Recent Letter to the Editor Published in the Northwest Herald

Thanks to Brad Fennessy and Bruce Mazurkiewicz for their eloquent letter to the editor that was published recently. The full letter appears in this post.

Letter to the Editor: Protect Our Parks from Runaway Legal Fees

​To the Editor,

​As Crystal Lake taxpayers, we expect our property taxes to directly support youth programming, senior activities, and park maintenance. Instead, a deep-seated structural flaw in the Crystal Lake Park District’s accounting formula is quietly siphoning community resources to cover volatile administrative overhead.

​A recent review of public financial ledgers revealed that thousands of dollars are being pulled

straight out of the Recreation Fund to pay for outside legal services with Staub Anderson LLC.

Because of a fixed administrative formula, whenever legal billing spikes, our community

recreation assets automatically absorb the financial blow. Over 25% of the district's entire

annual legal budget was exhausted in just a two-month window during recent executive

transitions, characterized by opaque block-billing practices.

​Worse still, internal records expose a glaring lack of vendor compliance. In February, staff had

to manually intervene to reverse an unannounced, unapproved contract deviation—an hourly

rate increase from $425 to $450 slipped directly onto the January invoice. When challenged, the firm defensively brushed it off as an "accommodation."

​Relying on a system where local recreation dollars act as an open-ended safety net for runaway legal fees severely compromises public trust. Our community deserves a proactive, protective approach to its funds. The board must take immediate action to insulate the Recreation Fund and cap outside legal billing. Our tax dollars belong in our parks, not in the pockets of defensive outside counsel.

​Respectfully,

Brad Fennessy & Bruce Mazurkiewicz