Planning & Zoning / Properties & Recreation Committees - Special Meeting

All right. I will call the Planning and Zoning Committee meeting to order. We'll start with the approval of the meeting minutes. If not, I'll take a motion to approve those minutes. Moved by Guskey. Second. Seconded by Zipleman. All in favor? Aye. We do have one public participation, Mr. David Kiken.

Thank you. The only reason I signed up to talk now is I've got to get to my business. We've sort of been devastated by the storms. Could have signed up for all three minutes for this meeting, three minutes for the next meeting, three minutes for the next meeting and still wouldn't give me enough time. Pay the bills. Pay for the audit. You knew the cost when you voted to have it done. You all had the opportunity to have the copies of the audit and supporting documents. If you thought there was sensitive information that should be redacted before the public hearing, you should have told the auditor to do so. but so much you do is reaction to not very well thought out action. You have enriched our town with many upgrades without considering the cost down the road, so much so that our public works department has been overwhelmed to the point that a very worthy effort by citizens had cleaned up the trash last Sunday. Although the trash came from the citizens, I don't understand why People don't realize what trash receptacles are for. The struggle to keep abreast of maintenance of all the park updates has brought us to the point that we have to hire private landscape services. Maybe part of the $25 million should have been kept for costs down the road. Pay the bills. You have no problem spending our money. A few thousand more for pickup. What I understood to be 300,000 for little house on the Prairie bathroom pavilion is what? It's about 400,000 really. How much for the new truck, Mr. Hanley? Was it 200,000? Is that what it is? I don't know. When the transmission would cost 16,000, was it too old? How old was the truck? I don't know. I've got a 1998 international truck trailer that's traveled almost 13,000 miles since the first year. I've got an 05 Peterbilt with 24,000 this year so far, an 07 Peterbilt that has 73,000 miles in the last seven months. Surely the Manteno truck doesn't get that kind of use. Also, I'd like to know, Mr. Hanley, who gave you the authorization to lock the doors during the circus meeting, the last meeting? Can't address people Trustees Barry and Vaughn were outside at the time. I watched as you flipped the switch and the doors were locked We were in there by the video Room my wife tried to get in couldn't get in I Looked at her again. She said doors locked went over and unlocked the door that mr. Hanley had locked I'm sorry, but the C.J. Geske and Crockett Circus is not the greatest show on earth.

Thank you, Mr. Kagan. uh so i just put the items that we're gonna be discussing obviously at our special meeting here at eight uh on this start i'm not saying there needs to be much discussion on some of these but others i think we should for example payment of the bills i'm pretty sure we were all in favor of payment of bills what we had asked just to separate the two items that we felt needed more discussion out and voted on separately was there anything in the bills outside i believe most of it's going towards our uh road project that we did I think that was like 90% of it. But was there anything else in the bills outside of green or leaves that we feel like should be discussed?

No.

OK. All right. All right, let's start with Lee's Rental. Obviously there has been some miscommunication on all of our parts. We talked in April about having them remove their port-a-potties. in general across all the parks uh i think our reasoning was at the time and still is that we have permanent bathrooms at the majority parks and parks that are usually flooded and the rest are are more smaller neighborhood parks so we have permanent um these heritage this well we're waiting for the square um and then at legacy the only one we wanted to keep for sure was one at st joe's um because we realized that was a more populated place too for kids to play uh with it Obviously, we, and I attached this to the meeting minutes, we got an email back from Maureen Lee on April 22nd, again, expressing that she was disappointed, however, that she said she would leave just the bathrooms on the square and at St. Joe's until she had heard otherwise. However, I believe, and may you address this, that you had reached back out to her and said, keep them and so there's been kind of miscommunication on our part from the trustees and the mayor to them with it. So this bill is paying, I believe, Sheila, it's June, correct?

It is for June.

June's payment which is still out there. I do believe finally though that the bathrooms are starting to get moved because I went by Jacobs Park and now they don't have a port-a-potty. I don't know if they're finally moving them now with it on there but that's what that part of the bill is going to be paying for.

He's saying that this bill is just for the month of June and moving forward we'd have no other bills from them other than St. Joe's Church and the Square firm right now? I believe so.

Jim, do you know when the Rock Creek one got taken out? Because there's not one out there.

Aye.

And it's on this bill, so I'm just... Yeah, there's a good chance that...

I think that got pulled out last week then as well. Okay. I think all of them got pulled out last week.

We were there Sunday for the cleanup and there was no porta-potties, and I just saw it on here, so I just wanted to make sure. Correct. Okay, I'm sorry.

I know that and I talked to Star Olsen too that NYSA is paying for their portion for the next couple of months for the ones out at Heritage.

They have.

They have been, correct? They have been, yes. Again, that was our reasoning of we get there are times obviously probably in the early spring summer where there's a surge for baseball and then soccer in the fall and then possibly obviously in the fall for wildcat out at legacy but other than that i think we feel that the bathrooms we have in our parks are sustainable obviously the other ones to me i see again as neighborhood parks so hopefully you just run home with it um with that kind of stuff but again i think all this too stems from again lee's a great company i think it just stems from 2.2 million in deficit on the budget. We're trying to find areas to cut back when possible. This was one that we thought was reasonable based on having permanent bathrooms at the usually continuous populated parks.

Trustee Boudreaux, I'd like to interject. This was brought up at a committee meeting that that would be a great way to save money. $95 a month to remove a porta potty. It was never brought before the board for a vote. So I don't know where the authorization came from that somebody decided let's just call them up and tell them to remove all the porta potties because it wasn't authorized with a vote at a board meeting. So when I got a phone call from Maureen Lee, this was in April, I said this is the beginning of the sports season and the park's opening up. Why would we remove all the porta potties? It doesn't make sense. So leave them in. And so that's the history.

Yes, and again, I think that's the miscommunication part here, because at the committee meeting, we kind of were seemingly on the same page, but then we didn't know about this conversation because you never told us. So that, I think, is thrown out. Again, I'm in favor of paying this bill because I don't think it's on Lee for why we have a bill. I think it's on us for not communicating properly on both ends. And maybe it should have been a proper vote, and that's fine. We can make it a proper vote for the future. I don't know if NYBSL pays for their portion. That's something we can ask them to do too because again, that's the only time where I feel like there will be surges where there might not be capacity at our bathroom. I still think our bathrooms would be able to hold it, but that's the only time I feel like we'd have surges.

In the history, they have not paid it. We've paid it. The only one who has paid it is soccer. When we talked during the committee meeting, we said if there was additional need sports the sports organizations would have to pick up the bill because we're trying to cut down our budget and that was i believe that the committee meeting all six trustees were here and all of us agreed to it because it was during our budgetary process but that was during a committee meeting when things are discussed we don't vote on things at committee meetings

Correct, and I'm not saying we didn't. It's just usually if we're all six in agreement, we can start reaching out and making the proper procedure too. I don't know if this comes to the threshold of a vote based on the monetary amount.

No, it does not, and I do not think anyone had the authority. I don't know which individual took it upon himself or herself.

I think we directed as a board for Chris to reach out.

Correct. Whoever did it, it was not done the way it should have been handled.

Well, nobody's. in here can make an executive decision and call somebody and say, without agreement on all of us either, nor you didn't have the right to call them.

As the mayor, I have a lot of rights and one of them was to stop the removal of the porta potties.

Which is fine. We can just vote on it next time. That's why I'm saying, pay the bill. It's not on Lee. It's honestly on us for having this miscommunication. Again, it's only $1,000. Again, I think our purpose was $1,000 or $1,200 a month. That's almost like $14,000, $15,000 a year. That's a good amount of savings we can get for putting in the money we did for the permanent bathroom. That's all I just wanted to say about that stuff, unless anyone else has any other points we can talk about for Lee's.

Sheila, do we have a bill from Lee's for July?

Yes.

So how are we gonna handle that?

I believe with our history, with the great service we've been getting from Lee's, that we should pay all the bills because it's been important to the people of Manteno to have those receptacles available for them.

So maybe we, We can add to the next board meeting if we have to make it a vote on that for the future. That would save us for August, I would believe, because they obviously removed them now. Maybe July is the last bill. I don't know, again, why it took this long to get them moved. I don't know. I'm OK paying the July 1, 2, and then after that. I mean, now I feel like it's very clear. But we could still make it a formal vote if we need to.

Bring it to board meeting and set the action, Trustee?

I guess I would ask to have it. That way it's formal and there's no disroups or miscommunication going further. Again, other than keeping the one at St. Joe's Park and the one at the square until our bathroom, because our bathrooms still don't have power from COVID, right?

Correct.

Okay, until that's fully done. So just those three, yeah.

Was Lee's given formal notice and a letter from the village to pull the porta-potties?

I think it was just an email.

Or a phone call. On which day?

I got the email on here, so we got an email. Yeah, it's an email.

Yeah, it's an email. What was the date of the email?

Again, April 22nd.

So they were notified in April to pull the porta potties via an email?

I did not authorize that and that was not voted for at a village board meeting.

I don't know that we have to necessarily vote to not authorize to pay for things, Mayor. We have to vote in order to pay for them.

We're spending an awful lot of time talking about how important it is to have porta potties in our parks and I think we need to move on to something else. This is silly.

Me personally, I'm okay paying June, July, and then I feel like that's it. I don't.

Do we need to put it on the next board agenda for voting? This way we could have an official vote. Correct. Yes, that's what I asked.

Even though we could do it that way, then it's official and we're going through it that way. Anything else for Lee's?

I want to clarify, am I paying June and July?

You're paying all the bills.

It's on the special meeting agenda. We're waiting for the real board meeting.

Okay, thank you. Okay, the next item is green forensic audit payment. This one to me is a little confusing because they sent us three different bills. We had discussed the one which was the final payment. Obviously at the committee meeting we had discussed taking off at least the cost that it was to our staff, which was about $1,300. So we'd be paying about $12,270.92. And then I guess we all received in the last two weeks two more random charges they want us to pay for. One for their own work of producing the copies without the account numbers, which was part of the negotiations, I believe. And then the second one is supposedly this random meeting in July 14th, and it made them fly back from D.C., which I have no idea what the heck that meeting was about. In my opinion, I just want to pay this. This was the final payment anyway. I'm not paying those two surcharges that they want to throw at us because I don't even know what they're from and I don't even think they're really viable. It seems very funny that they're charging us now five months later after when supposedly some of it occurred. I'm just going to make this final payment. That's my opinion on let's do this final payment. That's what we agreed to for the most part and then move forward.

I think that green forensics have waited a long time to get paid. We had a contract with them. We should have followed up. When they took this contract with us, they had no idea that we had over 40 bank accounts.

That's on them.

They expect, no, it's not on them.

Yes, it is. Before a company ever does something, they should do that. Let me speak, please.

Can I speak? They expected us to have a normal, for a town our size, maybe five accounts, maybe six.

That took them a lot of extra time, but they never asked for more money at that point.

And now you want to deduct money because... $1,300 because they show, again, I've never seen an audit. And now I've done so much more research on audits for towns. I've never seen an audit presentation that showed the entire account. Go watch Bradley's. Go watch KT's.

CJ, can I speak, please? Sure. Green Forensics has been doing this for over 20 years. They have never, ever had an issue like this. Bank accounts are identified by their numbers. There is nothing secret about a bank account number because we all have them on our checks. Every check you write has your account number on it. The banks protect us from anybody getting into our accounts. This was an unusual thing for Green Forensics. They had never had this happen before. So we asked them to go over and above what they agreed to do in the beginning, and that's why there was an extra charge. And now we're still not paying them? You're holding back?

We are still paying them. Actually, we have paid them 90%. This is the last payment. So they say we've been paid. We've paid $150,000 already. So we have been paying them. This is the last bill.

Nonsense.

Again, I disagree with the mayor's perception of this, but that's why we have it closed today.

We all look at things from different perspectives, but I feel confident in what I have said. And I think when you make a contract with a company, you follow through and pay what you signed to pay.

We are, but they added additional costs.

That's because we asked them to do more work over and above. We didn't ask them. We asked them to redact. We asked them for extra copies of the audit. We wanted them bound. We asked Mr. Edmonstone to fly home from Washington, D.C., because he was there for the summer with his son, who was an intern at the White House.

I don't think we ever asked him to come in the summertime. Who asked him to come in the summertime? Did you ask him to come in the summertime, Mayor?

I did not. You said he flew home. That's where he was.

Yeah, it's in a bill because he said he was called by the government to fly home. We never asked him to come after that one meeting. That was in May, so I don't know what he's talking about unless you had him go to a different meeting.

Trustees, we are here to serve the people of Manteno, and if we don't pay our bills, what are we doing here?

We're here to serve all of the people of Manteno.

All of the people of Manteno.

We tried to pay the bills on Monday, but you didn't let us separate it out, so that's why we're here on Wednesday.

I'm in favor of paying them. So am I. Minus what they cost us.

I disagree with you, but my perspective is to serve the people.

That's why there's six other board members.

but two of them couldn't be here because they work. So our treasurer or our finance person, Mike Berry, cannot come to seven o'clock meetings. And maybe he was at the last one.

I think everybody sitting here works. And I think when they ran for office, they understood the process.

But you know that they can never come to these meetings and yet you continue to have meetings at 7 a.m. And I can't come to the five o'clock meetings because I have my work schedules later.

I mean, we can have this again.

What is your work schedule?

Please, please. Please, no comments.

