Oh no she didn’t!

On October 31, our Village Board met in special session to approve the final agreements with the Metropolitan Alliance of Police (MAP) and our own sworn police officers who formed a union.  The subject at hand was a serious one, considering the tenuous path our previous administration chose to take in negotiations of the issues.  A link to the meeting recordings can be accessed here.

Once the Resolution before the board was motioned and seconded, discussion on the matter by the board was opened.  The third commenter was Trustee Karen Selman who stated for the record the following:

“Most of us weren’t here during this whole thing, so, and, that’s probably a disservice to this contract in that now we’ve come on to the scene, um, we’re way down the stream.”

Had any of the three recently elected board members uttered something like this, it would be understandable.  However, in Trustee Selman’s case, it is not understandable since the only Trustee with more experience and first-hand knowledge in the matter than Selman was Fritz Gohl.

Village records show that Selman officially became Village Clerk in June of 2009.  In this position, she attended nearly every executive and public session of monthly and special Village Board meetings, and received the exact same packet as the Board of Trustees do before each meeting.  As Clerk, she was responsible for recording and updating meeting minutes of closed-door executive session discussions of personnel issues, including those regarding our police force, up until 2011 when she was elected to our Village Board.

We can only speculate as to why Selman chose the words she did given her more than four years of first-hand exposure in meetings that most certainly covered a number of the issues between the Village and our police force.  (Her statement was disingenuous at best.)

What’s more dumbfounding, however, is why she was the only board member to vote against the Resolution considering that opposing it would only serve to continue the “hemorrhaging” of legal fees and create a deeper chasm in the relationship between our sworn police officers and our Village Board had the Resolution not passed.

–          The Observer