Housing Authority of the County of DeKalb (HACD) is losing its executive director, Shelly Perkins. This is an excellent development. It presents the HACD board with a fresh opportunity to address the unprofessional workplace culture there, by hiring an outsider and encouraging additional management departures. Having observed HACD for about nine months and collected hundreds…
Tag: Open Meetings Act
We could strengthen open meetings laws by plugging the ‘walking quorum’ loophole
I decided to find out more about Sycamore’s new city manager (who comes to us from Wisconsin) and ended up adding to my vocabulary. A ‘walking quorum’ is a series of gatherings among separate groups of members of a governmental body, each less than quorum size, who agree, tacitly or explicitly, to act uniformly in…
Letter requests oversight of housing authority’s business travel
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…
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…
How the DeKalb Housing Authority violates the Open Meetings Act
The DeKalb County Housing Authority has not often pinged my radar until now. A few years ago a couple people shared with me their being told by staff that federal rules prohibited bringing their cats with them into public housing unless the animals were declawed; my advice since then is to ask for citation of…
DeKalb city council voted to allow me to participate remotely in order to exclude you
As DeKalb’s city clerk, I’ve been participating in council meetings via teleconferencing since April. Then, during the July 13 committee-of-the-whole meeting, the city council, somewhat bizarrely, took a vote to allow me to teleconference. This post will explain why. Here’s the clip of part of the mayor’s introduction to the topic. (The first 4-1/2 minutes…
Eliminating Zoom option for city meetings is a terribly backwards thing to do
The Daily Chronicle reports that City of DeKalb is eliminating the remote public participation option for meetings because Illinois is entering Phase 4 of its reopening. First victim is Human Relations Commission, which during its last meeting enjoyed remote participation via the Zoom application by nearly 90 people. Since the meeting tonight also will not…
DeKalb’s credibility is suddenly becoming visible to the naked eye
“Folks, we blew it,” said the mayor. Mayor Jerry Smith recalled his previous State of the City assertion that DeKalb must “acknowledge our shortcomings and our mistakes” last night, when he brought up DeKalb’s violation of the Open Meetings Act of last Friday. “We blew it” is what he told the staff members involved, he…
We’ll soon see what this council is made of
***Updated 6pm: Check out the city attorney’s “blooper” during last evening’s meeting when he explained why he advised the mayor to adjourn the meeting before council could vote on the matter at hand. I’ve placed a video clip of it at the end of this post, or you could click here for the clip and…
Here’s the difference in agenda rules between regular and special public meetings
During a recent Annie Glidden North task force subcommittee meeting, I alleged Open Meetings Act (OMA) violations. I want to explain why. What I objected to was the subcommittee’s addition of discussion items to the agenda of a special meeting. During regular meetings, a public body can talk about anything it wants, but that same…