From a text from Park Board veteran Cathy Cagle:
meeting notes 7/21/25
Approval of agenda
a. Remove IX: Annual Rollover Bond Information from the agenda
i. We’re a 18 million dollar organization
ii. Bonds are a complicated and sophisticated issue
iii. We owe it to ourselves and especially owe it to tax payers to obtain our
information only from licensed, vetted experts
iv. Aaron Gold, Speer Financial, will be presenting the same package that’s
contained in our board packets to the board in August.
v. Aaron is a senior vice president with Speer Financial. Aaron is a licensed
Qualified Municipal Advisor Representative (Series 50) with the Municipal
Securities Rulemaking Board. The Series 50 ensures that municipal
advisor representatives possess the necessary knowledge and
understanding of the municipal securities market, including relevant
regulations and ethical considerations. Mr Gold is a CPA with experience
working as the Director of Finance for the Batavia Park District and
working for DuPage County in various financial roles.
vi. Eric Anderson is a lawyer who, according to his LinkedIn profile, works in
the following areas: Corporate (including Not-for-Profit), Municipal,
Litigation, Estates, Real Estate. He does not work in bonds or any financial
specialties according to what he shares. If he had expertise in bonds I’m
sure he’d be the first to share that on LinkedIn.
vii. Eric bills the Park District – and therefore tax payers – at $420 per hour.
How could we justify paying Eric for this work since he’s not an expert and
not licensed?
viii. Do we want the public to think that we, the board, were even considering
allowing Attorney Anderson to take over our bond business and that this
presentation was the first step? Or should we choose to be transparent
and responsible and keep our bond business where it belongs – with
licensed specialists?
ix. 3 of the newest board members have never attended a bond meeting as a
member of the park board. They deserve to learn about bonds from a
qualified, licensed financial representative.
x. We will have exactly that sort of a presentation done for us in August by
Aaron Gold, a licensed qualified municipal securities advisor
xi. Therefore I move to strike Agenda Item IX: Annual Rollover Bond
Information from the Agenda
b. Remove X: presentation by Steve Wilson, Northwestern Health and Fitness from
the agenda
i. Steve Wilson is a citizen living in Huntley. Mr Wilson is NOT a resident
living within Crystal Lake Park District
ii. Presentations, prime time slots on a board meeting agenda, are
traditionally used to present in-depth information by experts.
iii. Mr Wilson wrote a letter to the editor, published in the Northwest Herald
on July 12, opposing the purchase of the Healthbridge property
v. We already know Mr Wilson’s personal opinion from his Letter to the Editor and as a non-resident, this issue doesn’t even directly affect him. He
brings no expertise to the matter
v. Are we going to invite every citizen who pens a letter to the editor
concerning the Park District to give a presentation at a board meeting?
vi. Allowing Mr Wilson to misuse the board’s time by giving a presentation on
his opinion could require the board to give equal presentation time to
those in favor of Healthbridge. Let’s not inadvertently set this precedence!
vii. The proper place on the agenda for citizen input is Matters from the
Public.
viii. Therefore I move to strike Agenda item ten, a presentation by Steve
Wilson, from the agenda
c. Remove Agenda item XI: a presentation by Statisnostics from the agenda
i. Did you wonder, like I did, why this item is on the agenda?
ii. This is solely Dr Tiesenga’s initiative, no board discussion or agreement.
And it turns out, after enough internet sleuthing, that Dr Tiesenga has put his own brother’s data analytics firm on the agenda to report to us on a topic that we did not request using data that appears could be suspect or possibly wrong.
iii. What is StatisNostics? StatisNostics is a data analytics firm that
geolocates government revenue, spending and debt metrics to specific
addresses.- in other words it reports data. What data? Let’s take a close
look at that because it’s highly concerning.
iv. This is how StatisNostics describes their data source: ‘All content included
on the StatisNostics platform, unless uploaded by users, sourced from
public domain, or obtained through third-party data providers such as the
Census Bureau, Realtor.com, and Zillow – are we really inviting a company
into our board meeting, taking our valuable time and reporting information
sourced from the Census, Zillow, and Realtor.com?
v. Can we trust this information? I’m not sure. In their website disclaimer
StatisNostics states: StatisTax, LLC, its officers, members, managers,
employees, agents, successors and assignees, do not promise or warrant
that StatisTax, Taxpayer Dashboard, StatisNostics or any of the data or
material they encompass or provide is exhaustive, correct, or without
inaccuracy.
vi. Well, what can we trust when it comes to the park district’s finances?
Crystal Lake Park District has audited financials that have been
recognized as outstanding. The park district has received a Certificate of
Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting by the Government
Finance Officer’s Association for several consecutive years.
vii. The award program was created in 1945 to encourage and assist state
and local government to go beyond the minimum requirements of
generally accepted accounting principals to prepare annual
comprehensive financial reports that evidence the spirit of
transparency and full disclosure and then to recognize individual
governments that succeed in achieving that goal. The goal of the
program is not to assess the financial health of participating
governments, but rather to assure that users of their financial
statements have the information they need to do so themselves.
viii. So the real question is why, WHY are we having a presentation from a
company that takes public domain data and explicitly states that that data
is not promised or warranted to be correct and without inaccuracy? The
answer is simple: because President Tiesenga appears to have a personal
agenda, unsupported by the board, and has called in his brother, Ed
Tiesenga.
ix. Ed Tiesenga, President Tiesenga’s brother, is part owner of StatisNostics.
And Dr Tiesenga failed to disclose that information to us, as a board. Talk
about a screaming failure to be transparent! Could that be a conflict of
interest having your immediate family member present to the board? Is
this truly how we want to proceed?
x. We have audited and awarded financial information should the board
decide to dig in and look at taxes and revenues. Let’s not chose to go
down a dark and confusing path of listening to a data presentation, not
requested by the board, created using non-audited information that
StatisNostics themselves states may not be correct, exhaustive or without
inaccuracy.
xi. Therefore I move to strike Agenda item XI: a presentation by Statisnostics,
from the agenda
d. Remove Consent Agenda Item d ratifying the new board meeting dates from the
consent agenda
i. Anyone else notice how many times we’ve had to discuss the change of
meeting date since the current board majority approved changing Board
meeting dates from the first and third Thursday of the month to the first
and third Mondays?
ii. This is yet another example of how our current board lawyer, Attorney
Anderson, has failed to correctly counsel the board.
iii. The board approved changing the dates at the first meeting of the current
board on May 15. The majority voted to change an established meeting
schedule that served the community well for the last 15 years without
specifying actual dates to hold meetings.
iv. Hasty policy changes clearly have unexpected consequences. The issue
of board meeting dates appears twice on tonight’s agenda because the
change was given insufficient consideration in both the scheduling and
legal requirements to implement the change.
= = = = =
Each of Cathy Cagle’s motions were defeated.
