DeKalb resident Derek Van Buer sent me a copy of a letter he is sharing with members of the DeKalb County Board and officials of the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) regarding the Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb (HACD) and work-related travel restrictions. DeKalb County Board is the appointive body for…
Tag: Freedom of Information Act
Elements of a sound policy for automated license plate readers
The Daily Chronicle covered the October 11 city council discussion that led to approval of the purchase of 12 automated license plate readers. The newspaper purports to know how DeKalb PD plans to use the ALPRs, but that is not entirely true. They talked about some aspects, but as yet DeKalb has no formal policy…
Housing authority’s dealings with Morning Star Media
A month ago Ryan Weckerly, president of Morning Star Media, Ltd., agreed to plead guilty in federal court to charges related to a $3 million-plus kickback scheme. Several units of local government have paid Morning Star over the past decade. City of Sycamore gave the company TIF money to help it settle in new digs…
DeKalb Township reports it’s inundated with FOIA requests
I’ve finished another section of video from last week’s regular meeting of DeKalb Township. This time, I watched the board moan its way through the latest report of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The township supervisor says they’re spending so much time responding to requests, there’s a possibility the township may have to hire…
Housing authority’s listing of payments to Sundog is not complete
Some readers have expressed interest in how much money Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb (HACD) has paid to Sundog IT over the past few years. My ballpark figure covering the calendar years 2015 through 2020 is $325,000. The rest of the post will be about why we can call it only a ballpark…
Looks like DeKalb Park District failed us too
The DeKalb Park District Code devotes 3-1/2 pages to protection of trees in the district. But when it comes to contracting IT services, the district can’t be bothered with boilerplate to protect the interests of its non-arboreal constituents. I decided to continue my comparison of the relationships the Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb…
Documents continue to suggest housing authority’s pattern of partiality toward its IT vendor
In June, the DeKalb Park District approved a contract with Sundog IT, the company owned by DeKalb’s mayor, Cohen Barnes. We opposed the deal for reasons of conflicts of interests, but the district did run a request for proposal (RFP) bidding process and the buck did stop with the park district board, as one would…
Attorney General determines NIU Foundation must respond to Freedom of Information Act requests
The determination resolves at least three requests for review of NIU Foundation’s refusals to release information on payments to vendors. It followed an examination of the relationship between NIU and NIU Foundation. Hover over the top of the PDF to enlarge it and turn pages. NIU has sometimes used NIU Foundation to hide purchases and/or…
Will DeKalb learn from the departure of Tinez Tacos?
Last weekend I found out that the owners of the Tinez Tacos food truck have worked out a parking spot in Malta, and will serve from 11am to 7pm weekdays this summer at Hickey’s Corner Store. If comments at the City Barbs Facebook group are any indication, residents of DeKalb wish them well in their…
City emails reveal tactics in the condemnation of Lord Stanley’s
Emails obtained by a member of the City Barbs Facebook Group indicate City of DeKalb worked the Lord Stanley’s and Stanley’s Annex condemnations of April 6 in a decidedly business-unfriendly manner, and then blamed social media for frightening residential tenants with impending forcible eviction. As indicated in last weekend’s post, the city failed to follow…