All right, let's go next. Next up, we talked about this through the committee meeting. Well, it's two parts here. Our village clerk, Steven Horst, has put in his resignation. He is going to be done August 28th at the end of the month for the most part. um so there's two parts here um candidates wise if we know if there's anyone coming up because obviously we need a clerk to kind of do their duty um as we participate obviously there will be a race in april for the next spot and then updating the salary so I'll start with the salary part because we talked about this before I've been talking to kind of some other trustees about what we think is fair again I think we all had agreed the clerk does more than what they're paid for right now they're paid four thousand dollars the deputy clerk was paid fifteen thousand fifteen hundred dollars I think that you do the most work out of anyone here on the board with it so a number I came up with and we have six committee meetings, two board meetings, and then a planning commission meeting. It's about nine meetings a month, unless we don't have a planning commission meeting, and we could have a special meeting like we do today, doing $75 per meeting. $75 per meeting, and that is whether it is the clerk or the deputy clerk will get paid that $75 per meeting, that would be a total of $8,100 in for the year. That would be a significant raise from what they are. Again, I feel like the workload dignifies that for what they do, and maybe that would help appeal to keeping even like a deputy clerk or a village clerk, again, with the workload to make sure that they feel fairly compensated for the work that they're doing with it.

Well, it should be noted that we see the work that they're doing here, but once they leave this meeting, there's an hour, hour and a half of doing the minutes for each meeting. And then in addition to it, they also have issuing of licenses and permits and different things that are there. So I agree with you. I think that our clerk is underpaid and we bounced around a bunch of different ideas, but I think that, What you proposed, CJ, was whoever's doing the meeting, whoever's attending the meeting, that's the person that gets paid. And our current compensation is limited to, I believe, four meetings per month. Am I correct on that, Sheila, the trustees? That we were not going to have that same limitation for the clerk because there would be more meetings that you could attend. And quite honestly, I think doing that $75 based upon an average of six meetings makes them the highest paid person of the elected officials.

If they worked every single meeting.

Right.

Which again, that's the burden of we don't want to have the clerk have to go to every single meeting with that stuff too, so that appeals to a deputy clerk. They might want to kind of stay and do that stuff.

Right, and we don't want the deputy clerk being abused, whomever that is.

They want to be truly compensated, yeah.

I believe Melissa attended a lot of meetings for the little amount of money she got, and probably why she left.

We would have to have this passed before the election. That's why I think we need to get this done sooner than later that way that it applies then after April to the next candidate. Actually, I think though for deputy would apply right away.

Deputy, we can make it apply effective immediately, but the clerk, since it's elected, it wouldn't be until the next term, whoever won the next election.

If there's any thoughts on that. Again, I just-

I'm in complete favor. It's a lot of work for very little money that they've received up until this point, so I would certainly be in favor of a pay raise. Mayor?

It sounds good to me. I think they deserve more money.

Candidate-wise, do we know of anyone that...

Yes, I have two people that I have interviewed, and we haven't made a firm decision yet, and if any of you would like to meet them, contact me, and I would make sure that you get to meet them before we appoint them. because I don't like to bring things to the board at a public meeting and then have you turn it down. It's embarrassing.

So for the salary, Trustee, are you moving to have another discussion at the board meeting?

No, it sounds like at least us five here are with it, so yes. The $75.

But we want to put it on the next agenda for the next village board meeting. Yes.

That's what I'm asking. Would I attend a discussion or are you going to have an ordinance?

I think we can have it for the next village board meeting. I can reach out to Mike and Peggy, but also they have general discussion in theirs too that they can ask at the time. What was it? Yeah. Yeah. right this came up to my attention we had talked about this a while bruce is not here so i don't know if we can have much information we were talking about handicapped parking lot spots and we were talking on maine or on um third or second um with that too have we had any updates on i know we're i thought we were looking for more designs or more options but i just want to make sure we don't kind of lose this either he kind of came back with a few with a few numbers and i think it was pretty uh complicated and pretty

I'll reach out to Bruce and I didn't know if we had finished the conversation I think the conversation kind of died when we got the cost estimate and what was involved in sidewalk reconfiguration

I recall close to half a million dollars. I thought it was 300,000 when we backed it down.

It was pretty pricey and I think we'd be losing parking spaces for added crosswalks mid-block and stuff. There was a lot of things going on there.

I'm still open to new ideas though. Maybe there is another idea out there without going through all that construction. Let's not give up on it because there's a lot of people asking for that handicap parking.

Jim, you want to put that on the next Public Works Committee meeting for discussion? I'll talk to Bruce. I see that Bruce is here.

I think he had a couple of sketches made up. I can resend that to everyone and bring that for that meeting then.

I'll save general discussion for Trustee Gieske because he has it too. That way we can get through his items too. I'll take a motion to adjourn the planning and zoning meeting. I'll make the motion. I'll second. Motion by Crockett, second by Zimpleman. All in favor? Aye. Against?

First item is approval of the parks and rec minutes from July 8th. Any corrections, changes, deletions? I'll make the motion. I'll second. Motion by Boudreaux, second by Crockett. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Public participation, you already had. I don't know that we've had anyone else sign up. Burnpile, Chippera? There's somebody in the audience who would like to speak. Okay.

I thought it was at the end, though.

There's going to be an opportunity to speak at the end. We've got another meeting after this one. I can just do that. Okay.

Burn pile chipper out changes Jim We've been dumping large Loads of chipper brush or trees or whatever else over the last few years out at the old golf course Jerry Alexander owns People have been dumping trash there now, so he's looking to close up shop out there so we're kind of losing our spot for big piles I think Bourbonet, Bradley, Kankakee, they go down to the old drive-in. I don't know the cost and everything on that, but that's an opportunity if we want to start using that. either that or clamp down on the chipper, um, usage. It's, uh, it sometimes gets used and abused where, you know, people take down multiple trees. We don't know if they are hiring somebody out or not. I mean, we've said in the past that if you hire somebody out, they're responsible for removing the tree branches and everything else. But, uh, so yeah, we're kind of, it's kind of stuck in a spot whether we say, no bigger than a pickup truck at any point. If it's bigger than that, you have to divvy it up into multiple months or chipper routes. Or if we continue as is and haul down to Bourbonnais Bradley, there'll be a cost associated.

Well, I think it's a valuable service that we provide. I personally couldn't see not continuing that service, so I think we have to find a location that services our needs. I mean, it's unfortunate to have to drive all the way down to Kankakee. I mean, that's probably in a two-hour trip back and forth probably for somebody, I would imagine, if not longer. Yeah, do we not have any other options here locally?

Uh, none that I'm aware of. So, um, you know, if maybe try to contact a, anybody know a farmer that would be okay with us bringing dump truck loads of large branches and logs and everything else. And we were burning it out there.

Correct. And that's pretty remote location. Probably not bothering anybody with the, uh,

Smoke, right? It was kind of set up with a berm all the way around it, so it was pretty well controlled. We'd pick and choose our moments when we would burn out there, get ahold of the fire department and everything else.

We get a cost estimate then, or could you find a cost estimate for like if it was Kankakee, but then if not, we can try. I mean, I agree. I don't think we should lose this either. So we either need to find a new spot or we just use the Kankakees and we...

