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She helped push C'ville parking ban into court
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(in Carpentersville). I've never had a problem with anything," said Taillon, who has lived in the village since she was 5.
That was before the Carpentersville Village Board passed a controversial ordinance banning large vehicles from parking on neighborhood streets and driveways late last year. That included the small bus Taillon drives to transport special education students for Barrington Transportation Co., and her own wheelchair-bound son.
After the original ban on vehicles weighing more than 8,000 pounds passed in 2008, complaints from Taillon and other bus drivers drove the village board to reconsider various renditions, beginning in February. In September, six bus drivers took the village to court, claiming the ban violated the Illinois Human Rights and federal Equal Opportunity for Individuals with Disabilities acts.
In a year calmer than the last few have been for the board, Village President Ed Ritter said, "It was one of the few things that was contentious."
Taillon said she has lived in Carpentersville's Indian Trails neighborhood for nearly 30 years and parked the bus in her driveway for 23 years. Her parents had lived in the house before her, and her mother wanted her to have the home -- "for Stephen," she said.
Stephen Ratke Jr. is Taillon's 36-year-old son, wheelchair-bound because of cerebral palsy. Ratke is named as a plaintiff, along with the six Barrington Transportation Co. bus drivers, in the lawsuit against Carpentersville over the ban.
"I can't sell my house right now," she said. "My house is equipped for my son in a wheelchair. Why should I start over? It's not cheap if you have to have wheelchair access."
Taillon and her husband, Ted Taillon, have widened doorways and put a ramp in the house. They got a hospital bed for Ratke's bedroom. Currently, they're working on the bathroom -- "just little things, because his wheelchair is so big," she said. That's why, when the ban passed, she fought to keep the bus in her driveway. The drivers can park their buses at the transportation company in Barrington, but she said that's hours of commute time she could spend caring for her son. And it's important to the drivers that those buses are ready to go on a moment's notice, and their routes are planned around their residences for that reason, she said.
She and the other bus drivers researched how much different vehicles weighed, asked neighbors to sign petitions and spoke at village board meetings.
In June, the board considered the ordinance one last time -- then voted to allow vehicles weighing up to 10,000 pounds to park in residential areas. That allowed some larger trucks to park on village streets and driveways, but not the buses.
"Where are our rights at in the village?" Taillon said. "They let the other vehicles come back. We're the ones that brought it up, and we can't come back."
Still, the 16th Judicial Circuit Court in Geneva granted an injunction and temporary restraining order in late September, keeping the village from enforcing the ban. In October, the case was moved to the eastern division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago at village attorneys' request.
Village attorneys since have requested the case be dismissed in federal court, according to attorney John Juergensmeyer of Elgin-based Juergensmeyer & Associates. Juergensmeyer represented the bus drivers only in Kane County court.
As December draws to a close and the plaintiffs are required to respond to the move, they still have not found an attorney to represent them in federal court.
"This has been a hard year for us -- all the bus drivers," Taillon said. "It's a hardship for us."
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