What's the disconnect in Campton Hills?

When Lynda and Chris Jacobs bought a house west of St. Charles nearly 10 years ago, one of the selling points was its location in unincorporated Kane County.

Having both grown up in rural areas, the couple wanted the kind of minimalist lifestyle they believe exists only outside municipal borders: no streetlights, no city water, few government services, lower taxes.

"That was the way of life we enjoyed," Lynda Jacobs said. "We weren't looking for a change."

Change did come, however, on April 17, 2007, when 55 percent of the Jacobses' neighbors voted to incorporate 20 square miles known today as the village of Campton Hills.

Now, the Jacobs family and hundreds of others are waging legal battles for the right to get out.

"We just want to be left to go back to the way we were," she said.

Since the village's incorporation, 11 groups of property owners have filed civil lawsuits seeking to detach from the town and revert to unincorporated turf, including the Cheval de Selle subdivision to the southwest, where the Jacobses live.

Attorneys say at least three other neighborhoods are on the verge of following suit.

The arguments

So far, the disconnection attempts have faced vehement opposition from the village and its legal team, already successful in convincing a judge to quash one case.

The village argues property detachments of any size will threaten the municipality's financial viability by reducing per-capita state revenue and motor fuel tax income, and hinder its prospects for future growth.

Village President Patsy Smith, who was appointed to the post in May and is seeking election Feb. 5, adds that the village has a duty to defend the original boundaries presented to voters during the incorporation campaign.

By allowing detachments, she said, "we could be disenfranchising and taking action against what the people in those areas wanted."

Wheaton attorney Timothy D. Elliott represents property owners seeking detachment of an 80-acre farm, a privately owned cemetery and more than 130 single-family lots in the Cheval de Selle and Moraines subdivisions.

He has contended in court that the village would not be harmed, financially or otherwise, by any disconnection.

While the village does stand to lose more than $100 for each resident allowed out and a significant portion of motor fuel taxes that would otherwise remain, Elliott points out that the village would have fewer roads to maintain and fewer neighborhoods to police.

He also says village officials have been less than frank with the public about their long-term viability.

"It seems to me the village really is in a tough spot," he said. "In the public meetings and political campaigns, they have had to portray the village as (having) adequate revenue to operate because, if they didn't, their argument for there being a village would go away.

"But in the disconnection cases, they have had to argue the opposite," he said. "The bottom line is, the village is not as poor as it says it is."

The money

The amount of revenue on the line is not in dispute as much as its potential effect on the village.

Depending on the property, revenue losses could be as little as $900 a year to as much as $62,000 a year or more, disconnection attorneys and village officials said.

Smith says Campton Hills is operating on such bare-bones revenue that "any dollar we lose, I believe, would unduly harm our village."

Disconnection proponents, however, are quick to point out that Smith and six other village officials recently cashed in nearly $20,000 in back pay for their government positions.

The money, previously untouched by officials who said it should be around in case the village got in a bind, was doled out in December.

At the time, Smith said officials decided to pay themselves partly because village fund balances were coming under heavy scrutiny from disconnection attorneys and they didn't want it to appear the village had more money available than actually was the case.

Still, village attorney Bill Braithwaite maintains, officials have been consistent and honest in their portrayal of a village being run as lean as possible.

"It's not inconsistent to say that, based on the incorporated area presented to the voters, it was financially solvent, and then to later say that when you take away significant parts of the area, it will obviously impact the financial solvency," Braithwaite said. "That's absolutely consistent."

Pat Griffin, a local attorney pursuing the disconnection of the Prairie Lakes and Hidden Oaks subdivisions, claims the village is guilty of repeatedly "changing its tune."

"Based on what they've shown us, if you take their own numbers as accurate, they operate at a surplus," said Griffin, who says he will file disconnection petitions for Fox Mill, a 670-home subdivision, in the next month.

In court

All of the disconnection cases are expected to be decided in bench trials before Kane County Civil Court Judge Michael J. Colwell.

In November, Colwell dismissed the first and only case to be decided in his court thus far. He threw out the disconnection suit -- brought by CJR Enterprises Inc. and others -- on grounds the petitioners failed to provide taxpayers in a northern neighborhood proper notice of the effort. Several other trials have concluded and are awaiting decisions on or before March 1.

In April, one year from the incorporation date, a legal window making it easier to disconnect large groups of properties will close. That's when the law will require 100 percent of contiguous property owners in a given area to support detachment in order to proceed.

Until then, groups need only 51 percent of property owners to support disconnection. Elliott says 70 to 80 percent of landowners in his groups favor such a move.

To Braithwaite, the attempt to detach significant chunks of land -- hundreds of acres in some cases -- is a misuse of this legal window.

"The legislation was intended to cover the somewhat unique case of a property owner who is on the border, and perhaps there's another property owner adjacent to that who does not want to disconnect," he said. "In order to allow the one seeking disconnection, the statute allows (courts) to take out the one that does not."

"I believe it was never contemplated by the legislature that this would be used in the manner which is being attempted here," he said.

The future

Perhaps the most frustrating part for Smith and other village officials is the fact that not much has changed since Campton Hills incorporated.

Yes, residents now have a police department instead of relying on a few sheriff's deputies who cover all of unincorporated Kane County. But there's been no talk of a tax increase or government services that didn't exist before.

Rather, the point of the village, Smith said, is protecting the kind of rural living Lynda Jacobs and other Cheval de Selle homeowners seem to cherish so much from encroaching neighbors and county board members who have no ties to the area.

"To us, it's obvious that if we want to maintain our quality of life and semi-rural feel, we need elected officials who live within our borders," she said. "We had to change today to preserve tomorrow."

That's what bothers Jacobs.

"There's a big question mark and a big unknown that comes with an additional layer of government," she said. With potentially new leaders being elected every few years, "We don't know what's going to happen."