Niles Township High School District 219 recently cleared a major hurdle in its quest to deal with storage of its fleet of school buses.
The village of Niles planning and zoning board voted to pass on to the full village board the school district’s special use request to build a bus terminal and maintenance facility on property the school district owns in the 6000 block of Howard Street.
“The Planning and Zoning Board forwarded our requests to the Board of Trustees with no recommendation, and we are hopeful that the Niles village board will approve the three variance requests,” said Eric Trimberger, NTHS Dist. 219 assistant superintendent for business.
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The planning and zoning board vote came Feb. 6, after months of pushing the school board’s request to future meetings. Planning and zoning officials had repeatedly expressed apprehension over the district’s planned project and tabled consideration of a special use permit for the bus terminal and maintenance facility multiple times.
“The village’s Planning and Zoning Board was concerned that the proposed bus storage facility would impact traffic, particularly because most of the buses will be crossing over the railroad tracks each way at Leigh every day,” said Bruce Sylvester, a Niles economic development department senior planner.
Now, though, the seven-member board’s unanimous action means the issue could go before the full village board for final consideration at its Feb. 28 meeting.
A special use permit for the maintenance and bus storage facility planned for 6119 Howard Street was first considered at a meeting in June 2016.
At a meeting of the board last October, village officials expressed concerns over the impact the facility may have on traffic in the area and the village’s ability to take action if the site and the way it’s operated negatively impacts the health and safety of residents.
Sylvester said the school district needed a special use permit for the storage facility because of village code related to outdoor storage of equipment, including vehicles. He said the village ordinance, he presumes, “enable[s] the village to provide more scrutiny of such proposals and to impose conditions to minimize the impact of such uses on adjacent property owners, such as for noise, unsightliness, or impacts on traffic.”
If village trustees give the final approval next week, the maintenance facility and terminal would be built to service buses that transport approximately 7,300 students in NTHS District 219, Niles Elementary School District 71, Morton Grove School District 70 and Lincolnwood School District 74.
NTHS Dist. 219 would retain ownership of the property and oversee the service, which will be run by bus contractor First Student Inc., according to school district officials.
Students from Lincolnwood and portions of Niles, Skokie and Morton Grove in Niles Township attend school in NTHS District 219.
Unsatisfied with their prior bus service contractor, Trimberger said the district began looking for a property to house a bus maintenance and terminal facility in September 2014 and ultimately purchased the Howard Street property for $2.5 million in August 2015.
In March 2015, the district’s board of education authorized the purchase of 55 school buses for $4.9 million, he said.
Trimberger said the district initially believed it would be able to receive a building permit from the North Cook Intermediate Service Center for the project. But the agency declined to issue the permit due to a recent lawsuit involving Crystal Lake High School and a set of bleachers the school installed without permission from city officials. The lawsuit led to an Illinois Supreme Court decision and a new state law that requires school districts to comply with local zoning laws when constructing new facilities or buildings.
Trimberger said the district initially proposed parking 75 buses at the Howard Street site, including 20 buses owned by First Student. After Niles officials expressed concern about the plan, the district reduced that number to 55 buses and worked with Niles staff on a traffic plan, Trimberger said.
He said negotiations between the district and the village were initially hung up on a number of conditions, including staggering bus departure times and a clawback mechanism for Niles officials to revoke the special use permit.
Students are getting to and from school “just fine,” Trimberger said, but the district has incurred additional legal and engineering fees because it had taken so long for the planning and zoning board’s nod, Trimberger said. He said the district is also spending extra money to transport the buses to and from First Student’s maintenance facility in Glenview.
After NTHS Dist. 219 purchased the new fleet of school buses, Trimberger said district officials and the village of Skokie were not able to come to a long term agreement that would allow the district to park the buses on Niles North and Niles West High School campuses in Skokie.
He said the village offered the district a temporary one-year allowance to park the buses on the Niles West campus under the assumption the district would use that time to find another location to store the vehicles.
The buses have remained on the Niles West property in Skokie since August of 2015, according Trimberger.
Pete Peyer, community development director for Skokie, said they expected the district to find a new location for the fleet within a year, but he added that there’s no expiration date on the temporary parking allowance.
“The village is aware that District 219 is working on a permanent solution for the location of their bus operation,” said Peyer. “The village will be flexible on a time schedule with District 219 until a permanent location is found in Niles, Skokie or elsewhere. We understand that there are numerous factors involved in the location of a bus fleet/facilities and that it could take some time to find the right location.”
He said there have not been any issues with buses being stored at the high school, and he added that the safe and convenient transporting of students continues to be foremost.
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Lee V. Gaines is a freelancer.