Category: Malone Funeral Home

Why Is the City of Geneva Making East Siders Sick?

The Short-Term Solution to PM2.5 Particle Pollution is Dilution

The City of Geneva received several years ago a $1+ Million Federal CMAQ Grant to help fund the East State Street rebuild that has been in the planning stage for about two decades. Every year Geneva announces that “next year” is when the project will start. The goal of the grant is to improve diesel fuel efficiency and to dilute diesel emissions as semi-trailer trucks traverse the east side. Route 38 is an Illinois State Designated Class 2 Truck Route. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of warehouses are popping up just to the east. Some of these have been approved by the City of Geneva. Others are in the Geneva system for approval. The PM2.5 pollution problem will increase.

“CMAQ” is an acronym for “Congestion Mitigation Air Quality.” The highest priority is to lower 2.5-micron particles. Please consider going to this website for a few minutes: The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5 – Undark Magazine Watch the very brief video.

In the 1926 case of Ambler Realty v. Village of Euclid, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the legal basis of zoning. The Court recognized that public health protection is the basis of zoning authority, i.e., municipal zoning police power. Am J Prev Med 2005;28(2S2): doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2004.10.028 (activelivingresearch.org)

Geneva’s East State Street Corridor is primarily residential. The parcels that abut the right of way are zoned mostly for mixed uses, but people live in these one-lot deep ribbon zones, such as B3E. Residential zoning is directly adjacent.

What has the City of Geneva done to protect East Side corridor residents? The answer is that the City has repeatedly and consistently made the wrong decisions. The Burns Dunkin at the top of the east side hill is Exhibit A.

No place exists within the City of Geneva that is more ill-suited for high intensity use during peak traffic hours than the corner of Crissey and East State. The mayor snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he broke the 5-5 tie that would have doomed the project. Fortunately, the ineptness of the applicant and the mayor’s handpicked staff has now delayed the opening for about five years. No one thought to get an IDOT permit that was required before the construction could legally begin. Or did both parties simply hope that would get away with the “mistake”? Mayoral addiction to TIF spending was the root of the problem.

Harry Chapin’s proverbial “thirty thousand pounds of bananas” were terrifying going down the hill into Scranton, PA, in 1974. Stopping the bananas halfway up the east side hill in 2023 and then having to begin the climb anew in first gear is even more terrifying.

Then another high-intensity use (written into the zoning ordinance for the benefit of one applicant) that generates congestion and PM2.5 pollution was spot-zoned for the Geneva Pharmacy so that TIF money could be again squandered. That business folded in less than a year.

When the first principle (dilution) of short-term mitigation of PM2.5 exposure demands more setback from the source, not less, the City granted a variance for Malone funeral home’s new parking lot that reduced the required ROW setback from thirty feet to eight feet. Then the Special Use Ordinance 2021-13 required mandate for asphalt was switched to concrete without the Municipal Code required City Council approval. Due to the localized thermal inversion created by the high albedo (colder/heat reflecting) cement, the PM2.5 particles will be trapped and transmitted to nearby homes and yards. The low albedo (warmer/heat absorbing) black asphalt would have had the opposite effect of diluting and dispersing the PM2.5 particles away from the ground.

Recently the Geneva City Council approved a plan to gift $1.5 million in TIF funds to the Mayor of Naperville to build a retail outlet/high-density multistory affordable residential building with the only access/egress being Crissey directly across a substandard width street from the Dunkin exit. This, too, will require spot zoning and setback variances to move the future residents even closer to the PM2.5 source just outside their open windows. And it will add even more congestion at Crissey and E. State. Absurdly, the City will give away more money to exacerbate air pollution exposure than it received from the Feds to mitigate that same air pollution.

Other examples of bonehead aldermanic and mayoral decisions largely driven by Tax Increment Financing Addiction Syndrome (TIFAS) could be raised.

Longer term, the promise of electric vehicles could reduce PM2.5 particle pollution. But young children are particularly vulnerable, as are older people and those with chronic illnesses. For now, the City of Geneva needs to stop trying to injure those whose health and welfare it has sworn to protect through its zoning police power.

Geneva’s Two-Decade Funeral Processional to Infamy

Plate from ‘Pompa Funebris … Alberti Pii’, after Jacques Francquart, illustrating the funeral procession of Albert the Pious (1559–1621), Archduke of Austria, son of Emperor Maximilian II. Albert VII (German: Albrecht VII; 13 November 1559 – 13 July 1621) was the ruling Archduke of Austria for a few months in 1619 and, jointly with his wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands between 1598 and 1621. Prior to this, he had been a cardinal, archbishop of Toledo, viceroy of Portugal and Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands. He succeeded his brother Matthias as reigning archduke of Lower and Upper Austria, but abdicated in favor of Ferdinand II the same year, making it the shortest (and often ignored) reign in Austrian history.

Many sins can be forgiven, but not the Unrepented.

Geneva’s East State Street Corridor has fared dreadfully during the long reign of an overly incumbent mayor. The wrecking ball has been his favorite tool, and deceit remains his favorite political tactic. His posse has been his hand-picked inbred administrative staff. The City Council, stricken with chronic Stockholm Syndrome, have been his minions. The result has been the “Geneva Way” of deception, concealment, prevarication, secret meeting tape destruction, and fraud. Somewhere between Archduke Albert, the Pious, and Boss Kevin Burns, the Perpetual, was a sweet spot in duration for reigns. But that moment was long ago.

