Plainfield Mayor Mike Collins
By Marney Simon | Enterprise Staff
One village official is continuing his effort to hold the proverbial feet of his fellow elected officials to the fire.
On March 13, Trustee Edward O’Rourke brought up issues of transparency and accountability during a Committee of the Whole workshop meeting.
“We cannot fix what we don’t know is broken,” O’Rourke told his peers.
O’Rourke said he was bothered by several issues recently, including an agenda item brought to the board earlier this month about a proposed new fast food restaurant at Plainfield Plaza. O’Rourke said that while a motion was made to approve a plan for a drive though at that site, there was an error in the packet distributed to the trustees, one that was corrected during discussion by Trustee Bill Lamb.
Plainfield Trustee Edward O’Rourke
“We were ready to vote on the topic before we knew the packet was wrong,” O’Rourke said. “The board should be presented with the correct board packets, and all the trustees, not selected ones, should be involved in… updates.”
O’Rourke also said he brought up concerns over the village’s zoning code several times, but has not received any clarity from Village Administrator Brian Murphy. He told the board he’d like to discuss the lag time in getting topics discussed, but was met with resistance from other members.
“If we’re going to talk about staff and the way their job is done, it needs to be done in executive session,” said Trustee Brian Wojowski, with the agreement of other trustees.
“The evaluation of any personnel should be done in executive session, not in an open form where you’re going to hang dirty laundry out, or what one perceives as dirty laundry,” said Mayor Michael Collins.
Collins also took issue with the suggestion that Trustee Lamb had information about the Plainfield Plaza vote that other officials could not access.
“Some of the trustees have the availability of going to some of the planning commission meetings and are privy to the… interworkings of what the planning commission is doing,” Collins said. “If something is brought up by a trustee, you insinuate that the trustee had inside information about something that he wasn’t authorized to, whereas you would have had the same if you would have participated in that other meetings. So, I find it a little alarming that you would do this in an open forum like this. You’re making your assumptions inappropriately.”
Lamb added that he knew about the error in the packet only because he had attended a plan commission meeting on the issue prior to the meeting of the full board.
O’Rourke, however, said he would like to see more accountability out of the village administrator, a comment that again led other trustees to say that such a conversation is suitable for executive session.
Meanwhile, other members of the board said that a change in Plainfield’s online presentation of agendas, board packets, and video of meetings has shown a new level of transparency for the village. The village switched this month from posting video of meetings on YouTube, to using Granicus, a site used by more than 3,000 governmental bodies to post agendas and videos nationwide.
“For those that want more transparency, I can think of no better way than to go to live meetings [on the website],” Lamb said. “You can see the agenda, you can see the entire packet, and you get to see what people said. There’s no hiding. And I’ll give the press some credit too, because the reporting quotes very accurately. I think the reason why is because you can actually see what the quotes are. I’m impressed with the quality and ease at which this is used.”
Trustee Garrett Peck said he’d like to see financial documents can also make their way to the new site.
“I don’t see any harm in putting the checkbook online, our packets are online, it’s already there in a sense, I just wanted to see if it is something that is feasible,” Peck said.
Administrator Murphy noted that financial information is already available monthly under the transparency tab on the website, but staff would be willing to research other ways to display the information online.
The village website, including public information, meeting agendas, and calendars, can be found online at plainfield-il.org.