This week we had the first Committee of the Whole (COW) Meeting and Board Meeting of the year. The COW was over in about 10 minutes. The only item of any significance was an approximate $400K engineering award. Given the nature of the work these RFPs are typically not low bid and we look at several factors. I expressed concern that the scoring of the evaluation criteria was not shown even though I trust that staff gave us a good recommendation. At my suggestion the board unanimously (6-0, as Trustee Dodge missed the COW) referred this to the next board meeting and asked staff to include the scoring of the evaluation criteria in the writeup so the board has all the information before voting on it. So far, the COW process is working very efficiently as we hoped!
The Board Meeting had 3 items of note. The first was honoring Tim Lhotak, US Army Veteran with a Community Pride Award. My comments were:
After hearing the following story, I felt compelled to honor Mr. Lhotak.
In November of last year a call came into our Orland Park Veterans Commission office from a Orland Park resident, a Korean War Veteran, Mr. Herbert Summers. He’s an 89 year old combat veteran who was short on food and needed help to get to Jewel. We told Mr. Summers that we would find help.
At this time there just so happened to be an Army Veteran, Tim Lhotak, who needed help getting his Veteran status on his Driver’s license, because while in Nashville on a business trip someone took his jacket with his driver’s license and wallet. While speaking with our veteran’s assistant Darryl Wertheim, Mr. Summers story came up in conversation and without hesitation Mr. Lhotak said, “I will help”.
After obtaining his driver’s license Tim contacted Mr. Summers, met him and his wife and drove her to the grocery story, helped her shop, load the groceries and bring the groceries into their home.
Tim commented to Darryl “Two very nice people that needed a little assistance”.
The story doesn’t end there. A few days later Tim contacted Darryl and said, “sometimes when you do good things for people good things happen to you. I told you that I lost my wallet in Nashville while I was travelling for work. Two days after we met, someone sent my jacket with my wallet still in it by mail to me from Florida. They must have grabbed my jacket on accident.”
I am proud to present you with a Community Pride Award for your kindness and selfless act of assisting a fellow veteran and Orland Park resident in a time of need.
Your actions bring honor to yourself and pride to all of the residents of Orland Park.
The second issue was a resolution asking the Illinois Attorney General and FCC to enforce the laws regarding the vile and disgusting robocalls that we have received. I first commented as follows:
There were 2 more robocalls since last Thursday. The first was about the Secretary of State’s Office in the village hall closing. I find the timing of this interesting because the Secretary of State has only been discussed in executive session recently.
Let me share the basic facts without going into all of the exec session details. I asked our Village Manager to look into the Secretary of State lease due to all of the issues our employees deal with here in the village hall related to Secretary of State customers.
What we found out is that the Secretary of State has been operating here in the village hall with no lease agreement for over 25 years. They pay no rent and the residents of Orland Park are liable for any incidents that may happen with customers (slip and falls, injuries, etc). Clearly, they didn’t just move into the village hall with no one knowing so there was some type of handshake, off-the-books agreement (a quid pro quo if you will) at that time.
Clearly, it is unacceptable for the Secretary of State to not have a lease that protects the village. It is also unacceptable for us to be shouldering their costs. Particularly because, since my arrival here alone, the state has taken between $4M to $5M away from our village due to cuts and additional charges to the village. Not to mention a 50% hike in vehicle taxes starting this year. Our residents should not bear this risk or this burden!
Therefore, the board UNANIMOUSLY agreed to ask the Secretary of State to sign a lease and pay rent. Those discussions are ongoing.
After this, 5 residents spoke, including 3 from the Southmoor subdivision who have also been receiving robocalls attacking their board that are equally vile and disgusting as those being made across the entire village.
All the trustees spoke in support of the resolution and against the robocalls.
Then I made my final comments as follows:
These calls are made to create discord amongst people in the village. Since last March, there have been more than 20 robocalls, I only decided to speak about them when they started to attack spouses and children of trustees. My wife and brother have also been targeted. Trustee Milani’s wife and CHILDREN were targeted. Also, since March, Trustees Healy, Katsenes and Milani, Deputy Chief Mitchell, Police Chief Tim McCarthy, Village Attorney Dennis Walsh, Village Manager George Kosczwara, Orland Park Catholic Residents, Papa Joe’s, Fox’s, Crystal Tree, Austin Tyler and Horton Insurance have been targeted. Enough is enough.
In 19 attacks on me, off the top of my head, I’ve been accused of bribery, pay for play, embezzlement, theft, adultery, falsifying my military record, being dishonorably discharged from the military, bid rigging, child abuse, being kicked out of the Navy (which I was never in), and now have been called Hitler.
These calls are damaging Orland Park. Interestingly they track closely with the over 50 FOIA requests we have received from one individual. This same individual has also sent over 40 emails with eerily similar accusations against the same people. Perhaps most interestingly the person who sent these FOIAs and emails owns a robocall company and lives in Southmoor. It shouldn’t be too hard for the government agencies that have the responsibility for enforcing these laws to find this person. Given the new federal law that was signed regarding robocalls, hopefully this will help put the pressure on these agencies to do their JOBS!
The final issue of the night was the Pioneer Football Program …. again. The item that Trustee Calandriello put on the agenda was tabled, and 3 residents and most of the board made comments. I encourage you to listen to those comments here, starting at 35 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcN-xVA-R40. Since the core issues are pretty much the same as previously written about, I will only touch on a couple of items.
The first citizen that spoke was a person who previously coached in the Pioneers for over 20 years. Getting a permanent facility is so important to him, he came in from Michigan for his 3 minutes.
After him, the President of the Pioneer Board spoke. She started by attacking the coach and indicating that he no longer knows the needs of their organization since he hasn’t coached in 10 years. I personally want to apologize on behalf of the past Pioneer families and the residents of Orland Park for the embarrassing comments she made that do not recognize the efforts and sacrifices this individual made for the children of Orland Park to build the Pioneer football program to almost twice the size as what it remains today.
Additionally, Trustee Calandriello again said that the previous board made promises to the Pioneers about moving back to John Humphrey Complex based on a study that was done for the village board. Later I reminded Trustee Calandriello that the study did not recommend for football to return to JHC and that the village board voted against staff’s recommendations, resulting in a one yeardelay of JHC construction. That board has never voted on where any of our youth organization play, including the Pioneers. Also, a board cannot commit a future board to any actions. Regardless of the ultimate decision, any private promises made by Trustee Calandriello and the Pioneers are not promises made by the Village of Orland Park.
Regardless, this issue remains a priority for me. Unlike those who are simply using this issue to make more political attacks against me and my allies, I am focused on resolving this issue permanently so we have a football-focused facility in Orland Park that we can all be proud of.
Personally, I’d rather spend more time talking about the Tim Lhotak’s of Orland Park than dealing with robocalls and political bickering. There are more Tim Lhotak’s in our village than we will ever know, but I was proud to have the opportunity to honor him.
Below are some upcoming events:
- Orland Residents for Responsible Government (ORRG) monthly meeting, January 8th at a new venue, Papa Joe’s – hope to see you there. This week is an open agenda for residents to ask questions about the village with Trustee Milani and me.
- Quilt of Tears, Boots on the Ground exhibition, February 6th thru 8th
- Candidate Forum on Veteran’s Issues, February 7th, 6 to 7:30PM
- Mayor Pekau fundraiser at Blissful Banana, March 19th
- Senior Coffee – March 24th at the Civic Center, 9:30 to 11:00 AM
