Communication Regarding Litigation

Dear Community Members,

As your school districts, our primary responsibility is to provide an exceptional education for our students while protecting the interests of our taxpayers. To ensure this, on Monday, February 23, Fremont School District 79 and Mundelein High School District 120 jointly filed a lawsuit in the Lake County Circuit Court against the Village of Mundelein.

The suit challenges the approval of high-density residential developments on the “Walnut Ridge” and the adjacent “Agricultural Property” sites. The core of the dispute lies in a new 2025 Village ordinance that significantly reduced developer “school impact fees,” creating a projected funding gap of over $3.3 million for our local schools. While these fees are intended to cover the capital costs of new student enrollment, the Village denied the school districts’ right to formally object to these insufficient rates during the approval process (see timeline of communications here). We are taking this action to ensure that new developments pay their fair share, preventing a massive financial burden from shifting onto existing taxpayers and school resources.

How is the Village’s impact fee ordinance creating issues?

In April 2025, the Village enacted a new ordinance that significantly reduced developer impact fees to support new student enrollment. To illustrate the severity of this change, we compared two local Pulte developments: fees for Walnut Ridge (2025) are substantially lower than those paid for Sheldon Woods (2020), despite rising infrastructure costs. The current difference in impact fees being paid in Round Lake and Mundelein is also dramatic. While the cost of educating students and maintaining facilities continues to climb, the Village's fee structure is moving in the opposite direction, creating a deficit that local schools cannot sustain.

When impact fees are inadequate, the “gap” doesn’t disappear—it is shifted onto current taxpayers, and it directly affects the quality of our schools. Without proper support from developers, our school districts could face:

• Increased class sizes as new students enroll without corresponding funding.

• Reduced educational programming due to budget strains.

• Overcrowded facilities, potentially leading to the use of mobile classrooms.

• Unfair tax burdens on residents in Mundelein, Grayslake, Hawthorn Woods, Libertyville, Long Grove, Round Lake, Wauconda, and unincorporated areas.

What are the school districts asking the court to do?

We are not opposed to growth; we welcome new families to our community. However, we are asking the court to ensure a fair process by:

• Ruling that the schools have a legal right to object to these impact fees.

• Requiring the Village to properly review and hold public hearings on our data and objections.

• Finding that the Village’s decision to rezone and approve development of over 240 acres of newly annexed land with dense single-family housing, without adequately and fairly providing for the cost to educate the new students, was unreasonable.

While we are pursuing legal clarity, we view this as a principled disagreement between neighbors that requires a neutral third party to resolve. We deeply value our long-standing relationship with the Village of Mundelein and continue to take pride in our daily collaborations with the fire, police, and planning departments. By asking the court to step in, our goal is simply to ensure a fair outcome that protects the long-term interests of our students, our schools, and the entire community.

For more information, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions document.

Sincerely,

The Boards of Education

Fremont School District 79 & Mundelein High School District 120