Fox River Grove trustee won't support garage project

At least one Fox River Grove trustee has serious reservations about a looming public works garage, ones he says will keep him from supporting the project in its present form.

"Something's not right," Trustee Steve Knar said. "I don't want to go to Dominick's and have people looking at me like a (jerk)."

Thursday evening, the public works committee, comprised of several board members, met to discuss the garage.

The village plans to bulldoze an existing public works garage to expand its wastewater treatment plant in advance of pending regulations from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

They will replace it with the new public works garage that's estimated to cost $3.5 million and will go up on County Line Road near Route 22.

The village will use $3.5 million in debt certificates to finance the garage - debt certificates are loans that carry higher interest rates because they don't use property taxes as back up funding sources.

Officials have said it will take them 20 years to repay the loan.

Knar not only has grave concerns about the building's size and the impact it will have on residents nearby, but he also isn't convinced the village has really thought through the building's cost, or that money to move onto phase two of the project will ever materialize.

Knar suggested that trustees go back to the drawing board and plan the building all over again so they can all sleep at night.

"Let's just start at square one," Knar said.

But Trustee Jerry Menzel, sitting in the audience, said it's too late to turn back now.

"This is ridiculous; we've already voted to do it," Menzel said.

"You're acting like a dog chasing his tail."

The board in January voted to finance the project using debt certificates but has yet to approve a final plan for the building.

Either way, resident Glenn Kayler, who lives across the street from the planned building, would prefer that the village move it elsewhere.

"I just think you're being too eager," Kayler told the committee Thursday. "It just doesn't make sense what you're doing."

The proposal went through the zoning committee, which in July approved rezoning the property so the garage can be constructed, but under six conditions.

On Aug. 19, the village board is due to take action on an amended ordinance that gives them the authority to build the garage.