"Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment,
nothing can fail; without it
nothing can succeed."
~Abraham Lincoln
August 21, 1858
Embedded Files
609 S. 3rd St.
Geneva Open Meetings
Act Violation
Below are messages showing how Mayor Burns, the City Administrator Stephanie Dawkins, and David DeGroot withheld material information from the City Council to avoid questions on the process they had engineered to allow a developer with a checkered history to change the intended use of the Duke and Lee’s site. They allowed the current owner to further testify in that meeting where he was pleading for an extension of his plans knowing that his statements were not true. In the process, the Mayor likely exceeded his authority, and publicly made false statements that he was directed to do so by the unanimous consent of the City Council, while no meeting minutes exist to support such claims.
Mission of the project
Mission of the project
Sharing files from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to enlighten the Citizens of Geneva as to exactly how the Mayor has used City staff whom he appoints to their positions annually and acted himself as well, to assist a developer with whom he has personal ties back to high school to push through a project without any opportunity for public comment until after the project is approved by City Council. This includes accepting letters from the developer in question and cutting an pasting verbatim in one case, and almost verbatim in another. Withholding information from the Council on who the buyer is, not advising them of the material changes to the project, and that there was no funding for the project as the Seller’s representative was advising them. The following timeline lays out the process chronologically for you in their own words from emails.
UPDATE March 10, 2025 from the Office of the Attorney General, State of Illinois
Data gathered in relation to the events related to 609 S. 3rd St.
Upon finding out in June that the Burton Foundation did not qualify for State financing after all of their efforts to make it happen, DeGroot, emails Dawkins and Burns and suggests that they withhold information from the Council as the site is “tied up until October” and they can let them know after Crespo’s plans are extended so the zoning stays intact. They allowed the seller’s rep to tell the entire Council she was all set and really close to having her financing. She was just in the beginning phase of attempting again and they knew it.
The Mayor’s letter sent to the IHDA was either done with the unanimous consent and at the direction of the Council like he says, in violation of the Open Meetings act as there are no agenda items, meeting minutes, or other that would memorialize this ever being done at a meeting. Secondly, emails show that the first time the Council sees the letter is the 10th of April as an example in case they want to send their own. The mayor is either being dishonest in public statements about this letter (attached) or broke the law. I’ve requested he point me to the meeting minutes and he has not.
If the Mayor’s letter was not done with a vote and direction by the Council, he is acting outside of his authority to assist a developer who stands to benefit from State subsidies. This developer will profit from the favors that the Mayor is doing.
Mayor Burns, David DeGroot, and Stephanie Dawkins have gone to tremendous lengths to keep this project off the Development Map on the City site when projects with far less work and coordination are on there.
Mr. DeGroot and the Mayor wrote letters at the direction of a developer, and may have simply cut and paste these letters at their direction. Mr. DeGroot’s letters suggest a process that completely avoids the public comment until after approval of the development by the Council in an effort to help the developer get State subsidized financing.
The two attachments are one post on social media made by Mayor Burns. Both contain demonstrably false claims that can be proven with information we have obtained via FOIA. If his claim of unanimous direction of the Council is true, then they violated the Open Meetings Act. Based on emails though, it is demonstrably false. See below and attached.
Timeline prior to March 7th, 2025:
March 20th Degroot and Manning discuss impact fees by email. Attachment not provided in FOIA
March 20th email from Kim Termini of Burton Foundation to David DeGroot stating
March 20 Degroot replies that he will forward to the Mayor and asks for plans for site review. They were subsequently provided, will sent under a different email as the files are huge and were initially not provided under the FOIA until we objected.
Manning replies to DeGroot almost immediately with the plans for the 54 unit development (again I will provide those plans).
March 20 DeGroot emails the Mayor with the request for the letter. Burns replies. Of note, as seen above, the plans were already sent to DeGroot before he sent this email, but he must not have reviewed them.
March 22nd: Degroot replies to Manning and copies others with a zoning letter to IHDA. The request was to copy and paste on City letterhead, but the city is withholding the Burton attachments so we cannot compare, but have no reason to believe he did not comply with the devolper. See attachment “Attached_2024_03_22_Zoning Letter Tartesso”
March 25th Dawkins emails the Council and the Mayor about the project indicating the Burton Foundation has submitted a project, despite the Mayor’s adamant statements that there is no project submitted and no plans, they have both, and neither ever made it to the website almost a year later. She then says it’s not a “formal submittal”.
March 27th, Manning tells DeGroot they got preliminary funding and are under an option on the property should know more in June FOIA email
March 27th: With no Council meeting since March 18th where this was not on the agenda, and no other meetings shared on the website, the Mayor writes a letter of support for a “proposed development” and provides an endorsement for the Burton Foundation in the letter. His claim in the attachment above is that this was done with “unanimous support of the City Council and its direction to me…….” When was this direction given? He later described the letter as “almost perfunctory”, knowing full well that is not true. This letter was needed to give Burton Foundation points on their application.
