Until they get some kind of proof that the land in question is actually their responsibility, Wilmette Park District commissioners won’t make a decision on a complex land easement issue that the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District wants them to vote on.
Commissioners decided Monday to indefinitely table an MWRD request focusing on land crossing a section of the Canal Shores Golf Club, north of Isabella Street and near the Evanston-Wilmette border.
The issue stems from a request by the family of Glencoe resident Joseph Keefe, which owns Wilmette property near the golf course.
The family trust wants to get an easement over golf course land, in order to access the landlocked property and make it easier to sell.
But until Park Board members know “definitively” that the MWRD needs their approval, “I don’t know how we could vote one way or another,” Commissioner Amy Wolfe said at the Park Board’s May 9 meeting.
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Fellow commissioners tabled a motion to grant permission for the easement “until such time it is determined that the easement requested is … on property leased by the Wilmette Park District from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.”
Until recently, everyone with an interest in the issue – Keefe, the MWRD, the Park District, which rents the acreage from the MWRD, and the Canal Shores Golf Club, which then subleases it from the Park District – thought the Park District needed to approve the easement.
But last month, the Park Board learned the MWRD had requested a 30-day delay to research claims by Keefe attorney Jeffrey Greenspan that the easement doesn’t actually cross land rented by the Park District. If that was the case, the district didn’t need to approve or reject the Keefe request. Members of the district’s real estate committee were already on record as opposing granting the easement.
Park District Executive Director Steve Wilson told commissioners May 9 that his office let MWRD officials know that Park District research, including an informal title search and Sidwell map review, also seemed to show the easement wasn’t on Park District-leased land. MWRD officials responded that they were going to research the issue themselves, Wilson said.
Staff and Park District attorneys haven’t heard back from the MWRD about its research, but they did get an email from it, asking the Park Board to vote on the easement, Wilson said.
MWRD spokeswoman Allison Fore said in a May 9 email that her district “believes the property is held under the Wilmette Park District lease” and also said that MWRD officials believe a private landowner “has legal access to their property if available on public land. We would prefer avoiding the cost of legal action to end up granting an easement in the long run.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy