Fence Feud Returns To Burr Ridge Village Board

BURR RIDGE, IL – Burr Ridge's mayor on Monday expressed his unhappiness with a family requesting a fence.

At a Village Board meeting, Mayor Gary Grasso said the family did not give the correct information on whether the contractor told them they needed a building permit to install a fence.

But one of the family members said there was a miscommunication.

In April, a board majority voted to require a family to tear down part of a fence that was built without a permit. The house is southeast of 80th and Madison streets.

The new side yard fence replaced one built decades ago. The old fence was grandfathered in the village code, but once it's torn down, a new fence must comply. Under the rules now, the fence is too close to the street.

The remainder of the fence violates the rule against fences in front yards.

At the April meeting, Grasso said he wanted to know who the contractor was, so the village could figure out why the person did not get a permit.

"There has to be some pain here. The equity here is you violated the ordinance," Grasso said at the time. "You could have easily checked, and you have a contractor that is not stepping up either and who should have known."

He proposed a compromise in which the LaContes would keep the side yard fence without meeting the requirement that the slats be spaced out more, but mandate them to tear down the front yard fence.

At Monday's meeting, Grasso said representatives of the LaConte family told the village that the contractor misled them into believing they did not need a permit.

"I took that at face value," the mayor said. "We also said please give us the name of the contractor, so we can call the contractor and find out why he or she was making that recommendation and in the future don't tell somebody that they don't need a permit without checking with the village first."

He said he had village staff contact the LaContes more than once.

"Then I had to do it myself until I finally got a response," Grasso said. "I was told, well, they didn't get information from a contractor. In fact, the contractor told them exactly the opposite."

In an interview Tuesday, Colleen LaConte said the family never told the village the contractor said they did not need a permit. The contractor, she said, did not address the issue.

"We thought we didn't need a permit. We went forward with it. After all of it, we found, yes, we certainly needed a permit to replace an existing fence," said LaConte, who said she and her husband, Matt LaConte, are first-time homebuyers. "We didn't mean to imply that the contractor told us it was OK to do it without a permit."

The fence came up again Monday because the village later found contradictory language in the two ordinances it approved related to the issue.

So the matter is going back to the Plan Commission for another hearing. Then it'll return to the Village Board.

At the previous meeting, the mayor helped arrange the compromise so the LaContes could get some of what they wanted.

On Monday, he said, "My position has changed on this. (Plan commissioners) do not need to defer to my opinion in their reconsideration of the ordinances and they should enforce the ordinances."

Colleen LaConte, who was at the meeting, said she probably should have spoken up during the public comment period after the mayor's statement.

"I love rules," she said. "I want to be a good citizen."