The Mahomet-Seymour board of education discussed providing the Conway Farms POA (property owners association) with $26,000, or half the cost, to dredge the community’s retention basin on Monday night.
Although the terms and bylaws of the POA were unknown to many of the board members, Board President Max McComb, who was versed in previous conversations with developer Darrin Peters of Vertical Towers, LLC. said that the district makes up 50-percent of the POA.
A POA differs from an HOA in that the POA can be made up of people with a variety of properties, whether they be residential, commercial or even taxpayer-based. Sometimes, members of the POA don’t own the property that they are representing, but rather make recommendations or decisions that lead to growth within a certain area.
In this case, the membership of the POA is unknown, but Conway Farms also has an HOA where homeowners pay fees and make decisions for their subdivision.
Both the Conway Farm POA and HOA are within a TIF District.
McComb said that at the time the district was building Phase I and Phase II of Middletown Prairie, it came to an agreement with Peters to “save money” for both parties. Those discussions did not come to the board of education, and McComb would not or could not answer questions from board member Meghan Hennesy about how that decision came to be.
McComb said the district was asked by the Village of Mahomet and the Conway Farms property owners to not install the necessary storm drainage on the west side of the property because they wanted the Conway Farms lake to fill.
“We were asked to keep sending water,” McComb said.
With that water, came sediment.
McComb said that all the parties were aware of the sediment that would end up in the lake, causing a need for it to be dredged at a later time.
Hennesy asked if the Village would be contributing to the cost of what the homeowners now believe is a problem, and McComb said they would not. The two entities that will pay for the procedure are Peters and the school district.
Peters will develop the storm drainage system for seven lots on his property just west of the district’s property. The school district will pay $16,000 for two manholes into that system.
The additional $10,000 will be to dredge the lake. McComb and Superintendent Hall said that while the estimate to dredge the lake is at $20,000, the district has not had a discussion with the homeowners to see if they are going to want something more done.
Board member Ken Keefe asked what type of voting rights the district had on the POA board. McComb said it depends on the issue. Chief School Business Officer Heather Smith is the district representation on that board.
He added that although he is likely to vote in favor of spending this money, he would like to understand the terms of the POA, and who the lake belongs to so that the district isn’t paying for someone else’s responsibility.
Generally speaking, homeowner associations are responsible for taking care of dredging drainage retention basins in each subdivision. Hennesy asked if the annual dues that the district pays to the POA would help cover the cost to dredge the lake.
Hall said that fixing the storm drainage issue would eliminate the sediment going into the pond. Still, homeowners associations throughout the Village have to dredge their retention basins when sediment builds up.
Construction equipment is already on-site for this project.
This article is full of errors and misrepresentations of facts. It lacks adding important time references; lacks details related to the components of the $26,000; suggests there are two governing bodies over the Conway Farms subdivision area and lake; and suggests that individuals made or guided decisions. Land development is governed by village ordinances that are grounded in various laws and statutes that assure compliance with other state and federal laws. Illinois drainage law, village storm water ordinances, and recorded covenants running with the school’s land all require the northern part of the school property to pass through stormwater at a rate and volume as if it never developed. Since there wasn’t a pipe to connect to on the Peters property, they had decisions to make in how to comply with many governances. Options were explored as a part of design for the addition. Stopping the pipe short of the property line and allowing it to cross the Peters land naturally was the least expensive alternative for the school because Peters would allow it to continue if the school finished its pipe work when final design was done. The silting in due to the lack of pipe or controlled swale system is what Peters and the school are being asked to pay for. The POA members already spent money from regular funds to dredge parts of the lake as part of normal maintenance. This scope is directly from the deliberately uncontrolled run off. Underlying covenants of the schools land required the normal compliance of illinois drainage law – not Village direction. The downstream owner and school agreed to the temporary conditions as a money saving measure and because of that, the village did not enforce the technical lack of compliance. This was a cooperative effort between the district board via its approval of the construction plans for the expansion project and a very community-minded and generous individual that saved the school’s expansion project much more money than it is being asked to spend.
This is exactly what was presented at the meeting. If you have documentation of other details, I’ll be happy to provide those. Otherwise, this was the discussion and information presented.
I listened to the discussion and I found faults in your article as I explained above. Either presenting a transcription of every comment and question verbatim or providing an actual news article of the issue would have provided the most value to your readers. You straddling the line between the two was the problem. Don’t give it a misleading news article title if the content is a non attendees’ attempt at meeting minutes. I encourage you to do better as many people in our community do value the clarity you have provided in the past and need it now more than ever.
“Construction equipment is in the area” that is building infrastructure for seven new single family lots. No dredge equipment is present. The board has options for compliance. They are presenting and discussing the least expensive one that takes advantage of the work being performed by contractors on the private development “next door”.