2 LTHS Officials Spoke Up For Neighbors Behind Scenes

LA GRANGE, IL – Two years ago, Lyons Township High School board members presented a united front in public to sell the school's land in Willow Springs to an industrial developer.

This was in the face of opposition from neighbors.

Behind closed doors, though, two members spoke up for the neighbors. For months of closed sessions, the board secretly crafted its plan to sell – in violation of the Open Meetings Act.

The goal was to keep the plan under wraps for as long as possible.

The two members who spoke up behind the scenes were Michael Thomas and Alison Kelly.

During a November 2022 closed meeting, members discussed a request from Pleasantdale School District 107, which has a school next to the high school's land.

Pleasantdale wanted to swap land with the local park district, which owns land next to the high school's, so the school could build an early childhood education center.

Members debated over how to answer the other government bodies, which, like their residents, had no idea the high school was looking to sell to an industrial developer.

"I don't know that we owe them anything," member Jill Beda Daniels said.

Kelly, whose term ended in May 2023, took a different view.

"We don't owe them anything, but they are our taxpayers, they are our people," she said.

Daniels said the school and park districts weren't "our people" because they don't pay property taxes.

Kelly replied, "They are our community. I feel like they are going to be the ones most affected by this."

A month earlier, Thomas had a concern similar to Kelly's. During a closed-session discussion, the board was told that the village of Willow Springs would take care of any zoning approvals. It wasn't the board's concern, the school's lawyer said.

"Is it our role that we don't care, that we're going forward?" Thomas said. "Those are our constituents, too, and our base."

He said he understood the idea that the land's sale was for the greater good. But he wondered about the effects on residents closest to the 70 acres.

Attorney Ares Dalianis of the Chicago-based Franczek law firm warned against consideration of zoning issues.

"The farther the board drifts from maximizing value for the taxpayers of Lyons Township High School District 204, the more you are getting away from the whole school code concept of selling school district real estate," said Dalianis, whom the board replaced in August 2023. "The process is set up to get maximum value for the school district."

At the same meeting, both Thomas and Kelly expressed concern about doing any land swap with the school and park districts without telling them about the plan for industrial development.

"You would build a childhood center where you have all of these monster trucks coming through," Thomas said. "That just doesn't make sense."

The other members in the meetings were Daniels, Julie Swinehart, Jill Grech, Kari Dillon and Dawn Aubert.

The attorney general later found the discussions broke the open meetings law.

On Nov. 30, 2022, the board announced its plan to sell the land. But it kept secret an 8-month-old $68 million offer from an industrial developer (a proposal that mistakenly included a few acres that did not belong to the school).

The property's minimum price was set at $55 million, geared toward industrial uses. When that became known in early 2023, residents rose against the plan. They said industrial operations were inappropriate next to houses and an elementary school.

The board abandoned the idea a couple of months later.

During the eight months of closed meetings, no member ever questioned why the board was discussing such business behind closed doors. Dalianis, the lawyer, attended all the meetings but one.

As Patch previously reported, Thomas informed the board in November 2022 that it was violating the Open Meetings Act by not posting an exception under the law to close the doors.

The board's decisions on the land were unanimous. At the time, members held no public free-flowing discussions, limiting themselves to formal statements from the board president. Because of that, Thomas and Kelly's nuanced views were unknown to the public.

At the attorney general's request, the board released the closed-session recordings in December.

Recordings of the closed sessions are available on the "Neighbors of Pleasantdale" YouTube page.