Especially with the number of storms that we're having. Correct.

Prior to the regular, you know, Manageable piles. We're still able to chip we get mulch you bring it to the horseback stables We bring it to Camp Shaw. We use it There's been a couple farmers in the past that want the chipper mulch some residents have come and get it before there, too We've dumped it for them. So the regular manageable piles are are still good But it's the ones that are you know taking up the entire prior to the golf course location.

Where were we burning them? The golf course. Yeah, we've been out there for years

Yes, I'll get some prices on that.

Yes, if you could ask around too, I mean, we'll do our best too, but just see what other options or whatever. I mean, obviously, Bradley-Bourbonnais and Kankakee are all using that. I'm going to guess most of the county is using that as their spot.

Our general consensus is we want to continue with the chipper route. We don't want to make any changes, which I agree. Next thing is meeting decorum. I think our meetings have totally gone off the rails and we're seeing again today when public's addressing the board, they're not following the rules. We need to hold people to those rules and they should not be targeting Jim Hanley. They shouldn't be calling his name out. We all have the public participation rules. whoever is the committee chair of that meeting, I think that we need to hold people accountable. And it seems to be the same people time after time after time. And I think that it's getting old. So I don't know how everyone else feels, but I don't think it's appropriate that our employees are being attacked from the podium.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. We've, we've lost, we've lost control a little bit of this and that's why it's kind of become a circus to a point in a way there's a way to conduct meetings. I mean, again, if we need to go watch another meeting and other towns meeting to see how they do it, just to remind ourselves that this is not the norm. And I think unfortunately we've been doing this now for three to four years. Again, this is not just this administration. This was the past administration to kind of let it go. That has become a norm and we need to kind of break that norm.

I think we need to stop and remind ourselves that we need to listen to the people, and they do have things they wanna say to us, and maybe if they just generalize what they're saying and not name names, then you won't be so offended. But the public, we're here to serve the public, and if they can't tell us what they want, there's something wrong.

And I don't disagree with you that we're here to serve the public, but there's a way that we can communicate with people that is more appropriate,

Believe me, the public wants decorum just as much as we do.

I beg to differ. I think some public wants decorum. We have not experienced that and I will say that when we don't have decorum, I agree, Mayor. I agree we are not setting the best example, but that's a whole other conversation. When it comes to decorum, if the people want to get their message across to the elected officials, address with respect, and you'll get more attention that way than when you're up here personally attacking people. I'm going to speak for myself. I don't know how the rest of the trustees feel, but once the personal attacks come out, I shut down. I'm not listening to what you say. So I'm open to listening to anyone because I don't think that any of us are perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

Trustee Geske, I'd like to add that I have been personally attacked by some of the trustees during meetings and I don't think that's appropriate either. We're setting a horrible example. So let's all just settle down and start working together to serve the people that need to be served.

We've also been attacked by you through your letters that you read and I was told at the beginning of this when I read something, we're not reading anymore items like that.

We don't read from anonymous sources. That was a statement that I made.

And who wrote it? I did. Can you recite the first three sentences?

No, because I don't memorize things. You want me to memorize what I read, what I wrote?

I think we just all need to be aware of decorum. I also think we all need to be aware that I disagree with you doesn't mean I hate you in a way too. I think we're taking a lot of words personally And again, in governmental business, again, I've worked at the national level. I've worked at the state level. You can't take that that way. I've disagreed with Todd on things. I disagree with the mayor on things. I don't see them as evil villains or hatred. I see we just have different thoughts. And it's fine. We move forward. Again, we all have thick skin. So I think it's just more the personal attacks when you start digging into it. It's I disagree with you versus I hate you or you suck or what have I been called, a rat bastard or a communist. That's where I think the line gets drawn a little bit. And it's like, well, maybe that's not really a prime attack. And again, as Joel said, and I'll say it to the people here, because obviously George already yelled at me, if you think that that's going to sway my opinion, you're totally wrong. If anything, I dig in my heels. So again, come with a new approach is what I would ask, too, because it's not going to get you anywhere, at least not, I don't know, for a long time. I don't know. Again, we've lost it to the point where my students are embarrassed. You know what I mean? Again, they're groaning right now because I think they know it's true. It's true. It's embarrassing. It is embarrassing. I think we just got to recognize it on all of our, and again, like we said, it's us and them to a point, but I think you got your point across, Joel.

Okay. Next is agenda items. Obviously, we have had a huge debate and part of our circus, if you will, is over putting things on the agenda items and we have punished people for doing their jobs and i guess i'm going to ask the mayor we are told that how we have asked for items to be put on the agenda for the last 20 years plus is incorrect so what is the proper the way that you, Mayor, want us and the way that our ordinance is written for us to put items on the agenda because this is not a dictatorship. We all can put things on the agenda. You can't censor the elected officials. What is the proper way so that this way we do it the way that you would like and we can stop this circus?

I think what we're focusing around is the problem with our lawyer, because we have been in a bitter battle over who our lawyer is. And I have followed protocol in trying to appoint a new lawyer, which you have refused, and after two refusals, I'm allowed to appoint. That was not accepted well by this board. And so when you ask to put something on the agenda concerning rehiring our former lawyer, I don't want to see that on the agenda. I don't want to continue that battle because it's not being handled correctly. There are statutes from the state of Illinois allowing a mayor to make appointments. And when there's something else that you want on the agenda and two or more trustees want it and it's gonna serve the people of Manteno, I'm going to approve it. But if it's not going to serve the people of Manteno or it's all focused around one employee, I don't want to approve that and have that on the agenda. And I have the right to set the agenda.

Well here's, here's the gray area and you are correct. You, you as the mayor are allowed to make an appointment, but the words that have not been spoken enough are by the advice and consent of the board. and we did not consent for your attorney to be appointed.

Well, that's very obvious. That's very obvious. There's four trustees here who are gonna vote no on anything that I bring up. That's not true. Well, it's pretty close. That's not true.

Yeah, correct. What other appointments have we disapproved of? We approved of Stephen Orris, we approved of all your planning commission meeting members. I don't know, but I- It's just the lawyer, because there's a lawsuit going on that we need to defend ourselves, and I'm a little concerned that you aren't going to defend us, or you're taking a lawyer that will throw

Mr. Boudreaux, please let us speak. You are not running the meeting here.

I love this. I'm talking, and then she interrupts me and says, let me speak. Again, let me speak.

Do you want me to answer?

We just talked about the quorum.

Do you want me to answer or not?

Well, I was not done talking, but sure. All right, go ahead. Roll it. No, I just don't understand. You say that we don't approve things that you don't like, but they're so limited. I don't understand. It's one issue that you now sued us over that we're having a legal dispute over, and maybe that's the way we have to settle this. We just want to be able to put items on the agenda to vote on by the people that elected us. Again, there's six of us here that are elected. We're the ones that vote on the items. The only time the mayor will get involved is if there's a tie. We just need to have some power to put items on the agenda to let the public see what we're voting on. I don't want to have, if there's censorship at all, well, then we're going to have to change our ordinance and get that done.

