At a Jan. 19 special board meeting, the Oak Park and River Forest District 200 Board of Education voted unanimously to withdraw its resolution of intent to issue $17.5 million in working cash bonds that would have helped cover the cost of a $37.5 million pool facility at the high school. Board members Tom Cofsky and Steve Gevinson were not in attendance.
The decision to withdraw the bond issue means there won’t be a referendum question regarding the matter on the March 15 primary ballot. In late 2015, some 4,300 District 200 residents signed a petition forcing the proposed bond issue to a vote.
Several board members announced at a special meeting last week their likelihood of voting to withdraw the resolution. Some members cited the uncertainty of the current $37.5 million plan, which would require the demolition of the high school’s parking garage and the creation of on-street parking spaces, as a key reason for why they were leaning toward withdrawing the resolution.
A plan that calls for demolishing the decade-old garage would likely not work out if an alternative parking plan — one that D200 Board President Jeff Weissglass has insisted needs to be feasible for the surrounding community in order for him to vote on it — wasn’t approved by the village of Oak Park.
Over the last several months, the pool plan has drawn criticism from residents angry over the prospects of the parking garage being demolished and replaced by on-street parking and of the board funding the pool construction without going to referendum.
Last week, the petition drive to force the $17.5 million bond issue onto the March 15 primary ballot successfully faced down an objection — only to have the question removed from the ballot anyway due to the board’s vote to withdraw its resolution.
But at the two special meetings called this month in the wake of a petition drive to force the matter to a vote in March, board members conceded the petitioners’ moral victory.
The petition drive may not have resulted in a ballot question, but some board members noted that the effort was nonetheless successful in changing the course of the pool construction process.
“The people who put forth the petitions did so because they didn’t agree with our plan,” said board member Sara Dixon Spivy at the Jan. 14 meeting. “That being said, we are hearing what you’re saying, hearing your concerns, and we’re trying to address them. I think it would be disingenuous of us to go forward with issuing these bonds not knowing what our plan is at this point.”
Weissglass added on Jan. 19: “This has been a long process and it feels like if we do vote to abandon the bonds tonight, it will give us a chance to step back and take a deep breath and in a day or two dig back in and start moving forward on this to figure out what the next steps are.”
Among alternatives to the $37.5 million pool proposal are a shared community facility financed by multiple taxing bodies and a much more expensive pool structure that includes more than 100 parking spaces built into the facility.