It could be the beginning of the end for the South Lake Mosquito Abatement District, with the Lake County Board voting 18-1 in favor of an ordinance proposing its dissolution during Tuesday’s meeting.
Southlake provides pest treatment and surveillance to Bannockburn, Riverwoods, Deerfield, Highland Park and Highwood. The recent vote is only the first step of the dissolution process, which requires an audit.
Board Member Ann Maine, district 3, was the sole dissenting vote. The South Lake MAD is the last of its kind in Lake County after the Lake Bluff Mosquito Abatement District was dissolved in 2021. In a state with more local governments than any other states, single issue focused taxing bodies such as the South Lake MAD have faced growing criticisms, and the dissolution enjoyed bipartisan support during Lake County’s meeting.
The move towards South Lake’s potential dissolution goes back at least a few years. In 2023, the Lake County Board approved three new appointments to the district’s board, kicking off three longtime members. Maine, again the sole opposition vote, criticized the move at the time.
She was similarly opposed Tuesday, saying the district’s unincorporated areas will have “no recourse” if it was dissolved, and reiterating concerns she had raised in 2023.
Maine was also critical of a letter written by Kim Stone, who at the time was a new member of the South Lake MAD and who voiced her support for dissolving the district.
Maine did not respond to a request for additional comments as of Friday afternoon.
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Lake County Board Chair Sandy Hart, district 13, pushed back on Maine’s comments. Hart said she’s spent “a significant amount of time” looking at the district and accused it of spending “far more than area municipalities.” Hart also raised a broader argument against the necessity for such single-issue municipalities.
“The state of Illinois has more units of government than any other state in the country,” Hart said. “I’m really proud of the work that our board has done, little by little, chipping away and saying, ‘hey, is there another place that would be more effective to do this work?’”
Lake County has 52 municipalities, Hart said, 47 of which do their own mosquito management.
Board Member J. Kevin Hunter, district 5, also gave comments in support of moving forward with dissolution. He considered it an issue of “redundancy of services.”
“Above all, I’m for smaller government, plain and simple,” Hunter said.
Diane Hewitt, district 8, said that while she was voting yes, she had concerns about the loss of services for residents.
“If we go ahead with this process and eliminate the mosquito abatement as it stands right now, I think there’s going to be a lot of people not happy with the services that they’re lacking,” Hewitt said.
Statewide issue
Roland Calia is a project manager at the Civic Federation, a Chicago research institute that has criticized similar MADs in Cook County.
Calia said Illinois has almost 9,000 local governments, the most of any state. He described this abundance of taxing bodies as a “relic of the past,” from when local governments didn’t have the fiscal or professional capacity to provide certain services.
“But that’s really no longer true,” Calia said.
While mosquito abatement “is an important public health function,” dissolving them eliminates redundant management positions, opens up a larger pool of resources available to county or municipal governments, allows for economies of scale for purchases, and makes them more accountable to the public.
While the tax levy collected by such districts may be low, it “still doesn’t warrant having a separate government with local officials and local functions,” Calia said.
Stone’s letter
In a public comment submitted to Lake County, SLMAD trustee Stone called for the dissolution of the mosquito abatement district.
In a letter, she called the district “largely unknown” and “unaccountable” to the public, with no professional staff and poor management. The district had over $1 million in the bank, Stone said, “nearly twice its annual budget and well over the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit.”
Mosquito management would be “better accomplished” by professional staff at the county or municipal level, she argued, and should be led by public health experts, not “volunteer residents.”
Speaking to a Pioneer Press reporter, Stone said her concerns moving ahead were about who would take over the work of monitoring and treating mosquitoes after the district is dissolved, and what the treatment techniques would be.
She highlighted non-chemical ways of reducing mosquito populations, such as simply overturning any containers of still water after it rains, which people can be educated about.
She also noted nearly a dozen abandoned swimming pools in the district, full of algae that will have to be dealt with.