When it comes right down to it, the much-publicized lawsuit filed this week by
noted attorney Bill Roberts on behalf of The Hope Institute is about three
orange traffic cones. Set along the spot where Hazel Lane abuts a Hope School
parking lot, these cones theoretically posed “a severe danger to the health and welfare of the children we serve,” says Hope spokesman Mark Schmidt.
Obviously, it takes more than a trio of rubber cones to spark litigation. The
dispute between Hope and its neighbors on Hazel Lane dates back decades, and
both sides have resorted to keeping logs, snapping allegedly incriminating
pictures, hiring attorneys, firing off strongly-worded letters and sending a
flurry of Freedom of Information requests. This lawsuit filed by Hope Nov. 17
is the second one that the school for severely disabled children has filed
against the owner of the three cones, Woodside Township, and its road
commissioner, Don Duffy.
The issue in dispute is the use of Hazel Lane as a means of getting to and from
Hope Institute, which occupies 25 acres of land bordering Lake Springfield
leased from the city of Springfield for the token fee of $2,500 per year. Hazel
Lane — a narrow road with no curbs or shoulders, lined with ditches as deep as four
feet — dead-ends into a Hope Institute parking lot. The lane is maintained by Woodside
Township.
When the facility originally known as Hope School was established in the early
1960s, it housed only 10 children, and Hazel Lane could easily handle the
school’s traffic. As the school grew, however — now serving 125 children and staffed by about 500 employees — the Hazel Lane residents began to complain about the constant parade of staff
vehicles, school buses and delivery trucks up and down their narrow road.
In January 2004, a new, wider access road off East Hazel Dell to Hope was built
by the city of Springfield at a cost of more than $200,000. Despite the new
entrance way, some Hope school officials — as well as some employees, most delivery trucks and even job applicants — continued using the Hazel Lane route. In fact, school officials didn’t change the campus address from 50 Hazel Lane to 15 Hazel Dell until March
2006, more than two years after the new access road was built.
The address change was part of a settlement agreement hammered out by federal
magistrate Judge Byron Cudmore, in an attempt to resolve the first lawsuit Hope
filed against Woodside Township and Duffy [see “Road to court,” June 9, 2005]. The same settlement agreement obliged Hope to instruct staff and
vendors to use the new, wider entrance, and to erect signs alerting motorists
to enter Hope via Hazel Dell instead of Hazel Lane. Hope officials complied
with those requirements.
One sticking point remains: In 2004, soon after the new road opened, Duffy
installed a gate at the end of Hazel Lane, in an effort to change the traffic
pattern. Under the settlement, Duffy removed its gate and Hope replaced it with
another funded by $10,000 from Woodside Township. The settlement said Duffy
could not reinstall a gate “or other barrier . . . for the purpose of obstructing or impeding traffic to the
Hope School campus” unless the federal court found a “material breach” of the agreement.
And that’s where the three orange cones come in. They made a brief appearance after a
heavy snowfall last December, when a Woodside snowplow left what Schmidt
describes as “a three-foot-tall pile of snow” at the place where Hazel Lane joins the Hope parking lot. The township crew
placed the cones to alert motorists to the treacherous conditions. Neighbors
dispute Schmidt’s description, and say the snow pile was low enough to be easily crossed by
cars. Still, both parties ended up back in front of Cudmore for mediation in January of this year.
Hazel Lane residents insist they believed everything had been amicably settled
until reporters suddenly started calling on Nov. 17, asking about Hope’s latest litigation. Filed this time in the Seventh Circuit Court, Hope’s suit seeks to permanently enjoin Woodside from impeding traffic to the Hope
campus as long as it abides by the settlement agreement.
Duffy declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Woodside’s attorney, Thomas Wilson, said his response will be filed in court. Schmidt,
who made the rounds of every media outlet in Springfield to announce the filing
of the lawsuit, admits that the school operated safely with only one entrance
for more than four decades, but says Hope has shifted its focus to “more medically fragile” children in the past five years. He also admits that the three orange cones
could have been easily moved in case of emergency, but says it was necessary to
clarify the gate situation before the onset of snowy weather.
“Our board felt very strongly that because of our responsibilities to the
children here, we couldn’t go into another winter with this thing hanging over everyone’s heads,” he says.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2008.
