in this matter your honour's the only legislature has provided municipalities with the ability to create texas increment financing districts or tipped us troops but the authority to do so is not without limits there are certain requirements that must be present and certain procedures that must be followed of these requirements and these procedures are neither cursory nor optional and without meeting or following these requirements and procedures the hip district can't be properly established and that's exactly what happened here the city of christ hill in establishing the tip district at issue scuse me ignored the statutory requirements and prestigious and necessary to properly form a tip strict this case asks this court to answer the simple question of whether the city of press hill should be allowed to benefit from their failure to follow the rules the simple answer is no and the trial court erred in allowing the city to do so not to get to that point there's two main issues before court the st does the tip district at issue contain the requisite conflict you and he as required under illinois law and nd did the city abide by the statutory provisions that  act requires a tip district to be contiguous however the to fact itself does not contain a statutory definition of continuity so courts look to the common law and that's where we other courts have looked at and what we know for certain is that it doesn't include point to point touching where you have you know cornering intersections and it doesn't include using a narrow strip of land or a street to establish contact you to go to the county  cases in the building or parents in case now the important distinction here again as i mentioned is that we're relying on the common law definition of continuity we're not relying on the emic station statute says the city attempts to  cameras you're just saying you have to have physical touching from vanderbilt and i think most touching correct that the common law definition is substantial physical touch and you're saying in the facts in this case in response some stand still or was there  physical touching which your honor the fact apologize your honor under the facts there is no physical touching whatsoever and i'll get into that because of the pipeline correct there is a pipeline right it's a recorded easement your honor i know that it is an established utility right of way and that's what we look at under the undertone right away doesn't give the utility the simple ownership is that what you are saying it may i am not certain in this case your honor what the ownership interest is i know that it went to thank us in the court and because i'm saying physical touching you're saying there's none because there's a right away with pipeline going down that piece of ground well it's not in this sense because one it's excluded from the tip that's rick itself and to be the substantial common boundary requires direct watching and what we have here is a a area that's excluded from the tip that ground underlying ground revert back to the property owners under in right away it would appear to be so it could your honor but for the purposes of this analysis we're looking at the way the tip district was established and that that property is not in the tipped district it's expressly excluded and it's not relied upon to create the kinds of unity and that's when the testimony of the city's witnesses itself be expressed we state that the only way that they establish district there is no direct substantial physical touching of the two the two areas that we're concerned with and so that's what the court really needs to focus on and that's the city's argument itself and their own darn witness says you know we have two hundred and thirty four nine feet that we say is continuous but you still have to jump over this right away it doesn't touch the other side of the of the of the tip district you have two arms at the city combat so that people there there order to get a joint with the smaller chunks you got to jump in right away correct but the seventy four acre portion to the to the north west is the area that's not connected correct so you could split it up i mean they could decide to have this knowledge of the district but they didn't come back to the table to discuss that with you that's correct they they just simply plowed ahead you know ignoring the procedural aspects that we'll get admitted as much in her deposition and so so that the so that's really what we need to look at is and the city's position is you know if if if the court is looking at an extension cases to and so that's what we applied to the test and we have gotten from cases that talk about how you know we need you know fight over five hundred feet maybe substantial we found in the bull valley case the two hundred and ninety seven feet wasn't wasn't adequate and again these are in cases where you have direct boundaries direct direct contact with the two areas in question this case we don't have any of that direct physical touching but at a minimum it can be substantial and clearly city so again i think that that alone shows that there was an error but when we look at you know what is actually in there the two hundred and thirty nine he clearly isn't some isn't significant and substantial enough to create the requisite especially when you have to jump the right of way to have any conflict and that's that's that's an contra contradicting facts based on testimony from from the the city's expert itself that the city the city as witnesses  on that on that opinion that testimony and importantly again you know we talk about this right away because it plays a key role in the analysis but the only way that comes into play is if you're looking under utility right of way again for purposes of an annexation statue you prefer this is an extension with an express exception that's not incorporated into the to fact and it's not incorporated into the common law definition and we see that again in the to fact legislatures intent that you can have two different six on each other side of a right of way that are allowed to share revenues but it would it would completely give no meaning to that language if you're allowed to have  district is that the tip wasn't properly not all i know the legal argument but let's talk about the bottom line i mean that's the motivation as mine well i don't know your honor that the motivation is relevant when we're talking about following law of course you know when you have a to stri the question is you're saying there is a hair in there creating this to this tree and you just basically did admit that they could have had to share in the revenues and the school district would lose those  atari it is it's mandatory under the typical yes they're required to meet and confer they're required to resubmit their plan or an amendment to the plan and they simply ignored it and there is no the bar doesn't have  deny the creation of a monthly and if they go through that conversation so to speak it's correct but the state the legislature provided that seizure and if we simply ignore it and allow a municipality to say oh we passed it by a majority   these ordinances are presumed valid it's the burden of the plaintiff by clear and convincing evidence to show that they aren't valid secondly tips are authorized by the state legislature and we know that taxing bodies don't like tips because it diverts revenue from those taxing bodies that's the way the law yes you know one of the leading cases is  dealing with the next ation issue and that's the case that talks about the fact that we don't want to have two different definitions of continuity and that case says we're right away then jeff just bricks are going to be the boundaries are going to be settled by by public right of ways just so we're clear and to answer a couple of justice hold ridges questions the pipeline mother always confused by the combing not understanding of her right of way right well that's that's the common usage of  as i said the way it seems to be written in the act is that you can jump the  paid taxes and the remedy if somebody thinks this was done improperly twenty years ago is to go to the state's attorney and the state's attorney has to file for busy warrants o didn't do it twenty years ago but you know was it done twenty years ago why can't the city do it now well that it's not surrounded actually by because the the man i'm looking at and i guess i would ask the court because i want to try to answer one of your question and this property was annexed back twenty years ago it's been in the city they've paid their taxes and so we believe the same standard ought to be used for for both both applications basically he was the chairman of the joint review board and i said he answered straight seventeen of our brief our ideas were to enter into some kind of intergovernmental agreement of some sort with us as a taxing body for you know at least portions of the proceeds should there be any from the t f so we wouldn't go twenty three years with no increase i mean that was the entire basis of the joint review board not wanting  if you look at the records i mean she did a primer for basically primmer for the joint review board to this is what you have to look at if you have objections these are the criteria they didn't do any of them i mean the statement of action that they wrote it's quote not needed and then the nd thing the nd quote is it would have a negative impact on the taxing districts well not need it is just a simple conclusion they didn't look at any of the criteria and negative impact on well i'm not exactly certain what one he's talking about if he wants to cut out parcel b and a because we jumped up and have those two parcels cut out i mean i guess that would theoretically be those those two parcels could be cut out if you were to find that you can't jump the pipeline just told her just question if i'm if i'm understanding it correctly now it's a little different me sa if we find in favor of the taxing body here can you go back to the drawing board and create two separate ordinances what's the deal we have to go we def to go back to the drawing board i'm not sure where that would lead us it would depend on what this panel did in terms of what property you struck and things of that nature so ok i don't mean to be vague just this right but i don't know how to answer that really without a ruling  you i think my time's about up justices if there are any other questions i'll do my best you know then i don't i don't either the the city's arguments all kind of rely on these red herrings about you know invalidating annexations and you know testimony from an individual superintendent rather than the joint review board itself you know we're not seeking to because of eligibility criteria and they feel that they may not be able to do separate i can't speak to that only thing i can speak to is the the requirements for the to just as they have created it and it's clear that the  it doesn't exist and trying to to to tie that back into existence or twenty years ago is just a distraction from what the actual issues that are similarly you know when they talk about the testimony of  he was testifying in this case as the superintendent of the school board he wasn't testifying as a representative of the joint review board is only one vote on the joint review board he doesn't control it and his testimony was on behalf of the school district not the joint review board so certainly the school district has interests but what the procedures are for the joint review board and the and that the statutory language which to answer your honor's question from earlier though those tory requirements are are under case jurisdictional and mandatory they must be followed and when they didn't do that when they didn't convert after the negative recommendation d and they violated those those requirements and and them saying that you know the recommendation wasn't specific enough does not meet the eligibility criteria and whether they thought they felt it to be specific an up or not that's not their their their job to determine the city's job and that's contemplated by the act itself when it says they can release resubmit the same plan for it doesn't say is they can ignore the requirements to meet and confer during that thirty day period you know they passed they passed the ordinances on november th of two thousand and seventeen when the negative recommendation came down on the november  you know simply point they could have waited two weeks they could have been part of the could have waited two weeks and they could have passed the ordinance at that time but the clear and convincing evidence that mr hastert says we need it is in plain black and white they passed the