Village officials were surprised when they received a bill for the Grand Avenue underpass last year.
The project was completed eight years ago, and as far as the village knew, had been paid for in full. But the Illinois Department of Transportation had recently completed an audit and sent Franklin Park officials a $2.9 million bill for the project in December 2015. After working with state officials, the village will owe about $800,000, Franklin Park Mayor Barrett Pedersen said.
Fifty years ago, the Franklin Park Women’s Club began lobbying to have an underpass installed on Grand Avenue, village engineer Dave Talbott said. As the years went by, different entities took on the task of getting the project off the ground.
By 1999, state legislators approved an act to create the Grand Avenue Relocation Authority, a special district, so the major railroad rights of way that cut through Grand Avenue in Franklin Park would be relocated in order “to further and enhance growth throughout the region.” Members of the group, made up of appointed officials from Franklin Park and neighboring communities, had the power to acquire, by gift, purchase, legacy, or by the exercise of eminent domain powers, the properties within the special district’s boundaries in the service of the underpass on Grand Avenue.
By 2007, the project was completed at a cost of about $44 million. Funding had come from a variety of sources, including $14,000 from the ICC grade crossing protection fund, $11.5 million from a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant and $4 million from the 2005 Federal Transportation Appropriation, according to records from the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program.
Once the project was completed, the village had to figure out how to dissolve the Grand Avenue Relocation Authority and turn over its remaining assets, mostly construction materials, to Franklin Park’s government.
“Creating a special unit of government is pretty straightforward,” said John Schneider, the village’s director of community development. “Dissolving them is the hard part.”
GARA was officially dissolved on July 7, 2015, and its remaining assets were transferred to the village. Six months later, a bill from IDOT arrived, saying that the village had exceeded its $15 million limit for the Grand Avenue underpass project. In the mix of grants that were signed to complete it, village officials had been unaware that they had exceeded that limit and now owed IDOT $2.9 million, Talbott said.
Complicating matters was the fact that IDOT and other government entities involved in the project had already closed out their paperwork for the project in 2012, so they didn’t have the authorization to give out additional funds to cover the amount owed.
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Freelance reporter Maryann Pisano contributed to this report.
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