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.”
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 38Properties, 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.
The Burton Foundation owns the land adjacent to Emma’s Landing. James “Iceberg” Bergman (15) James Bergman | LinkedIn purchased that land for $650,000 in June of 2021, but the tax bill was mailed to the Burton Foundation. The land had been owned by the person listed on Emma’s Planned Unit Development and with her name recorded with the Kane County Recorder as the owner/applicant of the Emma’s Landing PUD. This was fraudulent. She was neither the PUD owner nor the PUD applicant. The City of Geneva was both. The City applied to itself for a PUD using a surrogate as a Trojan Horse. Only an owner can apply for a PUD per the Geneva Municipal Code. Without the adjacent $650,000 parcel, there was no access to the PUD. Without the PUD the $650,000 sale almost certainly would not have occurred. Who got the $650,000? You guessed it: the fraudulently certified and recorded faux applicant. Oh sure, some post facto “correction” of the PUD was clumsily “recorded” by the Mayor without the required authorization from the Council. But by then, the swindle had already been perpetrated.
You are correct if you get the sensation that smoke and mirrors were in play here and that the City of Geneva started the smoker and was holding the mirrors. Remember the “donation/discounted sale” flip-flop that the Illinois Housing Development Authority “missed” with a “wink and a nod”? Above is the 2021 property tax bill for the $650,000 parcel. Just to show how simple this is: 1) The parcel was purchased (actually an option to purchase) by Iceberg Bergman; 2) The 2021 Tax Bill was sent to ELA LLC C/O Burton Foundation; 3) The sole manager of ELA LLC is Emma’s Landing GP, LLC; The sole manager of Emma’s Landing Group LLC is The Burton Foundation, a 501c3 Tax-exempt Corporation. The sole employee of the Burton Foundation is Tracy Manning, President, with a 2020 compensation of $183,615. see: 2020-363839126-202112849349301306-9.pdf (guidestar.org). The Chairman of the Board of Burton Foundation filed for personal bankruptcy in 2015 see: Case 15-80195 Doc 1 Filed 01/28/15 Entered 01/28/15 16:00:59 Desc Main Document Page 1 of 60.
Genevan’s can rest assured that each member of the City Council, performing his or her due diligence to meet their fiduciary responsibilities to Geneva taxpayers, knew all this. They also knew that Tracy Manning’s husband was the project builder and cost estimator for the Emma’s Landing project. (Remember her “he gets a paycheck” testimony?) The Council also knew that Manning’s application for LIHTC funds certified that no identity of interest was present among and between the principles, such as between the principal sponsor (Mrs. Manning-Fellhauer) and the builder (Mr. Fellhauer). The Council also knew that when identity of interest is properly declared, an independent, disinterested third party must perform the cost estimate. The Council also knew, according to HUD postings, that shenanigans with cost estimating are a common source of fraud in LIHTC-funded affordable housing. GAO-18-637, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Improved Data and Oversight Would Strengthen Cost Assessment and Fraud Risk Management
Back to the adjacent parcel owned by Burton Foundation through a daisy chain of semi-opaque LLCs. The 2021 market value of the adjacent parcel was pegged at a “fair cash value” of $222,000. But below is an entry at the bottom of the 2021 tax bill:
The Assessor knew that his assigned “fair cash value” was about 1/3 of the actual market value. The Geneva City Council determined that this was not a problem since the rest of the taxpayers would be forced to make up the difference, and they did without a whimper. School District #304 and the other victimized taxing bodies agreed.
Now, what about Emma’s Landing taxes? The answer to this question is much easier. No tax bill of any kind was sent to anyone for the tax year 2021, payable in 2022. At least none appears in the Geneva Township Assessor database. Remember, the Council’s “Emma’s Fact Sheet” stated that Emma’s Landing would pay taxes “like everyone else.” Well, unless everyone else also pays nothing, and everyone else is taxed under the same State tax-discount statute as Emma’s Landing, the “Fact sheet” was fiduciary malpractice by the City Council in its purest form. What clandestine plans have been made for the 3+ acre adjacent property?
Love your country and your city, but eternal vigilance is the price of Life, Liberty, and Property. Trust, but verify everything.
$1.4 million taxpayer gift slated from TIF3 fund that contains no money.
At the Same Meeting the City Council Voted to Destroy the Tapes of the February 2020 Meetings that Created Emma’s Landing Fraud (See Footnote).
Geneva’s Next White Castle at 122-130 East State: Another TIF White Elephant Disaster in the Making. The Geneva City Council believes that the road to affordable housing is through the wallets of Geneva home owners. https://www.geneva.il.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_11072022-2047
Viewing the tape of the November 7th meeting at City Hall was deja vu all over again. Ironically, the only entrance/exit for the 6000 square foot retail, twelve apartment, three story building will be on Crissey Ave. opposite an exit from the Dunkin TIF project on Crissey. The new building will be on top of the site of the now-demolished structure where Forrest and Kate Crissey first lived in Geneva, and where Augustus Conant first preached. A block or so west of the new TIF building is the now vacant building of the failed Geneva Pharmacy, another “TIF money down the drain” City of Geneva gift recipient. Wasting millions of tax-payer dollars collected by Illinois’ most regressive tax (property tax) only makes living in Geneva less affordable for those already here.
The phrase “but for” was not heard in this discussion. The City must “find” factually that “but for” taxpayer largess, this project would not happen. Several Council Members lauded a similar project by the same developer in Naperville. When asked if that project had received Naperville TIF funds, the answer was “No.”
