North Cook News

The Wheeling Village board approved a budget amendment for the Chicago Executive Airport.

"So if you look at the collective amount that we're asking here, probably around $200,000 of delinquent fees," CEA Director Jeffrey Miller said. "We were working with our legal counsel on that because as we went through and tried to clean up a lot of this, there were things where different iterations of the leases where they were released to different people, tax rolls were being sent to different entities. We’ve squared away where all the tax bills are being sent now to the appropriate parties. But we will work with our legal counsel to see if there's a way to remove some of the fees."

The village of Wheeling has an intergovernmental agreement with the Chicago Executive Airport, and part of this agreement involves all budget changes being approved by all parties in the agreement, which is why the village had to vote on it. The director of the CEA presented the reason for the budget adjustment to the board. 

Jeffrey Miller, director of the CEA, spoke to the board about the budget adjustment. He has been doing a deep dive into some of the leases at the airport, several of which are delinquent in Cook County taxes. They have gone through the leases, finding who is responsible for what taxes. Some of the taxes were owed by the tenants, but some of the leases directed the payments to come from the airport. 

The budget amendment is to be able to get caught up on these payments. The airport is not too concerned about the payments because overall they are still making money even while making these payments. In the future, there will be a section in their yearly budget for these expected payments so no more adjustments will have to be made.