Crime & Safety

Neighbor Accuses Village Trustee of Removing His Fence

Don't fence me in: Trustee Alex Olejniczak's neighbor disputes placement of fence, claiming it's on his side of the property line, police say.

A neighbor of Oak Lawn Trustee Alex Olejniczak (Dist. 2) filed a police report accusing the trustee of removing his backyard fence.

An Oak Lawn police officer met with the trustee and his neighbor on May 29, after the neighbor claimed the Cyclone fence had been removed his backyard while he and his wife were both at work, reports said.

According to the neighbor, he never gave permission to Olejniczak to remove the fence from his yard in the 9300 block of Parkside Avenue.

Police said the neighbor produced a survey of his property showing the fence and posts to be on his side of the property line.

Olejniczak and the officer also counted off ten “public sidewalk slabs” in front of the trustee’s house, which Olejniczak claimed were commensurate to his 50-foot-wide lot, the police report said.

The trustee told Patch he notified neighbors on both sides of his house that he'd be replacing the backyard fence.

“I don’t know if it’s a language barrier,” Olejniczak said. “He came over to my house and asked my wife why I took his fence down. My wife told him it was our fence and that we had talked about it.”

The survey that his neighbor showed to police was from 1995 and “not an official plat of survey,” Olejniczak said.

Olejniczak has since had his lot surveyed after his neighbor accused the trustee’s fence posts of encroaching 15 inches over his property line.

“I got my own plat that shows I’m right on the line,” the trustee said. “I moved it over an inch. Even the village’s paperwork shows the fence was mind.”

Olejniczak said that he doesn’t have any issues with his neighbor.

“I want to make sure he’s happy,” he said.

The fence is expected to be installed on Tuesday. The police officer deferred the civil matter between the neighbors to the village's building department, the report said.



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