Mayor Cohen Barnes owns two parcels of property in downtown DeKalb as Bandits Castle, LLC. One of them should occupy the center of attention as the city council contemplates authorizing the condemnation and acquisition of the building owned by D-N-J Properties at 128-140 South Second Street via eminent domain proceedings. During Monday evening’s council meeting,…
Tag: ethics
Be more like Shelby County
It was nice to see the [Shelby County Board’s] discussions on numerous matters including not paying certain invoices which had no public purpose. The committee pulled those bills and took it upon themselves to reimburse the source of the invoice from their own pocket to the person who submitted them. They did so because that…
County housing authority paid for employee’s bridal event
Public funds, property or credit shall be used onlyfor public purposes. Constitution of the State of Illinois, Article VIII. Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb (HACD) reimbursed a housing authority employee $250.00 for a bridal event thrown for another employee. Payment records obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show HACD reimbursed then-employee Jennifer…
Water is the new TIF
This is second of a series. First one is here. For years, DeKalb bailed out its general operating budget with tax increment financing (TIF) funds. TIF administrative fees helped soften the blows following the 2008 market crashes and assisted the hiring spree after that. Now the enormous “TIF 1” district is gone, replaced by the…
Public officials’ ill-advised campaign contributions
We’ve talked about ethics issues and Bill Nicklas before, in the context of his outside employment, which — shamefully — the city council has so far failed to address. Now we see Mr. Nicklas, DeKalb city manager since the beginning of 2019, has been making political contributions to Illinois Representative Jeff Keicher. (“Report Received Date”…
DeKalb Township, that ship has sailed
DeKalb Township has begun posting its meetings on YouTube. In this video from Wednesday night, the township spends the first 20 minutes of its monthly meeting trying to put new township clerk Andrew Tillotson in his place for exercising his First Amendment rights. Trustees express concern about how the new township clerk’s public comments might…
Housing authority helped Cohen Barnes with marketing his company
Besides giving Cohen Barnes of Sundog IT frontrunner status on contracts, including providing him information about his competition, staff at Housing Authority of County of DeKalb (HACD) used their resources to assist him in crafting a testimonial with their name on it. Notice the HACD operations director cc’d the executive director in granting the favor.…
The avaricious romance of the local housing authority & our mayor
***UPDATE 8/21/2021: I’ve come across the rest of the conversation in my giant pile o’ emails and added the new pdf below the first one. In this batch, the operations director shares information about Sundog’s competition and says, “So, please update your quote. I now, officially have 3 bids or contacts so I can move…
Nicklas Consulting, LLC
Bill Nicklas, city manager of DeKalb, owns Nicklas Consulting, LLC. I did not know this until I read a complaint in which he is named a defendant. At the time of the discovery, I was the city clerk so I hesitated to address it publicly, especially when thinking of him as an abuser guarantees bias…
DeKalb’s mayor vying to become DeKalb Park District’s chief information officer as well
DeKalb Park District put out a Request for Proposals for a new IT contract. Eight firms applied. Of these, staff whittled down the list to three finalists: CMJ IT Solutions of Sycamore, Noventech of Lombard, and Sundog IT of DeKalb. The park board will probably be making a decision tomorrow. I’ve read the three proposals…