The association that manages the private lake in Wonder Lake proposed an $89 million reserve for dam replacement and dredging that could raise annual dues from $44 to nearly $1,000 per lot but its president now says it is not the path forward.
The Master Property Owners Association (MPOA), which manages the 835-acre private lake and its dam for the Wonder Lake area, published a proposal on its website September 18 to create 13 reserve funds totaling $89.3 million.
The largest are $50 million to replace the dam around 2077, $18 million for a catastrophic dam breach or failure and $17.2 million to dredge the rest of the lake, according to the proposal.
Funding all 13 at once would cost $927.58 per lot in 2027, a figure the proposal calls “a full-scope planning benchmark.”
A separate operating budget going to delegates would raise annual dues from $44 to $53 per lot and include $40,000 for a bathymetric survey to map the lake and measure its depth.
The MPOA’s members are the property owners’ associations of the subdivisions around the lake, which each send one delegate for every 100 lots to its annual convention, according to its bylaws.
The most recent annual inspection of the dam in October 2025 found its embankment mostly in good condition but its west sluice gate inoperable, an inspection report filed with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources showed.
The gate was repaired in May and June and the MPOA board’s minutes record a $123,073 invoice paid for the work.
MPOA President Ray O’Brien, who said he took office January 1, presented the plan at a public information session September 22 at the MPOA office in Wonder Lake.
A slide titled “The Number” put the reserve at $927.58 per lot plus the $53 operating budget for a total of $980.58 per lot in 2027, which the presentation called the peak year.
O’Brien told the crowd he owns five lots himself that are not on the water.
One slide, titled “The Questions We Expect Tonight,” listed questions the MPOA anticipated from residents along with its answers, including “Twenty-two times what I pay now?”
“Yes. Dues go from $44 to $980.58 all in — that is the true scale of it, and it is what 61 years of setting nothing aside costs,” the slide said.
The same slide took up the objection “These numbers aren’t engineered.”
“Correct, and we say so on every slide. They are planning estimates supported by every knowledgeable resource the MPOA has at its disposal,” the slide said.
“No fund spends a dollar until an engineered quote and current data support it,” the slide said.
“These numbers aren’t engineered. You’re right, they’re not,” O’Brien told the crowd.
“Is $50 million the right number? I don’t know,” O’Brien said of the dam replacement fund, adding that the engineering study needed to answer that would cost about $200,000, which the MPOA does not have.
O’Brien said collecting the full amount in a single payment “would bankrupt every association.”
The presentation said the MPOA still needs to find a billing company so the 17 subdivisions can bill owners monthly and that a hardship policy has not been written yet.
O’Brien said he did the comparable-sales analysis himself behind the presentation’s estimate that deeded lake access adds about $59,000 to the value of a home off the water.
The slide showing that analysis compared a $295,000 Wonder Lake home with eight non-lakefront homes in Marengo, Hebron, Union, Capron, Richmond, Harvard, Lawrence and Alden.
O’Brien said two neighborhoods, Oakwood Shores and Hickory Falls No. 3, have no vote at the convention because neither has a homeowners association and that they would have about five delegate votes between them.
O’Brien also presented a lower plan that he said the MPOA’s executive budget committee drew up the night before after hearing from residents.
That plan, titled “The Engineering Approach,” totals $46.77 million and cuts the dam replacement fund to $25 million, shrinks the catastrophic fund from $18 million to $1 million, adds a $200,000 dam engineering study and stretches dredging over 20 years instead of 15.
It would cost $470.01 per lot in 2027 on top of the $53 operating dues, or about $39 a month, and fall to about $91 by 2047, according to the presentation.
“Planning estimates only; not engineered costs or contractor bids,” a note on the slide said.
O’Brien told residents the lower plan is not on the October 14 agenda and could only be brought to the floor by a delegate after the $927.58 motion is voted on.
Hundreds of residents packed the gym at Harrison School in Wonder Lake for the next session on September 23 where O’Brien presented the plan again and residents booed, chanted “Drain the lake” and called for him to step down.
“Because they failed to form a homeowner’s association. That was unfortunate for you,” O’Brien said when a resident asked why Oakwood Shores has no vote.
O’Brien told a Hickory Falls No. 3 resident at the same session that the MPOA tried to stop that subdivision’s association from disbanding.
“You’re 100% able to start your own association again and we welcome you back to the table,” O’Brien said.
“When this fails, as is proven by this room, nobody supports it, then we go back to the drawing board and we start negotiating this again,” O’Brien said.
Sue Rose, a Wonder Lake resident opposing the plan, said that many residents told O’Brien they cannot afford nearly $1,000 more a year per lot and that owners whose homes sit on several small lots would pay for each one.
“I’ve lived in Wonder Lake for 37 years and I’ve never used the lake for any purpose whatsoever,” Rose said.
“I bought my home in Wonder Lake because it was more affordable than other areas. The lake had absolutely nothing at all to do with my decision to purchase my home,” Rose said.
O’Brien later sent delegates a letter, obtained by Lake and McHenry County Scanner, explaining how the convention could handle the proposal.
O’Brien said in the letter that the MPOA’s directors voted on September 9 to send the proposal to the convention at $927.58 per lot per year but did not adopt it.
“An item appearing on the agenda is not itself a motion,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said that if a delegate does move to adopt the proposal, delegates may adopt it, amend it or vote it down and that he will not advocate for or against it from the chair.
“I have come to believe that we have a serious long-term funding problem, but the $927.58 proposal, as currently structured, is not the path this community can successfully move forward with,” O’Brien said in a postscript to the letter.
O’Brien said the realization came to him in the middle of the night “after a great deal of personal struggle over where we go from here.”
“If no motion to adopt the proposal is made, there is no motion before the Convention to vote upon. This gives us an opportunity to step back from the current proposal without stepping away from the underlying problem,” O’Brien said.
“We should not abandon the mission simply because this particular proposal may not be the answer,” O’Brien said.
It is unclear whether any delegate will move to adopt the proposal or bring the $470 plan to the floor.
Delegates are scheduled to meet October 14 to take up the proposal and the operating budget.
Information sessions continue Saturdays at 10 a.m. and Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. at the MPOA office and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. at Harrison School through October 13, according to the MPOA’s website.
O’Brien did not respond to a request for comment from Lake and McHenry County Scanner.