Maywood Park District employees working without pay as district faces financial cliff

Maywood Park District employees have not been paid for almost six weeks as the west suburban district struggles with mounting financial troubles, district leaders and workers say.

Since early October, four of the district’s 11-person staff, including interim Executive Director Rod Chaney, have been working without pay while the other seven have either quit or are waiting to return to work. The park district runs four parks and after-school programs, athletics and senior enrichment activities for the roughly 23,000 residents of Maywood.

The district has about $3,500 on hand, Board President Dawn Williams said.

In January, the district defaulted on a $175,000 loan, Williams said. The district was supposed to use an installment of property tax revenue from that month to pay back the loan, Williams and Chaney said, but the money was instead spent on operating expenses, which includes payroll and bills.

In March, the district attorneys alerted the board that the district was delinquent on the loan.

“Our board was under the impression that the money was already paid back,” Williams said.

Although the district recently finished paying back the loan using tax revenue it received between March and August, it remains in about $290,000 worth of debt, Chaney said. The district has also not submitted financial statements going back to 2020, according to the Illinois comptroller’s office.

Maywood residents in last week’s general election overwhelmingly approved a pair of nonbinding ballot questions that gave a green light to dissolving the park district, transferring park administration to the village and using the district’s annual tax levy of $700,000 to create a property tax relief fund. The village already administers seven of Maywood’s parks.

Because the referenda are nonbinding, nothing will change in Maywood for now. But Mayor Nathaniel Booker, who supported the ballot questions, said he’d pursue a binding referendum that mandated dissolution of the park district in next spring’s municipal election and was confident residents would support the changes.

Williams and Chaney said they expected to be able to meet payroll in mid-November. Williams said another infusion of tax revenue could come from Cook County as soon as this week.

“However much that is, if it’s enough, we’ll definitely pay our employees,” she said. “We want our employees to be paid.”

Yahyness White, one of the park district employees, said she’d first found out the park district couldn’t meet payroll on Oct. 7. White moved into her first apartment just before she found out her paycheck had evaporated.

“Finding out I’m not going to be able to pay certain bills and stuff like that is very devastating,” said White, 24.

Shannon Kimble Sr., the athletic program director, said he expected to get paid “soon enough.”

“I can’t turn my back on the programs,” he said. “They’ve got to run.”

Maywood Mayor Nathaniel Booker said it was “unfortunate” that the park district was not paying its employees and blamed Williams and board Treasurer John Rice for the district’s financial straits.

“The lack of the board’s leadership accountability and overall direction is, to me, the problem,” Booker said.

The district’s former executive director, Lonette Hall, was put on administrative leave in March 2024 and her contract was not renewed in July. Booker said Hall played a role in the district’s financial decline, but said the board “never held her accountable to produce any real statements whatsoever.”

Williams countered that when board members asked for bank statements, Hall would not provide them. Rice did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment.

Hall’s LinkedIn account shows that she now works for the Foss Park District in North Chicago as the superintendent of recreation. She did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Maywood is represented by two of the Illinois General Assembly’s most powerful members: Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch. Welch referred a request for comment to the village and park district. Lightford said she wasn’t aware that park district employees hadn’t been paid, but that Maywood residents deserved a well-functioning park district and said there had been concerns about “the park district not flourishing” since her days as a Maywood village trustee in the late 1990s.

Most of the municipalities in Lightford’s district have separate administrations for their park districts, but she said her priority was ensuring good programming and facilities for residents.

“Whoever has the capacity to provide the services to the students and the children and the seniors, I’d be just fine with that,” she said. “I just need it to happen.”

Earlier this year, CBS News reported that south suburban Dolton had to use tax increment financing money to make payroll for its employees as the village remains mired in financial and legal issues.