St. Paul's ProposalsAre Finalized

By Meg Morgan Norris

At the February 8 regular Village Board meeting, Trustee John Mauk announced that the final information has been received from those who responded to the village's Request For Proposals (RFP's) on St. Paul's. He said the proposals will be reviewed in March and the committee studying them will make a presentation to the entire Board of Trustees thereafter.

In response to audience questions, Mr. Mauk said there were five responses to the RFP, although he said he is not sure if all of the parties will go forward with the process. He said the format of the presentation is still subject to discussion but that it might be a comparative analysis of the different proposals.

Trustee Mauk said that all of the responses had some deficiencies in fulfilling the mandates of the RFP. He said the committee's requests for more information served to help correct some of the deficiencies. He noted that some of the responders were informed that their proposals were so far "out of the ball park" that as a courtesy the committee informed them that they were unlikely to be successful so that the responders didn't waste more time and money. He added that the Committee To Save St. Paul's proposal was not one of those proposals.

Maureen Traxler, of the Committee to Save St. Paul's noted that her group appreciated the opportunity to strengthen their proposal, which amounted to 95 pages in length. She said the extra time afforded the Committee time to put together a stronger plan including getting a firm offer from an equity lender.