The Full Story of the Emma’s Landing Grift Will Never Be Known, But What Is Known is Ugly
This is page 2 of the Minutes of the Secret Session of the Geneva City Council from April 20, 2020. The audiotape of this meeting was destroyed in November 2022 even though a FOIA request had been made for it. As will be demonstrated below the Council did not deliberate over the selling price. Rather the Council schemed over how to put lipstick on the lips of porcine grift. The Council “rushed to a decision behind closed doors,” to use its own description. The Council kept the Burton Foundation informed but hid its planned ambush of its own constituents. The “May 4” meeting never occurred for reasons shrouded is mystery, but probably because of insufficient votes cast and gathered secretly. Ironically, the mayor-inspired donation plan was abandoned in the waning hours of the process. The donation never occurred but the ruse fooled the State Authorities into awarding bonus points to Emma’s application. All this while the Geneva community was focused on a pandemic. What is hidden by the redaction of minutes of a meeting where a land deal was consummated two years earlier? What was the Open Meetings Act exemption used to allow this material to be redacted?
On November 7, 2022, the Geneva City Council finally released partial minutes of its April 20th, 2020, secret session. Although a FOIA request had been made for the minutes and tape of that secret meeting, the tape was destroyed anyway. The released minutes were redacted, so the release was only partial. The OMA exemption from transparency cited by the City Council does not exist for several of the closed sessions. The Council often invented an exemption by combining two provisions into one. The fragment of the April 2020 minutes made public reveals the council discussed a donation of the Emma’s Landing site, not the “sale or lease” of the property. No OMA exemption exists for discussion of the donation of public property. The Council on April 20 also discussed “pending litigation” but failed to cite the legal action that was pending.
The nuances of the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) are many, and judicial case law is sparse. OMA_Reference_Guide.pdf (champaign.il.us) Given that no duty or requirement exists that closed secret session minutes be redacted or that verbatim recordings be destroyed, why is the City of Geneva so zealous in covering its Emma’s Landing tracks? The Geneva administration and City Council claim this: “The City of Geneva’s mission is to conduct government business in an open and transparent manner for all of our community stakeholders.” Government Transparency | Geneva, IL – Official Website
The City of Geneva talks the virtuous talk, but does it walk the straight and narrow path to transparency? Presented here is an example of one closed secret session, that of April 20th, 2020. The subject matter was both contentious and emotionally charged. The context is important. The meeting took place during the darkest days of a novel pandemic: Sars CoV-2 (Covid-19). The governor claimed emergency powers (some still “in force” today) that, among other things, suspended the Open Meeting Act. The legislature voluntarily disbanded. The governor did not call the legislature into an emergency session. The governor urged and advised but never ordered that only “emergency” measures be addressed by local governments during the crisis. On March 20, 2020, the governor ordered, without any due process, that citizens be detained by issuing a universal “stay at home” decree. (The mayor introduced an ordinance that would have the Geneva police cite and fine Genevans who “violated” this decree.) Pritzker also banned gatherings of ten or more people. The time was ripe for Rahm Emanuel’s “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Quote by Rahm Emanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste….” (goodreads.com)
The Geneva City Council Archivist at work.
Please note that the land donation was discussed secretly several times, including on February 10, February 24, and April 20, 2020. Here are copies of the minutes of the three secret sessions minutes (the other minutes refer to an unrelated land matter):
The document below was also acquired via FOIA from IHDA. “11831” was Emma’s Landing file number of its application for federal and state grants. “Site Control” was mandatory and “land donation” garnered the application extra points.
Below is the State of Illinois Press Release (see page 2) that Emma’s Landing was a “winner” of IHDA approval for funding and that wrongfully claims that the site was donated by the City of Geneva. after the Press Release is another improper communication with the Burton Foundation providing it with information unavailable to Geneva citizens. The Mayor and Council were obsessed with the delusion that they could tax and spend Geneva into affordability.
Above is another entry in Emma’s Landing QAP application to IHDA that explains how the “donation” grift was perpetrated. The red box emphasis was placed by IHDA. The applicant was privvy to the inner workings of the Geneva City Council but Genevans were not. Poor “Peter” did not get the approval on April 20th. But his “hurry up” offense won the game by stampeding the City Council into precipitous last-minute changes. What about the four aldermen who suggested the “next cycle” for a well-thought-out and transparent plan? They either resigned or got cold feet, apparently.
The Geneva City Council on April 20, 2020, did not deliberate on the sale price for the Emma’s Landing site. Rather the Council schemed on how to waive permitting fees and gifting the site to the Fellhaurs, AKA, Burton Foundation. The Posse Comitatus night riders even went so far as to discuss how to darkly grease the deal past their own constituents. Is fraud too strong of a term when the City attorney secretly corresponds with an outside party and provides “the form” of a document not even yet seen by the City Council? From where in the Municipal Code does the City Administrator get the authority to set the Council’s agenda? Or does a wink and nod from the mayor suffice?
If the City of Geneva lasts a thousand years, people will look back and declare “This was their darkest hour.”
Aldermen Earmark $1.2 Million to Deliver More Coal-Generated Geneva Electricity to an Area Where the Ground Water is Not Potable and Where PM2.5 Will Make the Air Unbreathable
This 720,000 sq/ft warehouse is in the approval process by the Geneva City Council. This building will have 124 truck docks with access from Kirk Road and Fabyan Parkway.
The Venture Park proposal (Venture Park | Geneva, IL – Official Website) is within the area where the groundwater has been contaminated by 1-4 Dioxane. City of Geneva water is now being provided to residents in this area. These residents will now be subjected to another health threat: PM2.5 air pollution from the heavy influx of truck traffic, plus idling diesel engines. The location within the 1-4 Dioxane area could not be worse since the whole area will be downwind, as the wind rose shows prevailing winds blow from the SW. Poor land planning inflicted the well water disaster on these residents – the siting of two landfills. One of these landfills is not engineered and received waste before the segregation of industrial waste from residential. The landfill time bomb continues to tick.
Now, the City of Geneva wants to encourage more development in a brownfield area. The groundwater in the area seeps from west to east. Contaminant plumes move at various speeds. 1-4 Dioxane is one of the racehorses in the stable of cancer-causing landfill toxic plumes. 1-4 Dioxane is considered a “forever” chemical.
The City of Geneva, under the current administration, was duped into signing a disastrous long-term contract with Prairie State Power, a coal-fired generator owned by Peabody Coal (which subsequently declared bankruptcy). Prairie State Energy Campus – Global Energy Monitor (gem.wiki) The $1.2 million Geneva investment in an electric transformer to service growth in a brownfield could help modestly to lower average electric rates in Geneva. At the same time, Geneva awaits the expiration of the long-term Praire State disaster many years from now. But the transformer is a speculative investment from both a fiscal and environmental perspective. In some ways, the transformer investment doubles down on the Prairie State Power lousy bet.
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.
Rod's Ramblings and Ruminations 