Mount Prospect discusses water agreement with Prospect Heights
It is six years late, but Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights are heading toward renewing an agreement for Mount Prospect to sell water to Prospect Heights.
The Mount Prospect village board's committee of the whole discussed this fluid state of affairs Tuesday with an eye to passing its part of the intergovernmental agreement at its Jan. 4 meeting.
In 1994, Mount Prospect began selling village water to Prospect Heights for its police station. The agreement was supposed to last 10 years, with Prospect Heights picking up an additional 10-year option to extend it until 2014.
But even as Mount Prospect augmented the service in 2007 to provide water for the new Prospect Heights city hall, which replaced the one destroyed by fire, one thing got lost in the shuffle the option was never officially exercised at the end of the first 10 years, in 2004.
“Arguably, Prospect Heights should have passed a resolution and forwarded it to (Mount Prospect) somewhere around 2004, saying, ‘We officially want to exercise this option.' And it was never done,” said Village Manager Michael Janonis,
On Jan. 4, the board will consider starting from scratch with a new 10-year agreement, with an option to renew every 10 years.
Janonis said that in addition to the police department, Mount Prospect at one time was providing water to the original Prospect Heights city hall, where the Walgreens property at 1 N. Elmhurst Road now stands.
Janonis said Walgreens uses Mount Prospect water today, paying the nonresident rate, which is double the normal village rate.
In addition, Mount Prospect has agreements to provide water with the Prospect Heights Park District and Prospect Heights Public Library District.
Mount Prospect also delivers water to the Social Security office in Prospect Heights, at 215 S. Elmhurst Road.
Janonis said discussions with Prospect Heights about renewing the agreement began last year.
He said Prospect Heights has been very good about paying its bills.
Mount Prospect Trustee Paul Hoefert, who said he supports the agreement, reminisced about discussions in years past, when another trustee used the analogy of “eating the salami one slice at a time,” suggesting that the floodgates would open to Prospect Heights using more and more Mount Prospect water.
But Janonis reassured him that it would be an engineering impossibility, saying, “Hydraulically we could not do that.”
“It's good for our neighbors. It's good for us,” said a supporter of the renewal, Trustee John Matuszak.
Following the Mount Prospect meeting, Prospect Heights Mayor Dolly Vole confirmed by phone Tuesday that the city did not officially renew the option.
“I can't say why,” she said. She speculated that it was “lack of knowledge” on the council's part. “Maybe it just slipped through the cracks. I don't know. I can't speak for them.”
Prospect Heights has yet to sign off on its part of the intergovernmental agreement.