What does John Blum mean "study"? It's right in the minutes from the December 13, 2005 public hearing regarding the adoption of the Mill Race Crossing Economic Development Plan Area on page two that "No feasibility study was ever done. The County moved right into the preparation of the Economic Development Plan." Here is picture of page two of the above referenced minutes:
(clicking on picture will make it larger)
Had there been a real study conducted it would have surely revealed that the numbers put forth in the Mill Race plan were not feasible. John Cook pointed out at the public hearing, in writing, that according to the figures presented in the plan there would have to be development equivalent to three of Freeport's largest property tax payers every single over the next 23 years. What are the chances of getting three big projects in any one year, let alone every single year throughout the life of the project?
The response to John Cook was that the numbers arose out of "making assumptions as to development we all hope will occur within the County" emphasis added. You can read it all and more in the above document.
What follows next are the actual projections in the "Finding of Fact Summary" which was approved by both the Stephenson County Board and the Freeport City Council. Note in the upper right hand corner the words "low scenario", believe it or not there is actually another table that is even more optimistic than the officially approved fantasy numbers which follow:
How could two governing bodies sign off on such phony projections? Also included in the Finding of Fact Summary was the Trim-Rite letter of intent. Here are photos of that:
Tutty is baffled that not one single public official raised the issue that the Trim-Rite "letter of intent" was drafted on John Blum's stationary Tutty is also baffled that members of the Stephenson County Board were allowed to vote on a $6 million debt without being fully and officially informed that they had nothing of a "legal and binding obligation" with Trim-Rite. Why did Stephenson County pay all of those lawyers during the bonding proceeding for representation? Who did they represent? Why did they sit back and let John Blum convince the Stephenson County Board and the public at large that the Trim-Rite project was imminent without so much as letting out a peep?
And Tutty has John Blum's State of the County speech from a month before the $6 million bond was issued. He clearly misled the Stephenson County Board, he knew that Trim-Rite was no guarantee, he's the one that wrote the letter of intent, yet he sure made it sound like it was a done deal. Tutty will have to dig that up for a future post.
Tutty still believes that the Stephenson County Board should stop paying on this debt (whoever holds the debt now makes little difference, they too have lawyers and should have checked out the potential legal pitfalls with any debt instrument they were willing to purchase).
Stephenson County, at the very least, should sue the involved lawyers for malpractice because they were surely not representing Stephenson County and as Tutty has said before, the opening sentence in the Rules of Professional Conduct for Illinois attorneys, states that the practice of law is a "public trust."
Or is that just a bad joke on the businesses and taxpayers of Stephenson County?
As always, yours in honesty, Tutty Baker tutty.baker@gmail.com



