With the help of city administrators, Victor Wogen managed to parlay his seat on the DeKalb City Council into income approaching $60,000 of taxpayers’ money in 2008, about ten times more than his annual salary as representative of the Third Ward.
Tag: transparency
The Redevelopment Commission
TIF oversight in DeKalb is a joke. Recently I asked to see several years’ worth of minutes of Joint Review Board meetings, which apparently are as perfunctory as can be since there is no substance to the minutes, much less evidence of real oversight. How could there be? They only meet once a year. Then…
Expenditures of Distinction: ReNewing Eduardo’s
Instead of the usual “Expenditures of Distinction” categories this month, we will focus on recent TIF spending. The City of DeKalb spent another $4700 out of the TIF Fund (.pdf p.52) on the Van Buer parking lot, this time for something called “FIBRCONE,” which brings the past two months’ parking lot embellishments to over $15,000…
The Flood-Prone Property Selection Maps
In response to the interest generated by news of FEMA funds released for additional buyouts of flood-prone homes, here are maps of the properties considered by the Stormwater Task Force. Properties labeled 1.0 or higher are considered to have favorable benefit-cost ratios. The first four properties bought and demolished were 814 W. Taylor and 829,…
High School Construction Contracts
Here is the list of contracts awarded for the construction of the new DeKalb High School. School Board President Mike Verbic sent it to me and a few others in late July, but I didn’t put it up then because I expected it to show up on the revamped District 428 website. Well, either they…
P.E.T. Does It. Why Won’t ReNew?
Last week I submitted a FOIA request to the City of DeKalb to review meeting minutes from the Preservation of the Egyptian Theater (P.E.T.) organization. Today I stopped by the Municipal Building to pick up two years’ worth, which translated to minutes of 17 meetings. Such accessibility is made possible by a provision of P.E.T.’s…
Your Tourism Dollars at Work
On July 13, 2009, City Council once more approved a $50,000 allocation to the Chamber of Commerce‘s tourism branch. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, City Barbs has obtained some financial information. This is how they spent the money last year: DeKalb Chamber of Commerce Tourism Fund a.k.a. DeKalb Area Convention & Visitors…
City Clerk Implementing New FOIA Standards Now
The new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation has an effective date of January 2010, but DeKalb’s Office of the City Clerk will not not wait until then to begin implementing policy and procedural changes in fulfilling FOIA requests. In fact, at least two changes — that of charging for copies of documents only after…
FOIA Request Rejection & Appeal
Kay’s post about Governor Quinn’s signing the new, improved FOIA legislation is great news, but comes too late to help with this current and ongoing situation. Let’s start with a recap of events. I have been trying to obtain, via the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), ReNew:DeKalb meeting minutes. Re:New, as a private organization,…
SB 189 > Public Act 096-0542
Gov. Quinn signed Senate Bill 189, the upgrade to FOIA. The full text can be read at this link. It takes effect January 1, 2010. It seemed to take him a while to get around to signing it but I see that his office created a new Web site which is here: http://accountability.illinois.gov/. This is…