The Board Village Board has to treat all village residents equally, and pending a precedent or finding of past village install that means no help for one resident with stormwater drainage work.
Revisited this month after previously being tabled in March, the matter at hand involves work done by Haas at 219 Clark Street, extending and cleaning up a storm drain on private property. Resident Eric Klisiewicz showed up in February off this year to the monthly board meeting on the matter asking if the village might help, given it was storm drain.
Unable to act immediately on the item was not on the February meeting agenda, the board decided to study the matter and revisit it the following month, at which time the work had already been done.
Among the board’s rationale for denying the request for partial reimbursement for Klisiewicz were:
1) That the work had been completed prior to consideration at the March board meeting, and
2) A belief on the village’s part that the previous landowner had actually installed the storm drain (rather than the village) to drain water for a sawmill business.
“We can’t prove it,” Streets and Utilities head Bob LaMarche said of his theory on who installed the original storm drain off Clark Street.
Tying into a drainage path that crosses Ingersoll just west of North Boyd Street, the drainage channel follows the lay of the land and normal water flow, continuing through a village culvert under Ingersoll.
Pending either precedent or establishment of village installation of the original drainage off Clark Street, no tax dollars can go towards helping defray the cost of installation.