During the early morning hours of Feb. 6, Paulette Vrett happened to look out her bedroom window and saw a McHenry County Sheriff’s Police car pull into her driveway.
“It was between 5:30 and 6 a.m.,” she recalled. “At that hour of the morning my first thought was that someone had died.”
Fortunately the news was not that grim. But to John and Paulette Vrett, it was far more perplexing. The policeman was there to serve them with papers indicating that their Westwood Court home had been sold for back taxes.
The Vretts were not alone in their confusion. Sixteen other homeowners in the upscale subdivision of Westwood Estates in Woodstock were served with similar papers that day.
All were notified that their homes had been sold for back taxes and that they had until May 31 to redeem their houses by paying back taxes, penalties and interest.
Needless to say, the Vretts and their neighbors were not happy with the news. The Vretts had been paying their taxes since they bought the house in the early ’80s. Surely, it was a mistake–but with their house on the line, they weren’t going to take chances. Vrett took the issue straight to the Woodstock City Council.
The back taxes, they discovered, were being levied on three open, commonly shared parcels in their subdivision. One parcel is a large tract ringed with homes, containing a 2-acre lake.
“We were all under the assumption that this open space belongs to the city,” Vrett told the Woodstock City Council recently. “It’s not deeded to us or we would have received a tax bill. We never received any tax bills.”
According to Vrett, the subdivision was annexed to the city in 1964, with development begun a few years later by local Realtor John Harding. The Vretts moved into their home when it was finished in 1982 and have been paying their taxes on time ever since.
It was his understanding, Vrett said, that after a specified number of homes in the subdivision were sold, Harding would form a homeowners’ association, which would then assume the ownership and maintenance–and tax liability–of the common area. However, he added, the association was never formed.
“It’s my opinion that Harding should pay this,” Vrett said in an interview. “Then if he wants to form a homeowners’ association and walk away from it, that’s fine. As it is now, he just dumped it on us.”
The developer, contacted later, agreed, and the story seems to be headed for a happy ending. Harding’s attorney, Tom Zanck, said he was taking immediate steps to clear up the back taxes, which Zanck estimated at “about $3,800.”
Zanck added that Harding “looks forward to meeting with the homeowners to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen in the future.”
The whole problem, Zanck said, “apparently stemmed from a lack of communication, and I think that goes for both sides.”
Learning that Harding was taking steps to redeem the house, Paulette Vrett breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m delighted,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful that Mr. Harding is taking care of it now that it’s been brought to his attention.”