Here's a great idea. I think all of us should attempt to attend a meeting in another village and see how they handle problems like this. Yeah, and watch the respect that's on their floor of their meetings because we've lost respect here.

Mayor, I did that for 16 years. I saw how well meetings were run, and there was no chaos. There was no battling. There was no attacks. When was this? For the past 16 years.

Yeah, because everybody here voted yes on everything. There was never a battle over anything.

See, there you go again. There you go again, generalizing. That's not true. That's not true. There were several things that I voted no against because I did not believe in them. I don't have to go to another village to see how a meeting can be run successfully.

I still think it's a good idea.

Maybe for you it would be, yes.

I've gone to two different village meetings. I think they're handled very appropriately.

And your statement that we don't go along with anything that you say is complete fabrication and way off base because everybody on the Planning Commission you appointed and we agreed.

I thank you for that. So how can you make that statement? Well, maybe I should have opened it up to some of the exceptions. Thank you very much for explaining that.

Yes, maybe you should have. And every clerk and when the forensic audit came and when the tax rebate came back, We didn't all vote in favor of one spot. So I guess to get back on to point of order that is our appropriate means to call it at the committee meeting? that we want to put on the agenda or do we need to call a special meeting like we're doing here in writing by two trustees? Which way are you going to not censor the board, Mayor? That's what I want to know.

I would love it if all of our meetings were at an appropriate time where all of our trustees could be available to come and be here, number one. Number two, make them available to the public. Who wants to get up and come to a 7 o'clock meeting? Obviously only a handful of people it's too hard to do that. Especially if you're a working person with children in school Again, I'm asking the question.

How do we get stuff on the agenda?

So this way we're not fighting I don't want to talk bring it to me meetings bring it to me Let me know who wants it on there and how it serves the people how it best serves our village. I

So we have to plea a case to get on that?

No, you just have to make me understand that it's a good thing for the community.

If we put in writing an email to you and the clerk with two trustees that are asking for it, you will honor our request to have it put on the agenda regardless of what it is?

I think if it's going to cause another problem, blow up at our meeting, I would avoid doing that if it's something that's contentious. Steve Orth will tell you, he will approve your agendas if they follow the law.

He approved this one. Guys, we're trying to make sure that we follow the law. Steve, is that how we need to properly do it to get things put on the agenda?

What I'm hearing is have two trustees bring a topic Is that going to be a topic that's already been discussed at committee or does it matter?

It shouldn't matter. The way that I see it, no matter what, we're trying to be transparent. No matter what's going to be discussed, there's no reason to not have it in an open meeting session. With the exception of litigation and employee discipline, those things should be in the executive session, but we don't do that either.

I have been told by our legal attorney that it is up to me to decide what's on the agenda. because we want the meetings to be handled professionally and with respect.

Let's say me and Annette want to put something on the agenda, you don't like it. It depends what it is.

If it's serving the public, why would I use it?

We're just going to have to start calling special meetings then. I don't want to have to do that. If you are going to deny us items on an agenda, which again, I don't want another lawsuit, but I feel like that's not legally true, then I'll just start calling special meetings to do our agendas. why aren't we working together that's my question to you we just if two of us we're asking for a vote we're not saying it's gonna be done we're asking for a vote on it let the public and again the public doesn't like our choices there's an election in april for three seats I want the public to be able to hear a vote and not have to have us do all these special meetings at different times and stuff. I don't expect the public to have to come to any meeting or all meetings. That's why I like it. It's on YouTube, but geez, we can't even put an item on the agenda.

I'm trying to understand this, but what I just heard was that if we bring something to you as the mayor that we want placed on the agenda. If you think it's okay to be put on the agenda, it will be, but if you don't, then it won't. If it serves the public. But who determines that? If I want to go out and paint Main Street purple, it may serve some of the people in this village, some it may not. Who determines that?

I can ask you why that would be an important thing to you. I'm using it as an example.

Okay, some people want to paint. You've talked about painting the new grain bin. Some people might think that's an important thing. Some people might think that's not an important thing because you're asking for money for us. Who determines that? Because you're in favor of it, so you want it on the agenda.

I would definitely put that on there for discussion.

But let's say that I don't want to pay $75,000 to do that. If I was the mayor, then I could be like, it's not on the agenda.

well let's let's bring it to real situations our last meeting the only difference between the mayor's agenda and the agenda that was posted the only differences were the overriding of vetoes which the mayor would never like to have her her veto overridden although we have statutory rights to do that and has to be done at the very next meeting and the difference in payment of bills so all the shenanigans that went on at the last meeting were all over a difference of of a handful of things which way that i'm understanding your your interpretation mayor is that he wouldn't serve the public so because you wouldn't like it he would never go on any agenda items so that means that we need to call a special meeting every time which is going to cost the village more money because we have to pay for the people to video it we have to pay the clerk or the deputy clerk on our new proposed bill and it seems to be a waste in my mind of something that shouldn't be there but if if that's how we're going to do it mayor i guess we can um i would just let all all agenda items be on there and then they're all up for a vote again the public will have record of where we stand mayor why would you be opposed let's just say that uh

Mike or Peggy or CJ brought an item that they wanted placed on the agenda to be voted on. Irregardless of what that was, why would you be opposed to that?

I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't be opposed to yours except that you keep bringing up things about one particular employee that I dismissed.

I didn't mention any employee in any conversation that we've had this entire 45 minutes.

I know, but some of the things that I have asked to be taken off the agenda revolve around the problems that we've had around the vetoes. It has nothing to do with an employee.

Going back to Trustee Guskey's question, how do we as trustees, in your mind, put items on the agenda? It's very simple. It is very simple. It's a very simple topic.

Two or more trustees can request it. So do that in the future, and I'll try and put all of them on for you.

I don't want to hear, I will try. I don't want to hear that. I told you.

I am going to put the things on the agenda that serve the public and serve the village of Manteno.

Just like Joel said, then the item on the agenda last week to overturn your veto would have never been put on the agenda. That does not serve the public.

That's against state statute and then we're breaking the law. What do you do in that circumstance? Are you saying that you're willing to risk us breaking the law because it's state statute that every veto has to be on the next agenda?

I don't make all these decisions willy-nilly. I talk to the lawyer about it and he has reminded me it is my meeting and it's up to me what's on the agenda. If I want to avoid that issue because it's so contentious, I'm not going to put it on there.

From now on, so this way us board members know, anything you want on the agenda, two or more of us will need to send an email to Stephen Orth and request that we have a special meeting and that's the only way that it will happen. I'm going to move on because we're clearly not going to get anywhere. Roll call votes and voting procedures. Again, I think that this is something that when we have any votes moving forward, I would like to see roll call votes because we couldn't even adjourn the meeting the other day because we didn't do a roll call vote. I don't know if any other trustees feel differently. I feel as though that that's important and wanted to bring that up with the clerk. I know that you're only here for a short period of time, but it'll be on the record that we're requesting that.

