“That could be my house,” said David Dyson, head of United Citizens for Robbins, a community organization formed to voice residents’ concerns. “We’re not ready for the quarry.”

Village officials at a meeting last Thursday pointed to the threat of litigation from Riverside-based ALM Resources as a reason for continuing to consider the contract, even though the Cook County Sheriff’s office spent months investigating it and issued a report this year concluding the contract disproportionately favored the developer.

Robbins is a primarily black suburb with a 26 percent unemployment rate, according to U.S. Census statistics. The village website says the next community meeting is 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Robbins Community Center, 13800 S. Trumbull.

“We just want to make sure the process is clean,” said Arnold Pugh, vice chair of United Citizens for Robbins. “Open this up to the citizens and make them aware; give this total transparency.”

Mayor Tyrone Ward, Village Clerk Palma James and the six elected trustees shared at last week’s meeting that they could not openly discuss with residents their plans with regard to ALM until the board passed a memorandum of understanding with the company.

Board members then met in a private side room for a closed session to what Ward called “personnel issues” and “pending litigation,” then came out and immediately adjourned the meeting.

Some residents expressed concern with the memorandum being a prerequisite for them to discuss the future of their village: “Why do you have to have an agreement to have a conversation?” resident Geraldine Page said.

“It seems to me there ought to be a discussion with the residents notwithstanding any kind of memorandum of understanding, because they’re (supposed to be) doing this on behalf of the residents,” said attorney Timothy Wright, who, in response to a request from U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-1st, offered residents his pro bono services at a meeting several months ago, to help them get out of the contract. The village board did not accept his services.

“The residents are the ultimate client here,” added Wright, who specializes in public-private partnerships and is a former commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Economic Development. He said the contract was “one-sided” and put the village in a “disadvantaged situation.”

Further frustrating many residents who spoke out at the meeting, Trustee David Bryant confirmed that the village leaders have not shared this memorandum with the residents.

“We want to see what the memorandum consists of,” Pugh said. “We want to make sure it contains the proper statements that the village wants out of this whole process.”

“I have no problem sharing the memorandum of understanding with the citizens,” Bryant said, adding that it hasn’t been made public yet because other village board members “may disagree.”

Ward, who said he preferred to talk by phone, did not return phone messages left with his office Thursday and Friday. James said she preferred not to talk to media.

Trustee David Bryant said he could not discuss the possible litigation. When asked if the village’s attorney advised him and other trustees against sharing the memorandum, Bryant said: “I’d rather not share if the attorney advised us not to share that.”

The village attorney, Christopher Welch, did not answer phone messages left with his office Friday or an email sent Thursday.

The developer, Riverside-based ALM Resources, entered a contract with a previous Robbins village administration, in August 2013, that would create a limestone quarry followed by a 169-acre underground limestone mine. More than 50 houses would need to be acquired for the redevelopment.

ALM tried acquiring the land last year through a “quick-take” process using the village’s eminent domain power to take private property for the public good. The village board decided against this option a day after another heated town meeting.

At the time, Dart’s office made a Freedom of Information Act request to view a copy of the contract between village leadership and ALM. Dart’s office later issued its report, finding ALM manager Jim Louthen told investigators he lacked money to complete the project, that Louthen made an allegedly illegal campaign contribution to village trustee Shantiel Simon through a company employee and the village attorney didn’t know about the deal until after it was signed.

The report also pointed to former Mayor Irene Brodie’s poor health when she signed the contract and notarization of the contract by former village trustee whose son owns multiple properties in the project’s footprint. Partly in response to the sheriff’s report, the village board voted this June to void the contract with ALM.

ALM’s manager Jim Louthen said in a phone conversation that he could not discuss Robbins, or whether his company might be threatening to sue the village.

When asked if his decision not to discuss Robbins was due to a nondisclosure agreement or legal advice, Louthen again said, “I’m not going to speak to the village of Robbins and to that development or to any of the development agreements and the like.” He added that the media has “a really great opportunity to move this narrative beyond any one project’s controversy to these other more important community issues, which really should be the point of the discussion.”

Louthen said there’s a need for economic development throughout the Southland, but declined to discuss Robbins specifically.

“We’re dealing with a regional community that has continued to suffer from a lack of jobs,” Louthen said, adding that there were “overlooked resources” in the region, because of its location in one of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

When asked to point to any specific project he has worked on that would be a good example of helping revitalize local economies or to illustrate any of his points, Louthen said he preferred to speak more broadly about his concerns with the Southland.

“The people that have to be communicating with the residents are the village officials—not the developer, not the people who stand to gain but the people who were elected to care for the residents of that community,” said Cara Smith, a spokeswoman for Sheriff Tom Dart.

“The residents are coming from a significant position of distrust that was created because of the way the terms of the deal were handled,” Smith said. “I think the residents of Robbins have significant basis for concern of what’s going on. I mean there are so many rumors, a contract that has yet to be explained to the people of the community, and they clearly don’t want it.”

While at the last meeting many citizens expressed concern with the memorandum and some were open to going forward with the memorandum, no resident expressed allegiance to ALM’s contract as it stands.

State Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, who represents most of Robbins, said after the sheriff’s report of “possible wrongdoing,” he was surprised to hear about the village’s continued involvement with ALM.

“The residents were not informed in exactly what they were going to do and how they were going to do it,” Rita said. “You talk about taking people’s homes, it’s like, OK wait — we need to have a little more thought in that plan.”

“The memorandum gives us an opportunity to take baby steps,” Bryant said, adding he sees himself as a citizen first and a trustee second. “I want a clean understanding on everything. How will this help us? A dialogue has to take place. There has to be a point where we say, Oh, that’s bad, that’s good.”