Schaumburg Township road commissioner wants refund for website he says wasn’t ‘delivered’ on time

Schaumburg Township Highway Commissioner Timothy Buelow wants a refund.

Buelow, a Democrat who was elected earlier this year, said he is seeking repayment of the $44,450 spent by his predecessor Scott Kegarise — after losing reelection in April — on an interactive website showing current road conditions.

Kegarise commissioned political ally Daniel Lee, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for Schaumburg Township clerk this year, to design the website and have it ready by July 19.

Buelow says the site wasn’t “delivered” on time.

Lee disputes that, arguing the website at st-roads.org did go live before its July 19 deadline. He said its features include real-time weather reporting and an AI assistant that can reduce the workload of township employees by answering basic questions.

“To this day, it’s credited to Mr. Buelow,” Lee said. “It’s up to him whether he wants to take the credit.”

But even when informed of the website address Tuesday, Buelow was steadfast control of the site wasn’t turned over to him as highway commissioner and was critical of its content.

“I could go on Squarespace and put that up in an hour,” he said. “This isn’t worth $44,000.”

Kegarise said the website combines data previously found separately and localizes it to the township, as intended.

“I can put up a website in two minutes, but I couldn’t do this,” he added.

Lee said the website has even more functions on a phone than on a laptop at home, such as being able to warn a user of a tree down in the roadway six blocks away.

From the outset, Buelow was critical of Kegarise’s April 25 decision to contract the website’s design for $27,500 from USynergetics, Inc. of Hoffman Estates — a company run by Lee’s wife.

Another $16,950 was paid in a contract with Valexity Technologies, Inc. of Hanover Park to perform monthly maintenance of the website for a year.

Individual contracts under $30,000 don’t require a bidding process, according to state law.

Kegarise defended the expenditure, arguing it was something residents had been seeking for years. He also defended his contracting it from Lee, who’d handled the Republican slate’s website generation during the election campaign.

Buelow believes the circumstances in which the website was commissioned — between the election and Kegarise’s last day in office — represent the reasons so many people have become cynical about government.

“I’ve tried to be as accommodating as possible to provide an off-ramp,” Buelow said. “This is the taxpayers’ money.”

Lee believes he’s fulfilled the contract but is concerned his family’s small business can’t afford a prolonged legal fight to prove it.

“That’s as un-American as it gets,” Lee said. “I thought he ran for the small guy.”