There has been little discussion lately about the liability facing the City of Morris as a result of its involvment with Community Landfill, Inc.
The Illinois Pollution Control Board has ruled that the city of Morris partnered with Community Landfill, Inc. to operate the city dump and that the city failed to provide the required "adequate financial assurances" for proper closure of the landfill.
The adverse IPCB ruling results from the actions of former mayor Bob Feeney and current mayor Dick Kopczick. The city co-signed performance bonds for Community Landfill, Inc. and submitted the bonds to the State of Illinois in order to maintain licensing for the landfill.
Why? Because Community Landfill, Inc. could not obtain proper bonding on its own.
Community Landfill, Inc. was operated by convicted felons, a fact known to both mayors when the bonds were signed.
Moreover, the bonds were issued by a bonding company which had been removed from the list of approved bonding companies in 2000. Another fact that was known to the city and its engineers and attorneys.
Predictably, the bond is worthless and Community Landfill, Inc. is unable to pay the costs. The IEPA is now looking to the taxpayers of Morris to do the environmental cleanup at the landfill.
The Illinois Pollution Control Board has already determined that the City is liable. Only the amount of the penalty to be imposed is yet to be determined.
Read the IPCB opinion finding against Morris here.
40 comments:
Is this all real? What about the health and safety of us residents? What if all the money is spent before the closure is complete - then what? This is ridiculous that the City of Morris & Grundy County would allow this to happen right under their noses. The State isn;t going to let you slide on this. What a sham.
$11,000,000.00 dollars, that is the new number that we all are going to owe. Dick Kopzcick and Scott Belt have cost this city far to much tax money.
Dick Kopczick needs to get off the sweet leaf and run the town.
This Board's decision that you linked to was from 2006. What's going on?
This is the biggest problem that the city faces and will cost the town $17,000,000.00 and the MDH is silent. You would think Mike Farrell would be writing article after article about this huge liability our town now owns.
These garbage dumps are under more scrutiny today than they ever were in the past. The costs associated with proper closure will be astromnomical and without a plan, those costs will fall on the laps of Morris residents. Who cares how much is left in the TIF fund, who cares if there is good music playing downtown, and who cares if the football team wears last years uniforms (win or lose)? Someone had better get a handle on what is going on in this town before we are all taxed out of our homes. Why do cities like Joliet, Minooka, and Coal City have City Managers that utilize their education to make planning decisions for the community when all we have is a meat cutter. Sometimes the cheapest way isn't always the best way fellas. Did the engineering firm tell the City years ago about this risk? Warren and Dick rolled a fat one and shared a bottle to blank out all logic, then claim they know exactly what to do. And now the City wants to take over the Morris papermill in a hand off deal from Grundy County where the contamination will be our responsibility to handle also. It's about time for some housecleaning at City Hall and at the County building. The Animal Control building may have more brains collectively in cats than the entire County office building and City Hall combined. Which alderman used a city pickup truck to haul a family member home from college two states away?
Dick knew the bonding company was not approved, but signed it anyway. The city pays the lawyer $280,000 a year and the engineer $680,000 a year, and they can't do something as simple as check a list to see if the bonding company is approved? It is time to clean house at city hall and remove all the rubbish.
You might get the idea that for these guys it isn't about doing the right thing for the city, it's all about raking in as much money as possible. How much more money have the engineers and lawyers made because of their own mistakes?
To 9:03 - The Morris Daily Herald will never print anything critical of city officials, even when it is obvious to everyone else that the criticism is well deserved.
I can understand the ignorance of the good ol boys that were elected to make these decisions, but I can't, for the life of me, excuse the legal counsel paid for by the city of Morris, that allowed this mess to happen. WAKE UP MORRIS DAILY HERALD!!!!! Start writing about something more than tricycle races and similar fluff!
When will the next Good Ol' Boys Club meeting be and whats on the menu? I hear fishing has been exceptionally well at the lake, so maybe they can recoup some of the needed fish oils and omega-3 that has fogged the brains of elected officials.
Morris Daily Herald - The source for all of your Feel Good Fluff! (Go somewhere else if you want news.)
The City of Morris Treasurer's Report shows that the city paid Hinshaw and Culbertson, the landfill attorney, $152,341.66 in the fiscal year ended 4-30-07.
Very impressive sledgehammer. Your blog is the talk in the tower.
Sledge, that is just one year. Over the course of the Community Landfill debacle, the city has spent $500,000-$600,000 on Hinshaw Culbertson, PLUS whatever Belt has soaked the city for.
The Morris TIF added $3.5 Million to tax bills last year. This money is going to lawyers and engineers instead of the schools.
Isn't Hinshaw Culvertson on the county payroll too? It seems like they reported something about that. Does the County match the money for the landfill bills too? That would mean it's double if thats the case! I'm surprised Hinshaw Culvertson doesn't have a fine office in downtown Morris given all that work.
Riddle: What's Dick's favorite computer progam? Adoobe. Ha ha ha.
Hinshaw Culbertson and Charles Helston, the attorney for Hinshaw, have given at least $1,000 to Dick's campaign committee.
The school districts need to get together and hire an attorney to fight the TIF extention, and they need to do it RIGHT NOW! The mayor, Jacobs and Belt are scheming right now to extend the TIF. This is their honey pot. The schools have the power to end TIF and even to recover millions of dollars stockpiled by the city for improper purposes, but they have to be pro-active.
