Last week our Village Board considered zoning code action items recommended via memo from our appointed Legal Committee. This committee reports to Village President, Robert Abboud, and liaises with Trustee Fritz Gohl, according to published committee assignments and the organizational flow chart below:
Source: Barrington Hills FOIA website
This memo, authored by the Village Administrator Bob Kosin, included recommendations that would lead to groundwater conservation, contractor licensing requirement(s) and property maintenance codes – the last of which would presumably apply to vacant properties in the Village.
We can debate whether any of these recommendations are reasonable and necessary, particularly the contractor licensing requirement that will surely produce increased pass-through costs to Village residents who hire contractors to work on their homes and properties. We will explore that issue further on another day. But for now, the real bugaboo here is that the recommendations were not those of the Legal Committee, but those of the committee’s lone Chairman (see “Legal Committee Meeting Notes February 16 2012” memo). The meeting of the Legal Committee on February 16th was attended only by the chair of that body along with Bob Kosin, and some concerned residents in the audience.
There is no reason this meeting should have occurred without a quorum, whether or not a quorum is required by law. Mr. Kosin purports to be fully trained and certified in the Illinois Open Meeting Act (see completion certificate). He knows (or should know) better.
But the real shame here is that, during the subsequent Board of Trustee meeting on February 22, the Board deliberated the proposed recommendations as if they were presented by the full Legal Committee. Of course, Mr. Kosin or his boss Bob Abboud could have ended the charade by disclosing to the full Board that the “committee” was a party of one. But, perhaps not surprisingly, they did not.
At the end of their meeting, when public comment was allowed, a patient resident informed the Board of what had transpired at the Legal Committee meeting. After that, a revised memo by Bob Kosin was published for public view on the Village FOIA site.
The major lesson coming out of this gaffe: Resident vigilance is necessary at all future meetings to ensure honesty and transparency in Village government, particularly when new ordinances and regulations are being proposed and discussed. We simply cannot trust the current administration to act in the best interests of the community.
We owe a big thank you to the residents who attended the Legal “Committee” and Board of Trustee meetings last month. Even more, though, we owe it to ourselves to begin planning for a change in our Village Administration.
– The Observer