An audit of the Dixmoor Park District has revealed that few of the assets that the district should own can be found, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
“The receiver’s (report) showed there was not much,” said state’s attorney’s spokesman Bob Benjamin.
The audit was presented in court this week by the office of the court-appointed receiver, Chicago attorney Earl Neal.
Investigators for several months have been checking into funds that are unaccounted for, missing cars and lost office equipment.
Also during Wednesday’s hearing, held before Cook County Circuit Judge Dorothy Kinnaird, it was recommended that the Park District enter into a six-month intergovernmental agreement so that some programs could still be provided, Benjamin said.
Kinnaird placed the district in receivership in August after three former district board members–President Bonita Wright, Bobby Jackson and Parnell Jackson–were charged in June with theft and official misconduct in connection with the theft of $500,000 in taxpayer money from the Park District. The money had been set aside for a recreation center that was never built in the south suburban town.
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Also charged were Gayle Occomy, president of Oakcon Construction Co., and Kevin Mattison, president of A-Prime Contractors, who had been contracted to build the center, Benjamin said. Both Dixmoor companies are defunct.
According to the state’s attorney’s office, the Park District issued $634,000 in bonds beginning in 1992 for a recreation center and also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, but land was never purchased and no buildings were constructed.
The debt has accrued to more than $1 million.
Investigators have been trying to determine what happened to 20 Park District vehicles.