D303 Board Member Blasts Schlomann Over Red Gate Traffic Lights

A local school board member on Monday told the St. Charles City Council that the St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 Board of Education did not renege on a cost-sharing agreement for traffic lights and a turn lane at the entrance to St. Charles North High School.

Board member Ed McNally, addressing the council during the public comments section toward the end of its regular meeting, said the Board of Education’s role in rejecting the original agreement has been mischaracterized largely because of the actions of the superintendent of schools.

McNally blamed Superintendent Dr. Donald Schlomann for failing to provide board members with information about traffic studies that might have weighed in favor of the agreement.

Ultimately, however, McNally said, the original agreement that the Board of Education rejected likely would have been voted down anyway because Schlomann had negotiated the agreement with the city without the board’s authorization.

Bridge Sparked Safety Fears

The city and school district entered into talks about installing traffic lights at Red Gate Road and the entrance to St. Charles North High School about the time the Red Gate Bridge opened in mid-December. Included in the agreement was a request by the district for a right-turn lane into the high school.

Schlomann told the board about the cost-sharing agreement prior to its Business Services Committee meeting in late April. In fact, the committee’s consideration of the agreement had been delayed until then at the request of board member James Gaffney Jr., who was scheduled to be out of town during an earlier meeting at which the committee was to look at the pact.

The superintendent told the committee in April that he approached the city about the traffic lights agreement when it became apparent to him that traffic from the new Red Gate Bridge might create safety issues at the high school’s entrance. The proposal he brought to the board would have had the school district paying about half the project’s $500,000 cost.

But Gaffney opposed the cost-sharing agreement with the city during the April committee meeting, saying prior traffic studies had indicates the traffic lights would be needed as a result of the bridge, and that the city should have installed the lights as part of the bridge’s construction. Doing so would have been substantially less expensive, he said. He and other board members also criticized the city for used leftover funding from the project to purchase two downtown properties.

Ultimately, the committee recommended the full board’s rejection of the pact in mid-May.

By that time, however, the city already had awarded contracts for the work — in part because officials believed the agreement would be approved, as well as to ensure the project would be completed by the start of the 2013-14 school year.

That sparked a new round of negotiations between the city and the school district, with some city officials saying privately at the time that the cost-sharing agreement was on life support. Still, the board agreed to fund about half of what the original agreement proposed — $125,000 — but only for the new right-turn lane heading into the high school.

The Traffic Study

The traffic study Gaffney cited during the meetings in April and May was done at the request of a nearby homeowners association, but it did not indicate traffic lights would be warranted at the high school until 2030, based on projections for growing bridge use.

McNally said after Monday night’s City Council meeting that that information would have put the original agreement in a more favorable light in his eyes. He criticized Schlomann for not broaching the subject during the April committee meeting and only making “an oblique reference” to it during the board’s meeting in May when the pact was rejected outright.

But even that would not have been enough to satisfy McNally, who said that in retrospect, he would have felt obligated to vote against it because Schlomann had entered into negotiations with the city on the issue without the board’s blessing.

Frustration Over City’s View of District 303

While speaking to the City Council, McNally expressed frustration over the mischaracterization of the board’s action as reneging on a handshake agreement. He told the council that the city did not have an agreement with the board at all, but with a superintendent who acted without authority.

Schlomann, McNally said, should have sought the board’s approval before beginning talks with the city.

When the City Council took up the revised agreement in June, aldermen clearly expressed their anger and frustration with St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, with one alderman likened the board’s action to breaking a handshake deal and others expressing misgivings about future dealings with the district and another criticizing the district for not taking on the cost of traffic lights for a school whose students largely live outside of St. Charles.

Added at 1:22 a.m. Aug. 7, 2013 (The following paragraphs were inadvertently deleted as the story first was filed early Tuesday evening, Aug. 6, 2013):

McNally was seated as a member of the District 303 Board of Education after winning the April election. He said the impetus for his school board candidacy was the way the school district rushed through the decision-making process when it reorganized Richmond, 300 S. 12th St.,  and Davis, 1125 S. 7th St., elementary schools into learning centers.

The reorganization, which was implemented for the 2011-2012 school year, has been the subject of a bitter court fight between parents who opposed it and the school district. Testimony in the trial on the lawsuit concluded last week, and is awaiting a Kane County judge's decision.

Related:

• June 6, 2013: Red Gate Light Drives Wedge Between St. Charles, District 303

• May 13, 2013: St. Charles School Board Dumps Traffic Signal for North High

• April 29, 2013: City, District 303 to Meet on Red Gate Traffic at St. Charles North

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