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: transparency
DeKalb’s ‘Suburban’ issue of fire safety
***Update 8/6/2022*** DeKalb city council is expected to approve an intergovernmental agreement during its regular meeting on August 8 that specifies a developer buying the Suburban property, the city annexing it and connecting it to city water, and DeKalb County providing American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds of $862,500 for the water infrastructure improvements. Agenda…
DeKalb Township is getting things done
With the election shenanigans and rough start of the new township board last year, I didn’t expect much from this public body at first. But eight months into it and they deserve credit for pro-public policies and practices. Meetings This week, for example, the board reversed an earlier decision to remove agenda background material from…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Charging the Water Fund for salaries in other departments is a masterpiece of nontransparency
*Note: “Departments” as used in this article should be read as shorthand for “departments, divisions, and offices.”* Take a look at this budget from DeKalb’s Finance Division: Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, it’s not. It does not show all the wages the Finance employees get paid. This is a budget that accounts only for the…
New Illinois Law for Local Gov Audits Is Doing the Trick
Here’s a new state law we can all get behind: Public Act 098-0738, which requires certain disclosures pertaining to city and county audits. Introduced by Rep. Tom Demmer, the law went into effect this month. Here’s another version with the deets. Of particular interest to me is the now-required sharing of the auditors’ letters to…