Whatever of the above title fits the descrition of the described proceedings as detailed in this blog. Some may have to look in the mirror.
On December 12, 2006 the JS reported as follows: "Judge: Park Board Broke Law; Erasing audiotapes violated Open Meeting Act: lawsuit over closed sessions can go to trial." The tapes contained information about "discussions" allowing the Peoria Public School District #150 to use 5 acres of Glen Oak Park as part of a new school. As anyone following this story is aware, after these "discussions" the Peoria Public School District #150 proceeded to buy property on these five acres for $800,000.00 plus. Apparently the school district owns these properties and at least one has been demolished as being unsafe.
Bill Shay, attorney for Alms and Partridge (Rally Peoria) agrued that the closed meeting violated the Open Meeting Act and that "Closed meetings make it easy for public officials to shield themselves from public acccountability."
Tim Bertschy and his team were hired as an outside counsel for the Park District and are defending the PPD from these proven violations. This lawsuit was filed by community leaders Karrie Alms and Sarah Partridge.
The same article quotes attorney Bertschy as saying, "A number of tapes were deleted. It's a significant violation and we addressed it." However, that did not appear to be a correct statement as on May 10, 2007, the JS reported, "Board (Park) adapts rules for recording; decision comes 5 months after Open Meetings Act Violations." (Almost 10 months after the original discovery.) The article says that "trustees approved a resolution to outline who will handle such recordings and under what conditions they can be destroyed. Furthermore, the board determined its secretary, or whoever is keeping the minutes will operate the recorder: each will include the time, place and people involved and the tapes must be kept for at least 18 months. Only one meeting can be used per tape and the board will approve when the tapes can be destroyed."
It is absolutely asinine to think a entity with an almost $50,000,000.00 (that's millions) budget would act like they could do anything they want and not have to keep a record of the transactions.
Note that the outside attorney representing the Park at taxpayer expense, said that the tape erasures were "a significant violation and we have addressed it". However, it appears by the report on May 10,2007 that the board had taken no formal action on the violation.
The States Attorney's Office decided to take no action against the PPD because the person who admitted to destroying the tapes was only an officer of the board and not a board member. She is Joyce McLemore who holds the title of Secretary and Officer of the Board. On August 7, 2006 McLemore wrote, "Feeling that I could do so, I discarded discussion tapes associated with the written released minutes. I felt I had this backlog of tapes, starting in January 2004, and I systematicly worked through the list of released minutes to erase tapes that had not been transcribed to match up with the corresponding discussion tapes, which tapes I marked "released". I have been a board secretary for over 6 years. Realizing that the tape recordings you were discussing couldn't be transcribed because of what I had done-it hit me like a ton of bricks."
The States Attorney further stated that HAD it been a board member who admitted to erasing the tapes, (she is not a board member) that office would have looked at the situation in an entirely different manner.
Interesting is the fact that the assistant secretary to the Board is Park Board Superintendent Bonnie Noble who is also the Treasurer of the Peoria Public Park District. Hmmmm.
My next blog will review where the lawsuit filed by community leaders Alms and Partridge stands and what the approximate cost is to the taxpayer is to defend this legitmate lawsuit. The outcome of this lawsuit affects all citizens anywhere and points out the obvious "lack of transparency" and ineffectiveness of many public employees and public entities that are run by elected officials who often look at them as their personal fiefdoms and as "country clubs". People have less and less confidence in our tax supported governmental bodies.
The Peoria Park District is a classic example and I am asking all fellow bloggers to post my blog and ask other bloggers to forward it and keep forwarding it.
Responsible citizens should feel an obligation to send some money to Rally Peoria @ Karrie Alms, P. O. Box 44, Peoria, IL, 61650-0044. This would ensure Rally Peoria would have the funds to continue should this case ever go to trial. A message must be sent to tax collecting entities like the PPD and that these organizations must not be permittted to do "creative" bookeeping and not to make serious "mistakes". Tax supported entities have an obligation to be well run and an obligation to operate in transparency.
Every statement as to time, place, people involved and money are true statements backed up by data.
The Peoria Park District has a budget for 2007 of $49,800,000.00 and rising rapidly each year. Look at your tax bill.
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