team that recognizes we have legitimate concerns.”

Trustee Joe Schmitt said that the village does not intend to sell the road, to Navistar or another party, at this point in time.

He said the provision discussed allows the village to grant Navistar “right of refusal in the unlikely event that some future board might say, ‘Hey, we want to sell this. It’s not in the village’s interests to maintain this road anymore.’”

Schmitt asked for justification of the provision.

Village attorney Robert Bush said the measure basically protected Navistar’s right to use the road in the event that another party took ownership of the property.

Schmitt also clarified that prior to the forest preserve district’s acquisition of the property, it was private property owned by Alcatel-Lucent. The October intergovernmental agreement verifies that it was private property until July 2007. In 2008, a portion of the acreage was leased to the Wheaton Park District.

While Schmitt suggested that the provision be removed from the agreement to “let a future board worry about it,” trustees passed the document unchanged.