Markham city officials filed a lawsuit and temporary restraining order against the Markham Park District Oct. 20, alleging the park board has mismanaged its funds and violated a 2012 intergovernmental agreement.
But several Park District officials said they were blindsided by the city’s move. Executive Director Quintina Brown and program director LaKeya Webb said the Park District has relied on city grants for more than a decade and that Mayor Roger Agpawa has made several promises to fund district programs and facilities, but has backed out several times.
Instead, Brown said, Agpawa started cutting city funds to the district this year without warning.
The lawsuit attempts to temporarily restrict the Park District from enforcing a disputed resolution passed in September, transferring possession of its assets and taking on new financial obligations. The lawsuit also argues for the district to turn over its property, net tax revenues and other assets to the city.
The Park District has until Dec. 10 to respond in court to the city’s allegations.
The dispute centers on an intergovernmental agreement created in 2012 when the Park District and city agreed to collaborate on park operations and funding because the Park District lacked home rule authority, which limits the district’s ability to levy its own taxes and provide a full range of services.
As part of the 2012 negotiations, the Park District agreed that all operations, programs and financial decisions would be made by the city. This required the district to hand over ownership of facilities and for the city to take on full operational and maintenance responsibility for facilities, programs and services.
The city also agreed to take on insurance payments for Park District employees, to the best of its ability.
In exchange, the park board agreed to annually levy property taxes, make all debt service payments and pay the city twice a year an amount equal to the net tax revenue. This payment included the district’s leftover tax revenue after paying other obligations such as debt and administrative expenses.
The city alleged in the October lawsuit that the Park District failed to transfer its property and to make its payments, according to the court documents.
The city argued it has held its end of the deal by providing the Park District almost $5.5 million in funding since the agreement began in February 2012, according to court documents. This creates more debt for both the Park District and the city, attorneys argue in the filing.
“These actions have caused dissipation of public funds, not provided services to the residents, and disrupted public park operations,” they wrote.
City officials stated they asked the Park District to correct its noncompliance in June, but instead, the park board voted 3-1 in September to terminate the 2012 agreement, which the city alleged created another violation.
For the agreement to be terminated, either the Park District or city are required to give the other party at least six months notice, according to the 2012 document.
The city said it received no notification of termination and thus the agreement was automatically extended to 2042 after its initial 10-year term that ended in 2022.
But in the September resolution, the Park District argued that in the 13 years since the agreement was adopted, neither the city nor the Park District made “any effort to exercise the rights and obligations” described in the agreement, rendering it no longer in effect.
The district’s resolution states that in 2013 and 2014, the city did not intend to follow the agreement and instead established annual financial grants to the district. These grants continued from 2014 through 2024 and ranged from $60,000 to $354,525, as stated in the resolution.
Park District officials state based on those actions, the agreement had been abandoned and substituted with financial grants.
Brown, the executive director, said the Park District has faced several funding cuts from the city this year. She said the city terminated employee insurance in November, along with a summer youth employment program in June without notice.
The insurance was terminated, she said, following a July notice from City Administrator Derrick Champion stating the Park District owed $60,000 for health insurance. Brown said when she asked for a line item list that totaled to the owed amount, Champion refused, and the district did not want to pay the amount without knowing how it was calculated.
“The Park District treasurer felt that was like an off the top of their head number,” Brown said. “He said, nothing is exactly $60,000.”
Brown said the city and previous mayors agreed for more than a decade to help pay for the employee insurance and not charge the district, so she said it was a shock to receive the insurance bill over the summer.
The insurance loss, she said, affects the health and mental well-being of the district’s employees.
Brown said the city also terminated a district summer youth program in June, a program that began in 2021 and had four youth employees, one of which was the mayor’s granddaughter.
“So now you have to call these kids, you have to call the parents, and let them know there’s no job when they could have gotten a job doing something else,” said Kenneth Muldrow, a former park board president.
Brown said the city’s allegations, specifically Agpawa’s actions, are a complete turnaround from past collaborative work.
“We’re doing what we have to do to make sure that we’re not mismanaging or mishandling anything, so I don’t know where he got this from,” Brown said.
She said Agpawa was the first mayor to give the park employees salary raises under city funding. She said he also offered for city employees to assist the Park District, such as Everett Simmons, the assistant superintendent for the city’s public works, who stepped in to help the park district after the district’s former superintendent retired in 2021.
But last October, Brown said, Agpawa told the Park District that Simmons had until the end of the year to return to city work.
Webb said Agpawa has made similar promises multiple times and revoked them later. She said he told the district not to raise taxes to pay for improvements because the city would pay for it. She said in one meeting, he told her the city could pay to fix basketball courts, but did not.
“He told us that, oh don’t worry about that, we got that,” Webb said. “He said ‘the city has so much money that it’s ridiculous, and we’re going to take care of that. Don’t raise the tax.’”
“Every time we sat down for a meeting it was, ‘we got you, we’re going to do this for you,’ but it was all a setup to make us look bad,” Webb said.
Cook County Judge David B. Atkins scheduled a hearing for 11:30 a.m. Jan. 23, 2026, in Courtroom 2102 of the Richard J. Daley Center.
awright@chicagotribune.com
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/25/markham-sues-park-district-finances/