I think typically based, Based on my review, the call for a vote is based on whoever's chair of the meeting. That's who the clerk goes to. It's not a, you know, I want to call, I want to call. At least based on my limited review, we can get someone who, I gotta look towards the chair, whether it's the mayor or- But I believe any vote, the governing body can ask for a roll call.

I would just request that, Mayor, if we could just do a roll call vote every time.

Yep. In the past, we haven't done a roll call vote to close a meeting. Yes, we have. We just ask people to approve. We've always done a roll call. To close the meeting?

Yes. Well, at least we got to say all in favor and then all against. I think the last meeting all was said was all in favor.

Well, that's a voice vote, right?

That's a voice vote, correct, but that wasn't done properly either. Let's just do roll call that way, then we know where everyone stands on every issue.

Okay, the next item I have is attorney negotiations. I think we can skip over that for now because we're not going to get anywhere. Lockout allegations. I'd like to address this a little bit because during the last meeting, our administrator was falsely accused I believe as a fact that he controls the keys and locked out Stephen Orth during the last posting of agendas and I guess Chief Swinford, can you address for me who has control of our lockout procedures? Because when I talked with Chris, he says he never has had access to who's got key codes.

Yeah, the police department has the system that creates our key cards and turns them on and off and gives permissions. So we get an email or a request from village hall or board to add one, or if we hire a crossing guard or an intern or something like that, we create a card and put certain permissions on it. So we get requests that we need to create one or we need to turn one off. So who makes those requests? Village Hall, typically.

So who requested to have Steven Orth's card deactivated?

Don. So that was done by Don Geske, all right? And let's address that as to how that happened. Do you know the date of when that request was submitted, Al? Let me look. June 24th. Okay. So that would have been after we received the first resignation request by Mr. Orth. And would that be proper procedure that when we receive a resignation request that we would request a key to be shut off?

Typically how it's done, if somebody quits, we shut their key off.

Even though he agreed to stay on and we did not have a replacement.

Well, Mayor, I think there's been a slight bit of chaos here, right, because How many, and this is, I'm glad Mr. Orth is staying on. He does a great job as a clerk. I wish that we could convince him to stay on through the rest of the term. But how many times has he given his resignation, and I'm not, please don't take this as insulting, but said this is his last day, then he extends it to do a favor for us, then now we've got another one because August 17th was supposed to be his last day or August 14th. I guess this is where the whole fighting is. No one did it intentionally or maliciously to prevent Mr. Ortz from posting an agenda. It sounds like a great narrative, But that wasn't the case. Mr. LaRock, who was accused of, falsely accused, by the way, of locking out Mr. Orr, didn't do it, doesn't have control over it, and the explanation as to why he was locked out, it was because they were trying to be proactive in it and removing his access when he was supposed to initially be resigned did they send the email back asking for him to be reinstated no they didn't but i mean i'm hoping that mr warts gonna say he's gonna stay past august 31st um again there there was there there there's a logical explanation behind it besides the sinister story that everyone's trying to make that it was a ploy by everyone to block Mr. Orth from being in there. Because that just isn't true. And honestly, I feel as though that Mr. LaRock is owed an apology for that false accusation.

Sounds like a logical explanation to me.

I would just recommend, too, that any time any of us have any comments or concerns towards an employee of the town, that we do that properly, which is under executive session. That way then it doesn't shock and awe the town when, again, that accusation was false. Now we have to say that another meeting that it was false. Again, there's proper procedure. We should be doing that in executive session and not on public time because we probably could have cleared up an executive session that that was not the case. Stuff like that.

Now on to hopefully a less controversial thing is vendor background checks. I asked this to be put on the agenda because last committee meeting we discussed it and I thought we were all in agreement it but it came up during the last board meeting about how we were not going to require board or I'm sorry background checks for Ashley for vendors and we discussed that committee of how basically useless the background checks are because we're doing a background check on the owner not the employees and if we did the employees we'd never have a single vendor here But I wanted to have discussion about it. And I believe during that last committee meeting, Mr. Berry was here as well to discuss it. So it's open for discussion. if we want to i guess i'll give you that mr orth our clerk who is responsible for issuing those licenses agrees and sent an email basically saying correct me from wrong mr that the entire our entire rules and regulations and ordinances that apply to this are really antiquated not not serving the purpose of what we want them to do um so so his recommendation and i'm generalizing so um His general recommendation is that we basically suspend all background checks and simply revisit the ordinance and issue these permits accordingly. As we talked, we said that the purpose behind having a fee for the vendors is to help our brick and mortar businesses stay competitive to some degree. If we just said, hey, any vendor, come on in, we'd have trucks lined up and down our street indefinitely. But I think that we had thought it would be a good idea to waive the background checks and to, I don't know if we wanna, I think we still want a license, right? So this way we can kind of control that someone's not camped out here running a business forever on the street.

What's everyone's feeling? Great topic here and I think Ashley would probably have some input on this with all the different vendors that you deal with throughout the season. What are your thoughts on that?

Stated like in the last meeting, it is an extra cost for them. It is time consuming for them. It's not something that they're used to doing because, again, no other village, no other events really require this. Honestly, it's just a nuisance to them, unfortunately. I do agree when it comes to making sure we are vetting them, which we do. We do review all the applicants that come in. We have a vendor list that is controlled and monitored so we know who's the vendor that's coming in, the owner, all their information. We try to continuously use the ones that we are familiar with. If anybody is new coming into the area, we just review their Facebook, their Instagram, their website. If we don't have much information on them or if they don't have anything that I can really base off of their services and what they provide for the community, we won't accept them. Hopefully that helps answer your question.

I think the question there as I listen to Ashley is, We've got to have some sort of guidelines because someone could say that you're discriminating against me because you don't like me, right? And I don't know that we want... There's plenty of people who I don't like, but if they still have the right to do business, they should be allowed to. I guess we need to find some common ground for that, and I'm wondering if we should put on the next agenda to have an official vote, since no one could say that, was an authority but to waive the wave the background check fees for the foreseeable future and allow maybe if mr orth would help with ashley and council try to come up with what would be a the appropriate way of doing it so it's where there are guidelines and we don't have someone that we're saying no to just because we don't like them or yes because we do like them because I could see that becoming a problem.

I think you want to probably centralize the treatment because I think we've got different bins going on here. We've got the chamber doing some, we've got the clerk doing some.

and so it's it's a bit you know decentralized it's kind of distributed which then tends to fall into your question trustee about consistency and complaints and we don't we want to head those off and as we talked like the farmers market we as a village have really wanted a farmer's market we had it years ago we lost it because vendors weren't making enough money to cover the cost and so as we talked before the meeting like how do we wave it for the farmers market to get the people that we want but then oktoberfest comes around and we want to ding them like we got to have some sort of guidelines to it and i'm just wondering is everyone okay with having a formal vote to formally wave at the next board meeting the background checks for the foreseeable future and allowing um Committee because obviously the two people who deal with it the most are the clerk and Ashley let them work along with legal counsel to Try to come up with our new guidelines and parameters. Would that sound appropriate to everyone? Mayor so you want to waive the background checks period?