Has anyone seen the Geneva District #304 School Board in the last couple of years? Most of the TIF money will come from the School District via the property tax payers. Much of #304 is not in the City of Geneva, but those homeowners will also subsidize this project.
Footnote:
“Written on Veteran’s Day 2022: To the Geneva City Council – The Illinois Housing Development Authority believed that the City of Geneva donated the Emma’s Landing parcel. IHDA cited this donation in its announcement that Emma’s Landing was a “winner” of a large LIHTC grant. IHDA used a communication from City staff based on a February 2020 closed session improper vote to conclude the land was donated. Emma’s Landing IHDA QAP application was given “bonus points” based on a donation that never happened. In Geneva City Hall, if you are not cheating, you are not trying. “Transparency” does not exist.
This is my final FOIA request for the February 2020 closed session tapes from the City Council and Cow. I have requested them in the past.
Democracy died in darkness on your watch. The funeral is over.
Memorial Day is about remembering the individuals who knew where the devil lived and their duty lay. They knew that a single individual’s effort was unlikely to be acknowledged. Richard Best sank the IJN’s premier carrier, Akagi, at Midway on June 4, 1942, with a single one-thousand-pound bomb dropped from his Scout Bomber Douglas 4 (SBD4) dive bomber (“Slow But Deadly” to its pilots). Best accomplished this with a little luck but primarily by following his Navy doctrine and training coupled with skill and courage. Many other anonymous bombs and bullets also hit their marks that day.
Over the weekend, I visited the final resting place of another WWII Navy Vet who went from Brisbane in ’42 to Tokyo Bay in ’45. He was a meticulous man who believed that details mattered. The Navy made him the ship’s bookkeeper aboard Haddo (SS-255, Gato class submarine). She and several other U.S. submarines were tied up to the Poseidon, a submarine tender, near Missouri when War II ended on 2 September 1945. The Pacific submarine crews suffered a higher mortality rate (20%) than did the 8th Army Air Corps (7.5%) over Europe. Jack made it home and got a job as a record-keeper at the Mark 15 torpedo factory on Roosevelt Road in Forest Park.
Today the assaults on our liberty that earlier generations created and preserved for us are often subtle, difficult to identify, and easier to ignore. An urban myth holds that putting a frog in a pot of boiling water will instantly leap out. But if you put it in a pot filled with pleasantly tepid water and gradually heat it, the frog will remain in the water until it boils to death.
“Fraud” is any activity that relies on deception to achieve a gain. Fraud becomes a crime when it is a “knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Frauds committed and then covered up by elected officials and their employees, whether out of personal avarice or for political gain, are acts of sedition and insurrection that destroy liberty.
Here is an example of a “knowing misrepresentation of fact:”
Above the self-proclaimed owner of the Emma’s Landing Planned Unit Development certifies that she is the owner of the PUD parcel and “caused same to be subdivided and platted…” But the City of Geneva owned the PUD parcel and caused (and then self-approved) the PUD to be platted.
Then consider that Joy Nelson was the owner of parcel 12-08-224-00 that abuts the Emma’s PUD and provided the access from Lewis Road for the Emma’s PUD that was actually owned by the City of Geneva on April 21, 2021. Also consider that Joy Nelson sold that abutting parcel to James Bergman on June 29, 2021 for $650,000. Mr. Bergman’s address on the deed is given as 2090 Larkin Ave, Suite 5A-1, Elgin. This happens to be the address of the Burton Foundation that is now listed on the tax bill as the owner of the former Joy Nelson property.
Geneva taxpayers sold the PUD to the Burton Foundation for less than $100,000 per acre while Joy Nelson received over $200,000 per acre, well above the City’s appraisal for Emma’s Landing. The City’s appraisal put the value of the Emma’s site at about $120,000/acre. No doubt Joy Nelson’s sale was contingent upon the approval of the Burton Foundation’s successful application for LIHTC funds which she improperly facilitated by a “knowing misrepresentation of fact.” Most Genevans were victims of that fraud, but some benefitted. Big losers were the 22 applicants for LIHTC funds whose applications were denied in favor of a fraudulent one.
But this could become much worse for Geneva property taxpayers. Both buyer (Burton/Bergman) and seller (City of Geneva) knew that the required PUD Plat was fraudulent, but the PUD Plat was also a required time-critical element for success in getting LIHTC funding from the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s once-a-year cyle. So the parties winked and nodded simultaneously, as per the “Geneva Way.'” The IRS, IHDA, the Kane State’s Attorney, HUD, the Illinois Attorney General and the HUD IG may not deign to take notice of the “irregularities” in violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act, unauthorized changes in contracts, and the blatant falsehood that is represented by the Emma’s Landing Planned Unit Development Special Use Zoning Plat.
Ominously, a violation of a city’s zoning ordinance can render the title to Emma’s property unmarketable. https://www.tourolaw.edu/Academics/uploads/pdfs/5_Marketable_WWW.pdf The lenders for the Emma’s Landing project and the underwriters for the LIHTC income tax credits will not go quietly into the good night should the project go into default. Real estate held as collateral that has an unmarketable, clouded title could make those third parties, including the title insurer, anxious to be made whole by the purveyor of the bad title. Ultimately, that seller’s liability falls upon the Geneva voters and taxpayers.
Geneva has a city government focused more on what it can get away with than on what the statutes and ordinances require. No elected, appointed, or employed official has attempted to explain why this fraud was perpetrated. We have descended into local vigilanteism and worse. The devil often now dwells in the “minor” details, and so does the danger to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Rod's Ramblings and Ruminations 