Campton Hills, road district at impasse: No new agreement

CAMPTON HILLS – The village of Campton Hills and the Campton Highway District are in a protracted standoff over a new intergovernmental agreement for the continuing service of the village’s 101 miles of roads.

The two had an agreement from 2007, when the village first incorporated, to 2017. It was then extended another five years. After two 30-day extensions, the agreement ended at midnight Monday.

The village gets Motor Fuel Tax revenue from the Illinois Department of Transportation – which used to go directly to the road district before the village incorporated in 2007, said Campton Township Highway Commissioner Sam Gallucci.

Those funds can only be used for maintenance and resurfacing of roads.

Kane County distributes road and bridge funds to the district from its property taxes.

Campton Hills Village President Michael Tyrrell said the continuing issue is that the village will now require the road district to provide more documentation for the work it does.

“In August of 2019, IDOT (Illinois Department of Transportation) informed the village that the Highway District’s MFT (Motor Fuel Tax) invoices were invalid and indicated the village owed the MFT fund over $330,000,” Tyrrell stated in a news release about the impasse.

The village went through a three-year audit costing more than $30,000 to document the road district’s spending, Tyrrell said.

So now the village wants to ensure all future accounting is clear, accurate and documented, Tyrrell said.

Gallucci disagreed with that assessment, saying that the village “sent incorrect paperwork to the state.”

“They got all the paperwork every year for 15 years,” Gallucci said. “Nothing has changed since 2007. … I get audited every year, every penny is accounted for. It was the village – whatever they turned in was incorrect to the state. We gave them the proper forms. It’s the same stuff every year.”

Ray Weber, the assistant foreman and safety officer for the road district, said the village got audited because Tyrrell’s administration screwed up.

“Our responsibility is to bill the village,” Weber said. “The funds the village uses to pay us is theirs to properly account to IDOT. … We do not have any responsibility to account to IDOT for how the village spends their money. That’s the village’s responsibility.”

Weber said the road district does not have the staff or the time to do its work and “be accounting for every little jot and tittle of billing.”

“We would have to hire a full-time person. That was the whole purpose of the intergovernmental agreement, to make it simple and as a government entity,” Weber said. “They were being audited for three years running and blamed it all on us. It’s not our fault.”

Weber said if the village was being improperly billed, officials waited until the last minute to say something.

“We knew nothing about this. He’s laying it on us,” Weber said of Tyrrell. “It’s not our responsibility.”

Tyrrell said Gallucci and Weber are both wrong.

“I have the highest regard for Sam and I want it to work out,” Tyrrell said. “He just wants us to send 101 miles of road resurfacing funding per the county rate per mile. … They’re sending invoices for May and June but there’s nothing on here that says what work you (the district) performed.”

Two weeks ago, Tyrrell said both sides verbally agreed to have the road district provide more detail on its invoices. But the updated agreement did not have the written language match what was agreed to in person.

Again, Gallucci and Weber disputed Tyrrell’s version.

“He’s (Tyrrell) twisting this because he has to have some way to dig himself out of this hole,” Weber said.

Weber said Tyrrell’s changes gave the village joint control, when the road commissioner is the sole arbiter of how roads should be maintained.

“The IGA worked very nicely all these years,” Weber said. “Mike and his crew made a bunch of mistakes and did not handle it properly. They got audited and were all ticked off about it. It was not our fault.”

Tyrrell said the village would fill out the IDOT documents for the road district – but the village needs details of the district’s work in order to do that.

“The IGA says they will supply us with the necessary paperwork that allows us to do our IDOT filings,” Tyrrell said. “We will pay when they send the invoice and they provide the necessary paperwork so we can comply with IDOT. That is not being done.”

Gallucci said if Tyrrell wants to create a village road department, it would cost $25 million to $30 million to buy the land, build a garage, buy the vehicles and hire the staff.

“No government agency is going to take on another 100 miles of road,” Gallucci said.

“We have 11 plow trucks alone … that cost $250,000 each and to order a new ones will take two years. … We have end loaders, back loaders – an incredible amount of equipment to do Campton and Plato townships. This does not pop up overnight – you need trained people to do the plowing, replace signs, trim trees, replace drainage culverts,” Gallucci said.

Private contractors are already working on their own agreements, Gallucci said, and would not be available to do the work in Campton Hills.

Tyrrell said he has a Plan B to take care of the village’s roads if the two sides cannot come to an agreement – eventually.

“I would love nothing better than for us to have amicable relationship and an IGA with the Campton Highway District,” Tyrrell said. “The fundamentals are that we don’t get the documents that we need and that are required.”