Yes

At this point in time, because I feel as though, and Mr. Orth agrees, that we're only doing the background check on the owner. So let's just say that I have a... I understand all that. Yeah, I mean, the employees are the ones there, and it'd be cost prohibitive to do everyone in. And even if the cost wasn't the issue, who's going to enforce it? Is Mr. Orth going to walk around every event?

I just wanted to be clear on that, because with the Oktoberfest coming up, we're not going to have any background checks.

Right, I mean that's again We don't do it on the carnival guys. We don't do it I mean and no other villages are doing background checks on any of their vendors.

We checked into this I understand I understand the the rationale behind it and in a perfect world but I do we and i think i think that's got to be you guys coming up with it it's only done by the applicant for the for the license and that could be someone completely different than even the owner for that matter could be the general manager or something right and i don't want to have a rule that's unenforceable because like i said we we create rules and who's going to enforce it you know are we going to is It's an unrealistic expectation for Steven to walk around every vendor and probably every hour because they could switch shifts, right? Yeah, but when kids are involved, who's looking out for the kids? Well, with the kids being involved, to your point, we have police that are there and it's usually pretty well patrolled whenever we have an event.

I think I'd like to ask the Chief. Al Swinford, what do you feel? Do you think background checks are ever needed?

Needed? It could be very well needed. When? Can they be done effectively would be the problem here. Like Mr. Wart was saying, if it's the petitioner that we're doing the background check on, he could hire six sex offenders to work in his booth. We're not going to know that, correct? I'm not sure what the answer to that is. We would literally have to go to every booth every day, find out who's working there, and go do a quick background check on them. That's why I'm guessing nobody does them. They're just not enforceable and not doable. We do background checks all the time. We keep Detective Sergeant Profitt very busy doing background checks on our crossing guards, our park rangers, our candidates, and there's a wide range of the type of background checks you do. It could be a simple social media check to a two-week interview, all resources, references. I'm guessing that's why most people aren't doing them. I don't know how you do them for these events. It would be great if we could. If we could do it, I'd love to do that. Increase our security, talk about the kids, but I don't know how that would be done at this point.

I think all of us want the safety and what's best for the community in that respect, but it's creating situations where either A, we can't have events or B, we're going to have rules that we can't uphold. I think it needs cleanup.

Cleanup, yes. Have it do what we want it to do. Correct.

so mayor are you opposed to us doing that okay especially for the um especially for the things that take place in the square the events that we have

Okay. I'm going to forego general discussion just because it's 8.02 and we've got our special meeting and we can have public comments and any general discussion that we need to at that point in time. I would take a motion to adjourn. I'll make that motion. Motion by Boudreaux. Second.

I'm going to file the meeting to order. Roll call, please.

Berry? Boudreaux here. Vaughn? Crockett? Here. Geske? Here. Zimbelman?

Here.

Thank you.

Consideration and motion to approve the remaining balance to Lees Rental for a portable toilet rental services in the amount of $1,095.

I'll make that motion.

Motion by Boudreaux. I'll second. Second by Zimbelman. Is there any discussion? If not, roll call, please.

I'm sorry. What are we voting on here?

To pay the rental services in the amount of $1,095.

Is that the full amount?

That is the number. That's the full amount. Thank you. That is for June's bills. That's June, correct.

Roll call, please. Thank you. Boudreaux? Yes. Zimbleman?

Yes.

Crockett? Yes. Geske?

Yes. Motion carries. Consideration and motion to approve payment to Green Forensic Accounting Solutions for the final audit invoice in the amount of $12,270.92. Is there a motion? I'll make the motion.

Is that minus what they call their cost?

I just want to say this up front before you vote on it. Because this was a legal contract, we could end up being sued for this if we don't pay what we agreed to pay. I'll make the motion. Motion by Boudreau. Second. Second by Geske. Any more discussion?

Boudreau? Yes. Geske? Yes. Crockett? Yes. Zimbleman?

Yes. Motion carries. Consideration and motion to approve the payment of bills and invoices in the amount of $367,125.39. Is there a motion? So moved. Motion by Geske. I'll second. Second by Crockett. Any discussion? If not, roll call, please.

Geske? Yes. Crockett? Yes. Boudreaux? Yes. Zimbelman?

Yes. All right, motion carries. Public participation.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

All right, we have several people who signed up to speak today. Our first speaker is Alexander Konopka.

All right, can everybody hear me well on the mic? Is it good?

Yes, and I remind each speaker that you have three minutes.

Gotcha. Today, I didn't have any papers prepared or anything. It was a little off the cuff since I found out there was a special meeting. So I didn't have any of my sources planned. But I'd like to mention that I started joining these meetings via your, seeing them through the YouTube channel and whatnot that you guys post them onto. And thinking that, I've been a political science student at EIU for about three years, now my senior year. Usually I study in international relations, but I want to give a hand at, local politics, because a lot of problems I see in the world are starting right here in this room. And the one thing I want to touch upon is the lack of communication, especially from the head down to the trustees, down to the people. What I'm bringing into that is the agenda. I think, like Boudreaux said before, you can correct me if I'm wrong, But you should have everything placed on the agenda, whether, you know, it's one trustee that wants it or a few trustees want it. You know, it makes life simpler for the people that come here that want to actually speak on a topic that maybe, you know, no one has mentioned yet and they haven't had the time to figure it out. And it's also more transparent for us because if we see, like, a special meeting today, it only had about three things on it, but it's on a Wednesday at 8 a.m. I'm pretty sure you guys only usually have your meetings either at 6 a.m. or 7 p.m. or 6 p.m. on most days. So I found it a little strange, and on that issue, usually that lack of communication between the trustees, between the mayor in this case, between the people that come here, you know, it's the first start towards a downfall that you can't really stop. I've seen it in many examples across the world that they're just not talking properly, they're battling each other. That's fine, you can have, you know, difficult decisions, and you don't have to have a ton of cohesion, but you have to outline everything so everybody in here within the town knows what's going on. I've only watched these videos, I think, for like four weeks. I went back to all the ones, I think, in April of this year. And I've already seen all of these problems easily laid out. I don't understand why... Since you're all fighting each other, this lack of communication is harming everyone. It's making the people of the town not be able to trust you. It's making the trustees not be able to trust each other because they're battling on the agenda. It would be such a simple task to fix, to put everything on the agenda and to vote for, and yet I don't see it happen. It's some of the simplest things that even I've done in college in simulations that we've had of like the UN, of little meetings between nations. Simple stuff, guys. I mean, it's hard for me to speak on a point that I'm passionate about in the town if you're barely putting anything on the agendas. I had to look at what the trustees are exactly going to say, what they're gonna say on the agenda, and not list it at the top.

