Schools
Lawsuit Against LT Seeks Millions in Unpaid Fees
The Lyons Township School Treasurer's Office filed the suit last month against District 204 to recoup fees it is owed and interest it distributed in error.
Lyons Township High School District 204 is being sued by the Lyons Township School Treasurer's Office over $4.4 million the treasurer's office claims it is owed by the school, The Doings reported Wednesday.
According to The Doings, The lawsuit was filed last month in Cook County by the school treasurer's office, which wants from District 204 $2.6 million in financial-services fees not paid between 2000 and 2011, $1.4 million to reimburse investment interest paid to the district in error over the last 18 years, and $473,000 for auditing fees owed from 1993 to 2011.
Read the full Doings story here.
The suit stems from former Lyons Township school treasurer Robert Healy's 2012 resignation.
Healy had resigned his post amid allegations he had misused $500,000 in vacation and sick time, and was charged in August 2013 with stealing more than $1.5 million from the office over two decades.
A Better Government Association report from May says that after Healy's resignation from the school treasurer's office, which manages fiscal services for 13 area school districts including District 204, officials discovered that more than $2 million in fees were owed to the school treasurer's office by District 204.
The district uses its own staff to perform most payroll, billing and bookkeeping tasks—services the school treasurer's office provides—and its officials have said a verbal agreement with Healy was in place dating back to 1999 that allowed for certain fees related to those services to be waived.
"We did not see why the taxpayers of District 204 should pay for a service they were not receiving," Board President Mark Pera said in May. "I am not aware as we sit here 13 years later of any adverse impact on another district."
Mike Thiessen, president the school treasurer's office board of school trustees, told The Doings his board never approved the fee waivers District 204 cites, and that all member districts are required to pay the school treasurer's office for services even if they do not make us of them.
The BGA said in its report that District 204 is still bound to pay those fees because it wasn’t officially emancipated from the TTO.
Read the full BGA report here.
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