April 3: Degroot to other staff indicating they will be including others in the discussion and talking about the project at the staff meeting.
April 10th: Ms. Dawkins emails the Council informing them the Mayor has written the letter dated the 27th “as an example if you wish to send a letter of support”. The Mayor, however, has publicly stated that this letter was done at the direction of and with the unanimous consent of the Council. This is clearly not the case.
April 10: Ms. Dawkins and Ms. Bowring exchange emails. The Mayor states this type of letter is “all but perfunctory” but knows this is not true. It was written at the request of the developer, possibly even drafted by the developer, and gives the developer points in their submission. It’s a favor to a developer done with no due diligence and no authority to do so on behalf of the City Government and Council. If it were “all but perfunctory”, then why has Ms. Dawkins never seen one before? Why is the Council seeing it after it was sent?
May 17th: After numerous emails and several calls as you will see in the entire email FOIA, DeGroot sends Manning an updated zoning letter based on the feedback Manning got from the state on her application. This letter is attached as Attached 2024 05 17 Zoning Letter Tartesso. You will see some changes from the prior one. In point 3 on this version of the letter there is a very material change. This time DeGroot lays out clearly to IHDA that Site Plan Review will not allow for the applicant to be cross examined, not any public comments until after Council approval. Manning’s letter to DeGroot that was withheld from us is critical here, as this may constitute fraud on the IHDA, as there is no way that DeGroot could get this process through given the variances required, it would need a full hearing with cross examination and public comments.
June 3rd: Dawkins, Burns, DeGroot on an email find out that Burton Foundation did not get their financing and DeGroot suggests they hold off advising the Council until the site is extended. The mere suggestion that they withhold the information from the Council knowing that there will be another attempt to extend the plans and they do now want to jeopardize it. See Council Meeting below where they play up that the buyer has the financing and this is the fastest way to get this done, etc. They allowed Crespo’s (seller’s) representative to say that they must have the financing because they have money down and they’re close to ready to go while they knew that was not true.
October 1: Ahead of the 10/7 meeting to approve the Crespo plans, Manning again sends an email DeGroot asking him to put on letterhead and “edit as necessary”, and he obliges.
October 3: DeGroot and Manning email exchange about the 10/7 meeting where DeGroot acknowledged that she would have to have a full site review with the plans changing anyway and this could cause questions from the Council. They then talk. Note: Manning had already presented a completely new and different set of plans for a 35 unit project. Still no mention of anything on the site. Note on the Council meeting agenda, even though it was known that Manning and her architect would be there, no mention of this project or any changes. The entire agenda was to extend the existing plans as is for another year.
The reason that they needed this extension was not the plans. It’s the ZONING. If the plans expired, then the zoning would have to start all over again requiring full public hearings and cross examination as a full zoning change does.
Ultimately Manning does not appear at the meeting at all after talking with DeGroot.
October 7th : City Council Meeting:
https://www.geneva.il.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_10072024-2423 Page 362 and 363 are the full extent of what is in the packet regarding the property. No mention of who the buyer is, even though it is fully known to the Mayor, Mr. DeGroot who was present, and it was even asked by one of the Council members. Meeting recording here, relevant part at 1 hour 10 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQoHS_hRxIA
November 2024: Burton Foundation closes on the property.
January 2025 The Mayor hosts a meeting of citizens, roughly 30 concerned citizens attend, Ald. Kosirog, Ald. Marks. Mayor Burns is asked if the Burton Foundation had any plans to develop anything in Geneva. He said “Not to my knowledge”. Further emails after the fact recapping the meeting, the Mayor parses words more carefully and says to the effect : No formal plans have been submitted. Two sets of plans had been submitted and preliminary reviews performed.
Attachment Legend:
IMG 0315 PNG is the first two assertions Mayor Burns made.
IMG 0316 PNG is the second part of the post and him posting the letter
Attached_2024_04_10 is the letter Mayor Burns sent to IHDA and we obtained by FOIA.
Attached_2024_04_10_Letter of Support - Tartesso (2).pdfAttached_2024_03_22_Zoning Letter Tartesso first DeGroot Letter to IHDA indicating that there is a “proposed project” and a cursory review has been done.
Attached_2024_03_22_Zoning_Letter_Tartesso.pdfCopy of Tartesso: emails with Burns, Dawkins, DeGroot, and Council
Copy of Tartesso.pdfAttached 2024 04 10 Letter of Support, Letter from Kevin Burns on City Letterhead dated March 27th
Attached_2024_04_10_Letter of Support - Tartesso (3).pdfAttached_2024_05_17_Zoning_Letter_Tartesso2
Attached_2024_05_17_Zoning_Letter_Tartesso2.pdfFOIA Request March 2024
609 S. 3rd St - Draft Letter of Support .pdfPage updated
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