Two objectors to the Community Consolidated School District 15 bond petitions have dropped part of their objection today, according to their attorney James Nally.

Palatine residents Susan MacDonald and Theodore Grabbe April 19 challenged 1,800 of the 7,500 total signatures on the petition, which forced the district’s issuance of $27 million in bonds to a fall referendum.

The district’s electoral board met April 26 to review the formal objection, which included individual objections over signatures, the petition’s filing date and the wording of the question posed on the petition forms. The board moved to send the signatures to the Cook County clerk’s office to be reviewed.

On May 18, the clerk released the results of his final records check, which revealed 840 objections, Nally said. The clerk needed to find 1,200 invalid signatures to dismiss the petition. However, objections over filing timing and wording on the petition remain, and will be reviewed by the electoral board when it meets again. The board has not announced details about the meeting yet.

“We’re not disputing facts,” Nally said. “The form says what it says and it was filed on the day it was filed. But legally, do those (issues) invalidate the petition?”

District 15 resident and attorney Mary Vanek, the principal proponent behind the petitions, said the outcome of the records check is not unexpected.

“Back when they filed the objections, those objections were part of the filing,” she said. “They’re not throwing up anything new. They decided those are the only things they feel they can object to.”

Vanek said the wording of the question on the petition was obtained from the school district’s Web site. Although she could not speak as to whether or not the question was legally sound, she said she and other petition circulators followed legal procedure by obtaining the question from the district.

She also said the timing was not an issue. The petition had to be filed within 30 days of a public notice of the bonds being issued. That deadline fell on Saturday, April 10 and because the district offices would not be open, Vanek said her group was allowed to file petitions on the following Monday, April 12 and she has e-mails from District 15 board secretary June Becker to prove it.

The e-mails were included with her attorney Richard Means’ strike and dismiss motion, which he filed at the April 26 meeting and that would dismiss Grabbe and MacDonald’s challenge.

However, Nally said petitioners had within 30 days to file the objections, and therefore would have needed to file the petition on the Friday before the deadline.

The electoral board, which consists of board President Gerald Chapman, board member Tim Millar and Becker, will reconvene to determine the validity of the other objections and decide the future of the petition.

Vanek has set up a political committee, Citizens for Accountability in District 15, which is taking donations for community members to pay the roughly $3,000 it will cost to fight the petition challenges, Vanek said. The committee will stay in place through the referendum, and possibly through the next school board election in 2011.

—By Michelle Stoffel, Triblocal.com reporter