Why is Lake County forest district buying land it used to own?
Trying to correct a 40-year-old paperwork glitch, Lake County Forest Preserve District officials plan to buy land near Riverwoods they mistakenly thought they already owned.
Lake County owns the two properties, which total nearly 11 acres and are part of the Cahokia Flatwoods Forest Preserve. That 210-acre preserve is east of Milwaukee Avenue and north of Lake-Cook Road.
In the spirit of government cooperation, county officials are offering to sell the land to the forest district for $1.
According to a memo from forest district Executive Director Ty Kovac, the district bought the land in 1976 as part of a six-parcel, 133-acre purchase from the Trans Union Development Corp.
However, when district officials filed a tax-exemption application for the properties, one of them - this 10.9 acre site - accidentally was omitted, Kovac said. The tax exemption certificate the district received in 1978 didn't include the site, but no one noticed.
Because of that oversight, tax bills continued to be generated but weren't paid by the former owner or the forest district, Lake County Clerk Carla Wyckoff said. A sum wasn't available because the records are so old, Wyckoff said.
Because of the tax delinquency, the land was put up for auction by the county in 1981. No one purchased it, so the county retained the site by default.
Ownership formally was transferred from the forest district to Lake County after foreclosure proceedings in 1985.
Forest district officials had no idea about the missing tax certificate, the foreclosure or the transfer of ownership. And in another error, taxpayer information continued to list the district as the land's owner.
The Lake County clerk's office discovered the mistake this summer during a routine audit of county-owned properties that were foreclosed upon due to unpaid taxes, Wyckoff said.
"We came across (the land) as being owned by county of Lake as trustee but with tax bills going to the forest preserve," she said.
That was a red flag, Wyckoff said, because such properties should list the county as the owner and taxpayer.
"So we contacted the forest preserve and asked if they knew about this," Wyckoff said. "They didn't."
Forest district officials are happy the error was discovered. Although relatively small, the land is critically important to the district because it contains a stretch of the Des Plaines River Trail, which runs more than 31 miles between Lake-Cook Road and the Wisconsin state line.
"That could've been a horrible situation if somebody had bought it at (the) tax sale," forest board President Ann Maine said. "I'm thrilled that nobody did."
The forest board's land preservation and acquisition committee tentatively approved the purchase Monday.
The full board is expected to finalize the deal at its next meetings Oct. 11. The county board doesn't need to vote on the pact because the issue falls under the county clerk's authority.