Crystal Lake South High School bleachers can come down, District 155 Board says

CARY – The controversial bleachers at Crystal Lake South High School can come down, the Community High School District 155 Board decided Wednesday evening. The 5-2 vote approving a $233,000 bid was contingent, however, on a McHenry County judge moving forward with his tear-down order or talks with neighboring property owners and the city of Crystal Lake failing to come up with an alternative. Moving forward with the project would require board approval. McHenry County Judge Michael Chmiel had ordered the tear-down of the bleachers on the west side of the Crystal Lake South football field last October, but the decision was stayed as the Crystal Lake-based school district appealed his decision to an appellate court and ultimately to the Illinois Supreme Court.

The Illinois Supreme Court issued an opinion last week, backing the lower courts' decisions and ruling school districts are subject to municipal zoning and stormwater ordinances.

The new expanded bleachers at Crystal Lake South High School do not meet the city's zoning rules, and variances have not been granted for the structure. A proposal modify the bleachers by moving the press box and adding additional landscape screening was rejected by the Crystal Lake City Council in June.

The board also directed district staff in a unanimous vote – a motion not listed on the posted agenda but allowed because it falls into a similar subject matter, district attorney Robert Swain said – to enter into discussions with the city and neighboring property owners and to review alternatives, including one proposed by the neighboring property owners who originally had filed the lawsuit against the district.

The property owners’ proposal would include dismantling about two-thirds of the bleachers, installing a privacy screen to prevent people on the bleachers from seeing into nearby homes, relocating the press box to the other side of the field, creating a more solid landscaping screen between the bleachers and the homes, and eliminating two of the speakers to bring down the noise level, according to a letter from Tom Burney, the attorney representing the property owners, to the district’s attorney.

The board did not direct staff to begin preparing bid documents as Burney requested at the meeting. District staff needs to look at the capacity the proposed bleachers would provide and come up with alternatives that would address that need, school board President Ted Wagner said.

The proposal is a “good start,” board member Dave Secrest said, adding that the city, engineers and architects should be involved in the process before bid documents are prepared.

“I’m not sure that it would be – and I know we’ve been charged with not being responsible – but I don’t think it would be responsible on our part bidding on something that we laid our eyes on for the first time tonight in the form of a letter,” Secrest said.

The way the bleachers would be dismantled – systematically with each piece categorized and stored near the football field – would allow them to be reused, district Director of Operations Jeff Daurer said, adding one option is to move the bleachers to Cary-Grove High School. The bleachers at Cary-Grove take up a similar-sized footprint and would need to be replaced at some point in the future, he said, adding they’re not handicap accessible and are more than 30 years old.

“We can do a lot of things with time and money and planning,” Daurer said. “But this gives an opportunity to have them down and be in full compliance, and then make good decisions about what we’re going to do next in coordination with others.”

The cost to dismantle and then move the bleachers would be about $960,000, Daurer said, noting those budget numbers are rough. This option could open up the possibility of replacing the Crystal Lake South bleachers with something the property owners and the city would like even better, Wagner said. The bids had been sought in December after Chmiel had handed down his tear down order, and the low bidder, one of two received, had agreed to hold the price steady, Daurer said. It would take about two, maybe three, weeks to mobilize and get the contractor ready and another six weeks to complete the work.

Board member Adam Guss, who voted against awarding the bid along with board member Rosemary Kurtz, questioned why this is the only option being presented to the board.

“Two years in or wherever we are, all we’ve got is one option,” Guss said.

Criticism of the board filled the public comment period that started the meeting, the first since the Illinois Supreme Court handed down its decision. Two former District 155 school board members and McHenry County Board member Donna Kurtz – who is Rosemary Kurtz’ daughter – blasted the four board members who had been on the board when the lawsuit was filed for failing to work with the city and residents and for what they characterized as misleading the public. Jim Bishop, who led the school board when Crystal Lake South High School originally was built, called the district’s assertions that it had not been required to comply with the city’s zoning and land-use requirements in the past “100 percent false.”

“I’m here because the community is angry,” he said. “I, like so many residents of the district that have served, are very proud of District 155, and until this debacle, we had every reason to be proud.”