Although residents of some unincorporated parcels are seeking to join up with a municipality, a few neighborhoods in northwest Cook County continue to favor their independent status.
They remain unincorporated because homeowners say it offers certain advantages, such as having fewer laws to govern them, but residents know it may be only a matter of time before a suburb claims them.
Although some villages say they don’t forcibly annex land, state law allows municipalities to annex any property that is less than 60 acres and bordered on three sides by the village.
One neighborhood that has fended off annexation overtures from Arlington Heights is the Lynwood subdivision, a community of 113 single-family homes on 90 acres in Wheeling Township southeast of Illinois Highway 53 and Palatine Road.
“If you want a little bit of country still in an urban area, to be unincorporated is one way of achieving that,” said Raymond Young, president of the Lynwood Homeowners Association.
Lynwood lacks those finishing touches characteristic of subdivisions located within municipalities, such as curbs, gutters and sidewalks. But the tradeoff, Young said, are that lot sizes are at least a half-acre, and they have more leeway in the kind of building they put up.
Young, a Lynwood resident for 20 years, said one major advantage of being located on unincorporated lands is property taxes, which are considerably lower than rates paid by Arlington Heights homeowners. Lynwood residents pay the county tax rate of $1.17 per $100 assessed valuation; Arlington Heights residents pay an additional 76-cent municipal tax.
Charles Witherington-Perkins, Arlington Heights director of planning and community development, said Lynwood is one of six unincorporated parcels on the borders of the village that Arlington Heights expects to take in over the next decade. Arlington Heights assists in providing Lynwood with emergency services, and it would like to have the extra tax revenue.
On the opposite side of Illinois 53, the village of Palatine is closing in on 1,300 Palatine Township residents of townhomes and apartments near Rand Road and Williams Drive.
Richard Kozdras, director of community development in Palatine, said the village’s 10-year plan to expand its boundaries includes annexing the area.
But John Luety, president of the Cunningham Courts Homeowners Association, which is in the unincorporated territory, said being under Palatine’s wing offers no advantages.
In addition to higher taxes, Luety explained that annexation would not improve police service because county protection is adequate. The area’s unwillingness to join Palatine also stems from a running dispute between residents and village officials.
The homeowners association unsuccesfully sued the village to keep Palatine from leasing a nearby abandoned building as a counseling center for troubled adolescents. Residents have also been dismayed, Luety said, because the village permitted a restaurant to open nearby at the site of a former nightclub that had a clientele of rowdy patrons.
