A lawyer painted a dismal picture Monday of the condition of Kewanee’s mobile home parks — and of the financial position of the bank he represents that issued a loan for the parks.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, the lawyer for the First Secure Community Bank in Sugar Grove, Ill., offered to pay part of an overdue water bill for the park that has gone well into six figures.

He said the bank made a $975,000 loan to the owner of the mobile home parks. The bank has already spent hundreds of thousands more for park cleanup work and other expenses.

And today, the lawyer said, the bank would be lucky to get $500,000 for the properties.

Part of the problem, the lawyer said, is that a Michigan real estate firm the bank hired to carry out the redevelopment of the mobile home parks didn’t do much.

“The issue was, unfortunately, a lot worse than what we thought,” the lawyer said, and the restoration work by the Michigan firm “was not occurring.”

The lawyer listed expenditures the bank has already made on the parks: $198,000 for cleanup work that has been done, $10,000 to fix a water leak (and another leak has recently been found), a $23,000 electric bill.

Bank officials don’t want to spend any more on the trailer parks; “There is a tipping point for us,” the lawyer said.

The outstanding water bill for the parks was reported as being more than $200,000 several months ago; it’s more than that now.

Bank officials previously asked the city to waive the entire bill, but Mayor Gary Moore and the councilmen adamantly rejected that request.

At Monday’s meeting, the lawyer said bank officials would be willing to pay $100,000 to settle the water bill, and the council seemed more receptive to that idea.

“I can certainly appreciate the position you guys are in,” Moore said. “We would definitely like to offer a counter proposal.”