Who is jacobs? Sorry for my ignorance.
Why would the mayor Dick Kopczick have the city involved with convicted felons.
Do you think Belt is not getting a finders fee for this attorney you are wrong he gets a cut of the bill also why has Dick spent a million dollars for the old center school lot and over 700 thusand in blueprints and such 1.7 million and we have a great piece of grass. come on dick is lost
Sigh.
OK, one more time—let’s review how the Morris TIF works.
The TIF freezes the amount of property tax dollars the schools, the parks, the library, and other taxing bodies get from that district for 23 years. If the schools were getting $100 from a TIF district when it was created, that’s all they’ll get until the TIF expires. Any extra tax money, generated by rising assessments or new development, goes into the TIF fund.
Think about this. If the schools, parks, and library can only get $100from a TIF district, what do they do when their expenses go up to $200? They have to raise their levies—the amounts they each get from the property tax pie—to compensate for the money diverted to the TIF. When they do that, property taxes go up. No matter what the city tells you, TIFs are tax hikes, plain and simple.
The existing TIFs divert at least $3.5 million a year in property taxes.
Comments by city officials suggesting that the Morris TIF does not raise taxes are insulting to the intelligence of taxpayers. The city is basically saying, We can get away with telling you anything about TIF because you’re too apathetic to care or too stupid to figure out that we’re putting you on. And so far the city has been right.
City Hall sources say that Charles Helsten with Hinshaw & Culbertson has a way of creating work for his law firm in order to bill the city. Also, he is on the County payroll for several other matters like fighting the Kendall County landfill projects and other projects that never seem to end or get resolved. There are some ethics that lawyers are to follow with timely service and honest billing procedures which obviously this lawyer skipped the course on those days. It still bears the question of accountability by the Mayor & Alderman for the City of Morris; and the County Board Chairman and elected members of the Board to watch over these hired services. Maybe we should be asking the people from this community why they are allowing this to happen over and over again with taxpayer money that we entrusted them with. With outrageous numbers like this going to one law firm it makes me wonder what kick backs are happening. Does anyone have actual amounts on what was paid out?
Does anybody want to guess what the convicted felon that ran CLC was convicted of?
Did it have anything to do with money and politicians?
Read about this in the Joliet Herald and came to sledge to see if anyone had commented. Of course, Sledge had trumped the paper by a week, or maybe was the reason for the City doing something.
Our city will soon be facing a financial crises thanks to the greedy people in city hall. This administration has wreaked havoc on the fine city of Morris.
The Community Lanfill problem is a truly stunning example of municipal incompetence. Dick Kopczick and Brian Feeney both favored partnering with Community and the city voluntarily signed the performance bond.
The city got into bed with some very shady characters. Now it is time to pay the piper - for up to seventeen million dollars. It is time for some restructuring in city hall.
This probably has nothing to do with the fact that a one time mayor allowed the disposal of bromide from a tanker that was leaking down in Dwight. If I remember right, the EPA said that a normal closure would not work. By installing a methane collection system in a landfill that did not have that in its design stage, would allow the bromide to leache out and could poison the ground water. The bromide was allowed to be dumped on the weekend when the operators were not even there. The City can not say that none of this is their fault. And for his promise that it will be an East Side Park, I have stopped laughing at that joke at least 30 years ago.
who is the new environmental director at the health department in grundy county? it seems he has been causing some problems with grundy county business owners because things are not done in grundy county the way they are done in will county.....news flash, we are in GRUNDY COUNTY so deal with it!!!!
Sledge, we need to shine the light on Mr. Corbett's "resignation" as CEO at Morris Hospital. A man of such integrity and accomplishment does not deserve the treatment he received from the flash in the pan hospital board members. There is a plan in place to replace Mr. Corbett, after a sham "candidate search", to bring back a golfing buddy of a board member, as CEO. The golfer has been known to have credibility issues with the medical staff and hospital staff. What a blow to hospital morale. The hospital board members need to grow some backbones and act like a true board, not a bunch of wimps bullied by a chairman.
Community leaders! Ask the board members about this resignation and do not accept stonewalling! The board chairman has some splainin' to do. Does the board chairman prefer golf buddies to experience, integrity, and self-sacrifice?
It is being revealed that the Board Chairman was nothing more than a bully at his career of Caterpillar in Joliet. He used his clout to move jobs out of this country and create an unstable work environment in Joliet. Only now after he is gone are things headed in the right direction for the plant he left in turmoil. Corbett must be his latest sacrifice in a long standing resume of power and corruption.
where's he golf?
The school districts need to get together and hire an attorney to fight the TIF extention, and they need to do it RIGHT NOW! The mayor, Jacobs and Belt are scheming right now to extend the TIF. This is their honey pot. The schools have the power to end TIF and even to recover millions of dollars stockpiled by the city for improper purposes, but they have to be pro-active.
You're loosing out to Grundyville....gone on vacation?
"You're loosing out to Grundyville....gone on vacation?"...posted the same comment on the Skeptical blog. I didn't see anything in Grundyville that was all that eye opening.
9:24,
I too am eager for "Sledge's" next article; but please, don't compare my "blog", Grundyville, with the "Sledge." The "Sledge" spends a lot of time and hard work on investigative reporting whereas the Grundyville blog, only lists links and comments on topics. We are two different "animals." Go "Sledge," we can't wait to read your next article.
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