Five residents made public comments before the board. While they are all worthy of listening to, we recommend readers listen to the third public speaker. A direct link to that recording can be found here.
The entire meeting lasted over four hours, with half of that time consumed with Trustee Selman’s Finance report, including the discussion of the 2015 Village budget and levy.
When the monthly bills for approval were presented, Trustee Messer objected to a portion of the bill from Bond Dickson, the temporary Village law firm, stating the bills were not detailed enough for him to approve. After some questioning of his complaint ensued, he finally admitted his true objection was due to his displeasure with the resignation of the Burke Warren law firm, and unwillingness to pay for attorney attendance at Board of Trustees meetings.
Trustee Harrington stated he did not want to approve the bills either until the board discussed the three candidate law firms that had presented their qualifications for consideration to become the new Village Counsel at a previous board meeting. In the end, Trustees Harrington, Gohl, Meroni, Messer and Selman voted to withhold payment to Bond Dickson, with a partner of the firm sitting at the table providing legal guidance for the meeting.
At the end of the meeting, when the three law firms (primarily selected by these same five trustees) were discussed, it was like a page taken from “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” They were either “too big” or “too small” but none was just right, so the search continues with an unpaid Special Counsel continuing to serve.
One of the highlights, or perhaps lowlights, of the meeting came when Trustee Patty Meroni presented her request for nearly a half million dollar increase in her Roads and Bridges budget for 2015, which would result in an increase in the tax levy. When she began to attempt to explain the significant increase, an audience member began to video record her, and she objected by obscuring her face with a file folder for over five minutes. A direct link to that discussion can be accessed here.
While Meroni’s proposed increase will not increase the levy for 2015, it will negate any cost savings realized from decreased expenses, particularly legal ones due in great part to the efforts of Village President McLaughlin to finally settle the decade long Sears litigation in 2014. In fact, we may have actually enjoyed a decrease in the levy next year based on cost containment efforts were it not for years of mismanagement of our roads maintenance (see “Of Bikes and Blame, Part Two – Peter, Paul and Patty”).
More folly came from Trustee Gohl’s and Meroni’s objection to including a Barrington bank (where a former trustee is or was a board member) among the list of possible banks in which the village could consider depositing funds. That trustee no longer lives in Illinois, and it’s doubtful he’s still actively on the board, but these two felt the need to grouse about something, so they picked at this nit.
It’s time for the minutiae-driven bickering such as this to stop at Village Board meetings.
In the scheme of things, running the Village of Barrington Hills doesn’t need to be complicated unless some choose to make it so on purpose, or if some continue to follow the disruptive political agenda of a phantom outside of Village Hall.
Either way, this behavior in the board room needs to stop because residents are growing weary of it.