CLC controller discovers, recovers $112,000 from forgotten trust account

About $112,000 was returned to the College of Lake County this week after it sat largely untouched for more than a decade in a First Midwest Bank Trust account.

The money is what's left over from the $9 million contribution the college made in 2002 to the $36.4 million project to build the Technology Building.

Now called the T-wing, the Technology Building opened to students and staff in January 2005. However, there were several outstanding items to be completed, and the college agreed to leave money in the trust to address any lagging invoices, according to CLC documents. In the years since 2005, all the invoices were paid, rectified or canceled.

The money has stayed in the trust, unnoticed for years until June, when CLC controller Constance Kravitz was reviewing the trusts the college had with First Midwest. Kravitz, who was hired by CLC in 2016, said the college has opened other trusts with the bank recently, including one for the newly completed Science Building and another for the upcoming $48 million building project at the college's Waukegan campus.

"When I was looking at all the different trusts, I realized there was money there for the technology building," Kravitz said. "I started asking questions: 'Why is it there and how can we get it back.'"

She discovered the college needed permission from the state to reclaim the money from the trust. In July, the state Capital Development Board provided a letter to release the trust money to the college. The CLC board voted at its meeting Tuesday to take back the money.

Now that the money has been returned to CLC, it will be used in future projects that serve students, Ken Gotsch, the college's vice president for administrative affairs, said.