To the City Council of Geneva,

“As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.” Nathan D. Baxter

My family continues to be subjected to daily nuisances, health threats, and financial exploitation from the unauthorized demolitions and unlawful constructions at 314 and 316 E State Street, Geneva.


First, valid applications for demolition permits, special uses, variances, and site plans for 314 E. State Street were never submitted to the City of Geneva. A proper public hearing was never convened. Unauthorized demolition of the historic building at 314 E. State Street occurred. Route 38 Properties, L.L.C. owns this 314 E State parcel. This owner was never identified at any time in any required notice, during any public hearing, or any City Council proceedings. The property rights of this unidentified L.L.C. far exceed those of any Geneva citizen (the politically well-connected habitually excepted). Think Emma’s Landing with its fistful of shady interlocking (to the extent of actual marital bonds in one glaring case) developer/builder/ownership L.L.C.s.


Second, the parcel at 316 East State was first unlawfully used as a parking lot twenty years ago after the unauthorized demolition of another historic structure (a small early settlement period Greek Revival-styled home). The parking lot was unlawfully constructed under a “remodel” building permit in 2002. In 2022 the 316 E. State configuration was altered, and the asphalt surface was replaced with concrete. All this without any site plan or building permit that depicts or authorizes this construction.


For many months, the City of Geneva has gas-lighted and ghosted citizens by consistently failing to respond to questions about the unlawful activities described above. The City has chosen to ignore Illinois Law and specific and general City of Geneva Ordinances. The City has conspired with private beneficiaries (Malone and Route 38 Properties, L.L.C.) to create off-the-books “wink and nod” unlawful “exceptions, deviations, reliefs, and conditions.” Examples include public R.O.W. encroachments, absent setbacks, paved parkways, code-violating parking isles, islands that are too few and smaller than the required 148 square feet, obstructions in A.D.A. stalls, and others. The City went to the unprecedented extent of officially granting permission to violate special use standards.


I understand that a conspiracy is, in a broad legal sense, an agreement to commit an unlawful act. In British and some American courts, lawful acts that finish in an unlawful manner are also included (In British parlance, a ‘conspiracy to injure’; in American, a ‘true conspiracy’).  Some states require an overt act. (Common law rule does not.) A common understanding among the citizenry is that “you can’t fight city hall.” A corollary is that citizens’ rights depend on the integrity of their rulers.

For example, where is the Geneva Ordinance 2021-13 mandated fence along the western boundary?  Under whose authority and why was noise-amplifying, light-reflecting cement substituted for the noise-abating, light-absorbing asphalt required in the site plan codified into law by Geneva Ordinance 2021-13? Who authorized the Geneva administrative staff to gas-light and ghost citizens injured by officially sanctioned conspiratorial misconduct?

The Malone Funeral Home has been a slow-walking infamy for two decades. The expansion in 2001-2002 onto an adjacent lot (purchased in 2000) with only a “remodel” building permit was illegal. A Special Use Ordinance passed after a valid Public Hearing was required but “over-looked” under the current mayor-for-life administration. In 2012 the 324 E. State property was found to have failed 8 of 9 Special Use standards, so the Special Use was denied. (Failure to meet just one standard causes the application to fail.) That same parcel was found to meet all nine standards in 2021 when nothing had changed in the intervening years.

The 2021 special use process was flawed from the start. The applicant was unlawfully “coached” by City Staff in secret for months, as demonstrated by the FOIA/OMA Public Action Council’s binding opinion. The initial public meeting notice was fraudulent and untimely (the hearing followed the notice by many months – months lead time for applicants, days for opponents). Where is a retroactive Special Use authorized in Illinois’ Constitution or Statutes? After an illegal expansion, when does “pre-existing non-conforming” become “illegal non-conforming” in Geneva? Immediately, if the law were followed. Never, if you “know” the mayor. The City of Geneva granted the first retroactive special use ever bestowed in Illinois, but with deceit as its only authority.

I hope the City of Geneva has enough remaining decency to disband its Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Task Force. The City must walk that walk itself before disingenuously inviting others to talk that talk under the auspices of its false flag.


Once again, I ask that the use of the above-cited unlawful parking lot be immediately and indefinitely halted.

Rodney B. Nelson, M.D., F.A.C.P., former Major U.S.A.F.
23 Kane Street
Geneva Illinois

Audio tape from April 12, 2012, Geneva Plan Commission meeting discussing the staff “error” made in 1999-2002 when the Malone Funeral Home was expanded without the required Special Use Permit. The only building permit was classified as a “Remodel Commercial.” The First voice is the current Geneva Director of Development. The second voice is the 2012 Geneva Director of Development, Richard Untch. Mr. Untch does NOT MENTION the construction of the parking lot at 316 E State, which was re-constructed in 2021 without a Special Use Permit or Building Permit.
Above: Parking lot and building addition at 316, and 324 E State Street, Geneva, under construction in 2002. Below: Geneva Building Permit 20081 approved in 1999 and occupancy permit 2002.