By: Diane Benjamin
All you taxpaying citizens in Normal aren’t allowed to go speak to the Council and be first up if your topic isn’t on the agenda. You have to wait until the end of the meeting which could be hours of waiting. Of course special people get to speak out of order. Remember when County Board Chair John McIntyre got first dibs?
Last night the youngsters telling the Town what they want to see 25 years from now in Normal got moved to the beginning of the meeting. Sure they were cute promoting happiness for all, the Council mostly fawned over them for their civic engagement. The kids spoke and then left, maybe moving them to the beginning of the meeting was so they couldn’t see opposition isn’t tolerated in Normal.
Stan Nord questioned why only 1 bid was received on Water Line and Service Materials. He wondered if staff could ask the people who didn’t bid why. He was worried the citizens weren’t insured the best pricing with only one bid.
Chris Koos:
I suggest you listen to all the Trustee comments at the end of the meeting. They start at 57:25 with Stan Nord. Kevin McCarthy chimes in praising staff for spending water funds on snow removal equipment, he leaves out water department staff was out clearing roads. When your water rates go up because the fund was drained send McCarthy a thank you. Maybe clearing the roads went well because Constitution Trail wasn’t cleared first like last year. Karen Smith proves why she doesn’t deserve to be reelected if she chooses to run again. She represents staff, not citizens. She looked like she was going to cry.
Stan Nord’s comments had to do with ethics. He wants an ethics ordinance, he suggested using the ICMA ethics statements. Some citizens are still not satisfied with how the Town handled National Fitness Challenge. Staff declaring it dead without a Council vote is unacceptable since the ethics issue is not allowed to be discussed.
In case you forgot, staff and Koos not only claimed NFC was a non-profit, they didn’t tell the Council the head of Parks and Rec, Doug Damery, was on the Board of Illinois Parks and Recreation who benefit from every NFC product sold. Staff refuses to explain why this isn’t at least an ethics violation. Pam Reece responded to Stan Nord’s comments, she isn’t going to tell people what they want to hear, at appears the rest of the Council doesn’t care. Pam, hiring outside counsel will get the answer you want. We’ve seen that dog and pony show. If you can’t see the problem maybe other ethics need investigated too.
Don’t forget Kevin McCarthy changed his business website when I pointed out it said he trains people at Rosa Parks, the exact place NFC was going to be installed. Conflict of Interest? Ethical? In Normal it is.
Entire meeting:
I requested a policy which includes a process whereby the public can submit ethics and corruption complaints. Currently, members of the public have submitted complaints and they are not receiving feedback that anything is being done. Complaints that have no feedback to the complainant or are ignored without explanation appear as a coverup or an absence of accountability. Actions like this result in justified distrust of government. These actions contradict the ICMA ethics recommendations for municipal managers . Here’s is the document I quoted from last night and justify my comments posted here. It is titled Ethics Matter!Advice for Public Managers. Please start reading at pdf page 28 titled “ Why You Can’t Rely on Your Attorney . . . to Keep You Out of Ethics Trouble”.
https://icma.org/sites/default/files/18-
207%20Ethics%20e-book_final.pdf
Stan Nord – Normal Council Member who is fighting a lonely uphill battle for ethics reform and less government corruption. It would be nice if politicians who campaigned as pro-ethics and transparency and anti-corruption would support this effort instead of deny these problems have ever existed in Normal..
Respectful disagreement is dead in Normal. Any question, comment, or concern from other council members or citizens that isn’t 100% lockstep with the Mayor’s beliefs gets attacked, or that person painted as ill-intentioned for even daring to have a different idea or question. If the Mayor had been re-elected with 70% of the vote, maybe you can argue he has a “mandate”. But when 48% of the town disagrees with you/votes against you, and you don’t make an effort to include them, you’re just being smug.
How do we get more people to attend Town Council Meetings? We need a full audience all signed up for Public Comment to let these leftist progressive marxists know we’re disgusted with their complete lack of ethics, morals, decency, and integrity. Besides Stan, not one of them gives a darn about the tax paying citizens of Normal.
Guess Normal citizens don’t care. Maybe I should quit writing about meetings.
Completely unprofessional. From the underpass to Jelanie Day…Chris Koos doesn’t care about anything besides himself. He became a politician to make himself look important and build a miniature Naperville. If the average person paid attention to local politics he would be out of office by now. Read all sources of the news and pay attention so you don’t have a mayor like this
From watching the council meeting it looks like if you disagree with Koos he will make things pretty bad for you. Who would want to move or base their business here if they saw on of his council meetings. Koos is doing more harm than good and the council encourages his antics.
Rand is spot on. Preston, Lorenz, Smith, Reece, Cummings and McCarthy watch, and often encourage, Koos bully and intimidate ALWAYS the same person. Encouraging bullies make you worse than the actual bully. Normal government is absolutely hostile to diversity of opinion.