The intention is to begin attending DeKalb School District 428’s Facilities Planning Committee (FPC) meetings despite harboring doubts that a non-construction type could contribute much to the discussion. But now the thought occurs: Send Enviro Woman! She’ll know what to say! Such as, “LEED, or get out of the way!” Take the case of the…
Wogen, Neighbors & the Women’s Center
This is to update the post of October 29 concerning Victor Wogen, the Neighbors Helping Neighbors group (NHN) and the DeKalb Area Women’s Center (DAWC). Victor Wogen did indeed obtain use of a lift for the DAWC paint job after all. (We had a chuckle over the lift belonging to Irving Construction. Made us wonder…
Wogen & the Women’s Center
Last spring, Victor Wogen showed up to the DeKalb Area Women’s Center (DAWC) while university students and others were painting the place. The DAWC building is an old church, and parts of it reach to a third-floor level that the volunteers simply couldn’t reach. Wogen told the DAWC director, Anna Marie Coveny, that he knew…
Wogen Watch Gets Results
Third Ward Alderman Victor Wogen came out both on the air and in print today to clear up a few things. The timing was no accident. Wogen had met with and made promises to a regular poster over at the Wogen Watch blog and, indeed, beat an October 5 deadline to follow through on them…
Additional Reports: Public Access Improvements
The Daily Chronicle today published an article by Benji Feldheim regarding recent complaints over the City Council meeting minutes and subsequent actions by citizens and the city to improve public access to them. Mr. Feldheim did a good job. The story is accurate and IMO almost annoyingly objective. 😉 My aims here are only to…
A Discussion of Ethics
Lately I’ve been pondering questions of conflicts of interest in political life and recently declared (elsewhere) that since a certain act of omission by a certain politician made me trust him less, I knew he had made the wrong decision. I was mocked for it, I suppose because it sounds simplistic. Short rebuttal: It is…
Ethics & Downtown Revitalization
All we know for sure is this: DeKalb Mayor Frank Van Buer cast a vote against Gavin Wilson’s candidacy as 5th Ward alderman. The mayor is now found to have close political relationships with Wilson’s opponent in the race and with the man who challenged Wilson’s ballot petition. Van Buer’s campaign manager, Don Floyd, says…
Conflict of Interest No. 12,498
In the February 24 article, “No Race in DeKalb’s 5th Ward” I decried the Illinois campaign laws that could be used to get a person kicked off the ballot for not much more than forgetting to cross a “t.” In my opinion only out-and-out fraud, such as forgery, should get a person tossed off the…
Shut Up
The Setup For nearly all of the past 20 years, my day job has been about providing services for adults with developmental, physical, intellectual and/or mental disabilities. One of the challenges is to keep vulnerable people safe. We sometimes fail. Abuse and neglect sometimes occur no matter how good the service agency is, so what…
Donna Johnson & the Liquor Commission
Part of Donna Johnson’s job as city clerk also includes the role of deputy liquor commissioner. It was in this capacity that Johnson was put on the defensive in early 2005, when “the city” made the decision to allow a tavern to pay a fine for getting caught serving a minor without the requisite public…