The Mahomet-Seymour School Board voted down the sale of 13 Acres Park to the Village of Mahomet on Monday night.
The vote needed a super-majority of five votes per the Illinois Municipal Code (65 ILCS 5/11-76-3) to pass. Board members Meghan Hennesy, Ken Keefe and Colleen Schultz voted against it, leaving Merle Giles, Jeremy Henrichs, Lori Larson and Max McComb voting in favor.
With access points on Main and West streets, 13 Acres is centrally located just south of Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School. The park is often used by teachers at the junior high, junior high and high school athletic teams, Mahomet Parks and Recreation programs and various clubs, including Diamond Dogs, Mahomet Mavericks and the Mahomet-Seymour Youth Football.
The Mahomet-Seymour School District has owned the property while the Village of Mahomet has performed much of the annual maintenance. The Village sought to purchase the entirety of 13 Acres, Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School and Middletown Park for $750,000 until September when the board of trustees decided to step back while the district continued to make future facility plans.
The Village plans included putting a Mahomet Area Recreation Center (MARC) building at the junior high and developing 13 Acres into a baseball complex.
Although the Village was willing to wait on the purchase of the junior high, the Village offered the district $225,000 for 13 Acres with a decision deadline of the end of October when the Village would begin to seek out other land for recreational purposes.
According to Village Administrator Patrick Brown, the property was first appraised at $350,000.
At the Sept. 21 school board meeting, Superintendent Lindsey Hall said if the district kept the property, it would also be responsible for fixing drainage issues to the tune of $200,000. This was the first time the board of education had been made aware of the investment needed at the park.
“The irony of all this is it’s going to cost (the school district) more to probably check some of the issues out there, including a new playground set that’s needed,” Brown said Tuesday night. “It’s going to cost them more to do, the drainage and some of those tasks then they’re going to get on the property. So, that’s a decision that they made.”
The motion on the floor Monday night was to sell the property for $225,000, setting aside the money aside for purchase of additional land in the future.
Village Mayor Sean Widener said that the Village has money set aside for the purchase of the land, but did not have the money for the development component of it yet.
The school district would still have access to use the property, per an Intergovernmental Agreement that was passed unanimously earlier this year. That agreement still stands.
Without a transfer of property, though, the Village said it would not develop the property further. At Tuesday’s Village board meeting, Widener said that development could happen as soon as five to 10 years down the road. Taking priority first will be improvements at Barber Park and potentially the MARC building.
“We have other phases of property we do own, and we have plans for that will take priority over 13 Acres,” Widener said.
McComb suggested that there may come a time when the district would not need the 13 Acres property anymore. He said that the land was not suitable to build on, and that as the Village moved away from the property its use may become residential should the district decide it was no longer usable.
Board member Lori Larson, who supported the sale of the land to the Village, said that it was important that the district would keep the funds from that sale for future development.
“I just want to remind our board that we don’t have a plan moving forward for all of our facilities,” Larson said. “I want to be cautious on going out to find something if we don’t know where we’re going to put something, because that’s dangerous.”
Board member Giles said that the district does have a strategic plan, “it’s just not precise.”
Board members Hennesy, Keefe and Schultz said that they are not opposed to the sale of 13 Acres to the Village, but the time isn’t right for the district because there is additional facilities planning to be done.
“I look at this as the cart before the horse,” Keefe said. “I support selling this to the village. I don’t support selling it right now.
“I think we need to get further along in our facilities plan. I don’t think we need to be completely done with our plan; I think we need to be further along so that we are very sure that we’re not going to need this for some purpose.”
Hennesy said that the district is in need of soccer fields or maybe a marching band practice field. The district has also talked about tennis courts, which used to be on the 13 Acres property before they were torn out after 2013. She said she has never envisioned the property as a place where the district would build.
In Sept. 2019, both boards met at the Cornbelt Fire Department to get a first glance at plans that had been in the works for Conway Farms, the junior high and 13 Acres since 2016. On Monday night’s board meeting, Widener said those discussions had been taking place even longer than the time originally stated.
Hennesy had asked in several public meetings for another joint meeting between the two boards. That request was not granted.
“I’m disappointed that we didn’t have the opportunity to meet the village board and actually have a real discussion about what their needs, what their time frame is so we can come up with some more creative ways to address this while not divest ourselves of an asset that we’re not entirely certain we don’t need.”
Schultz said that once the district has a plan, the sale of the land might make sense to the district. But she also voted against the document because she said it was inaccurate in a statement of the district’s use.
“In this document, it says that the school district has determined that the property is no longer needed by the school district for school purposes, but we know that this year we’ve used that a lot. And so I have a hesitancy to vote for a document that says something’s true that’s not true.
“The cross-country team did all of their running on that site, so it was certainly a great asset to have,” Hennesy said.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, the Village said that they were instrumental in getting the property ready for the junior high cross-country season.
“It’s just another example of the fact that the school district owns it, but it’s really a park that the village has long maintained,” Brown said.
At the end of Tuesday’s Village meeting Brown said that the district may be willing to revisit this discussion in a year, but Village staff also has orders from the board to explore additional sites.
