Congratulations and criticism are in order for the Park District of Oak Park as it has now broken ground on its long-desired community recreation center project.
Last Saturday, the traditional shovels-and-hardhats event was held at Madison Street and Highland Avenue as officials and donors turned some dirt just ahead of the actual earth-moving equipment rolling in to get this project launched.
It has taken a while, but we have slowly warmed to this project. The focus on inclusiveness, on making a welcoming space particularly for young people in those afternoon hours, the goal of seamlessly providing mental health support in a safe and non-judgmental space is powerful.
That it comes with a track and a gym, maybe someday an indoor pool, are all fine things. The determination to build a net-zero-emissions building is exciting. Proximity to the middle schools is great. And we always like to see investment on Madison Street and on the east side of the village.
To its credit, the park district has sought out and received some measure of contributions from the public and has been, so far, effective in securing a number of grants from foundations, the state, and the village to fund aspects of the construction.
All that said, why is the park district so aggressively non-transparent in laying out the financing scheme for this public project? This is a longstanding haze. In previous incarnations of this ambitious dream, when the goal was to work in collaboration with River Forest, there was a certain mix-and-match element to the finance plan. The park district had some millions in reserve — tax dollars, we’d note — if River Forest parks contributed this much and so on.
A donation that we’re clear on, because we can see it on the tax returns of the Parks Foundation of Oak Park which we dug out, is the value of the large parcel on Madison Street, which was contributed by the Schuler family. A private appraisal, the tax docs show, valued the land at $2.1 million.
We’d note that, through its Good Heart Work Smart Foundation, the Schulers are also notable donors to Growing Community Media, the nonprofit publisher of Wednesday Journal, where their annual donation helps cover our costs of reporting on education and equity.
Beyond the donation of the land, there is our previous reporting on a $1.6 million grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation, a $400,000 grant from the village toward net-zero, and the decision last week by the village to share $1 million in federal ARPA funds with the park district.
However, our clear request of both the parks foundation and Park District Executive Director Jan Arnold to provide a financial overview of this project has been turned away.
“I’m not going to get into the details,” said Edward Kerros, vice president of the foundation.
Arnold told our Stacey Sheridan that 80 percent of the funding has been gathered and that there would be no tax increase tied to the project. That does not tell us how many previously collected tax dollars are being invested.
Why not be transparent? At heart this is a public project being built by a taxing body and using some portion of tax dollars to fund the work.
By its secrecy the park district is distracting from what ought to be a grand moment of accomplishment.