Thank you very much for your comments. Our next speaker is Karen Brzecki.

Good morning, I was just gonna address a couple of things that you guys mentioned in the meeting. So I have a few notes here. Most of them are around protocol and it was brought up about background checks and I understand the difficulty with background checks. My question and my suggestion would be, I understand getting rid of them because we wanna bring vendors in, but we still wanna balance the safety of the town with what's going on. So I guess kind of a suggestion or maybe something that has happened where I worked in a larger village. The code enforcement officer was the one responsible for going around to each booth every single event to make sure that everyone was living up to their responsibilities, to their license, to everything else. So that would be something that our code enforcement officer might be able to do. It's just a suggestion at this point. The other thing is if we're doing a background check on a vendor or a vetting or however the protocol ends up being, whatever it is, the suggestion of a centralized person to do that I think is a really good one so that everyone is doing the same thing, same protocols, same vetting, same whatever your protocol is, it should be done for everyone like was mentioned. Um, it's just good for the safety of the town and the vendor that should be responsible for their employees. So if that person has the license and you will go in and find out, Hey, wait a minute, this guy is a little sketchy. We probably don't want him here. Then the vendor could lose their license to be set up at that event. That would be my suggestion as well. I don't know how you would enforce that again. My suggestion would be code enforcement, but it was just something that was brought up during your discussion. So I thought I'd make that suggestion. Um, excuse me. Again, most of my suggestions had to do with protocols. When you talked about a person being locked out, the police department gets an email or something that says, okay, this person no longer should have access. I think there should be a centralized person that does that. So if Ms. Geske is the person that actually informs them, then who's the person that tells her? That's something that probably should be decided in one of your meetings, executive session discussion, who makes that decision when they get locked out and how, and then Ms. Geske would then inform the police department and that's your protocol. So it's not just someone say, okay, I understand that she was trying to be proactive, but, there should be the person that makes that decision above her. That's just another suggestion. Um, I'm sorry, I'm going through the list. Some of the questions were answered as you went. Um, Oh, the agenda protocol. Um, it sounds like at this point right now that you don't really have an agenda protocol. I think that's something that you guys should discuss and figure that out, that there is a specific protocol for agenda. Um, Oh, sorry.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Janet Damps.

I just wanted to speak very quickly about two things.

One is the cost of a special meeting. And can we afford a special meeting?

And my second concern is that when I'm hearing about the protocols, I didn't know that certain departments could decide who could participate in events. And unless of course they're running that event, I don't know if that has to do with our friend from the park, but it's probably not a good idea or have a judging committee on the product that they're selling as opposed to the human being do it on the product. And regarding protocols, I think we have a lot of protocol issues in this town. I've seen the trustees speak poorly of one another. I've spoken poorly of all of them. I've seen the trustees call the mayor names. I've seen residents call the mayor names. it's hard not to react to something like that. No matter who you support, it's still hard not to react to something like that. And I've listened to you guys at the meetings quite often, like our last meeting that we had last Monday, which we have another meeting coming up Monday, CJ. I'm not sure why you're butting into Mike's part of the meeting, but... Why do you guys feel like it's okay to be so disrespectful to her? She's not disrespectful to anyone here. You may not like what she says, but she's never been disrespectful. I've never heard her raise her voice to anyone. And the way you kept on after the meeting was adjourned last time, it was really sad. So if we want protocol, the protocol should be Respect the mayor, respect the citizens, and quit acting like it's okay to call the mayor names. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have something I'd like to say.

I'm sorry, this is time for public comments. Do you want to hold it until the public comments are done?

Sure.

All right, our next speaker is George Reichert.

I probably don't need the microphone.

They need it for the television.

It's on TV.

We had an election and we had six trustees on the board. I'm thinking, good, maybe this board's going to work together as a team. What I don't understand is... You have your own business, you can set your own hours. You have your own business, you can set your own hours. You work for Troy, you work for the school district, and you're out in the summer, and how many times I see you when you have your meeting with Mr. Getsky over there, you gotta fly out the door when school starts. Why don't you have your meetings later in the day, like 5 o'clock. Why can't we try to work together? If Mike can't be here because he has a job, you would think you'd want to work with him and say, okay, Mike, we'll try to make it to where you could be here, too. Not just you four, but where Mike and Peggy could be here. And you guys are not working together as a team. And I know you guys could all set your own hours. That's no doubt about that. But things are never going to change until you guys start working together as a team. It's like you four against those two. And that's the way it works. So thank you. Thank you, George.

Our final speaker is Bob Forsyte.

I really have to ask why we have a special meeting this morning when we have a board meeting on Monday and this could have been done on Monday. Not, not today at eight o'clock in the morning. Last night, trustee Boudreau, you made a comment about you want to run surveys out to see what the village, what the residents want. Do you realize that a year and a half ago the residents voted for a change? Well, that's right, you got voted in, but the residents got, they voted for a change. And you don't want that change. None of you want the change. We voted for the change. And I don't just, I don't understand it. And then that thing about the veto, to give Chris LaRock the veto, Well, Mr. Getzke, how would you like it if your employees were you?

You have to be careful about attacking people, so don't use their names.

How would it work if the people that have businesses in town here, or that sit on the board have businesses, and their employees decided to overthrow them and tell them that you don't have any more power, and you're just a figurehead, you're here, and it doesn't matter what you think, but your employees are going to make all the decisions for you. I mean, that's exactly what you were trying to do, is overpower the mayor completely so she has no decisions and you four can be the mayor. And that's exactly what it wants, what it looks like is you guys all want to be the mayor. And I really think that if we can't call out someone by name, that means you get to hide under the radar. We don't get to call you out for being the person that you are and the things you vote for. I mean, I just don't understand it. I don't understand even why we're here today. This could have been done Monday night.

Thank you. All right, Annette, you wanted to make a comment.

Just to Mrs. Damps. you know, respect in that. I recall at a meeting where my husband was present and you sat there and you said a couple cuss words to him.

I did not.

Yes, you did. Oh, wait, I did. You did, yes. So because I was up here, you were making your little comments back there. He looked your way because he overheard it. And then you...

So you came out and attacked me. That's okay.

Yeah, well, that's respect going both ways. My husband didn't deserve that. I didn't deserve that. I've done nothing ever to you. I don't even know you. You don't know me. Yeah. You don't know anything. Okay.

I did say, I will say this, since you brought this up in your discussion. I wish, and I told you at the time, that you never make your own comments and your own votes. Go with the three.

That is not true. Okay. I have been in business. Okay. All right. Well, you have your opinion then. All right.

It's time for an adjournment. Can I have a motion to adjourn?

I'll make the motion.

Motion by Boudreau. Second. Second by Geske. Roll call, please.

Boudreau? Yes. Geske? Yes. Crockett? Yes. Zimbelman? Yes.

Meeting's adjourned.