Clarification

The ballot in this election uses the phrase "vote for not more than..."

Just to be clear: you do NOT need to vote for more than two people for Village Board Trustee -- if you vote only for Ledvora and Wilkie, that is a perfectly valid vote.  Same goes for the Park District Board -- if you vote only for Hummel, that is a perfectly valid vote.

Lisle's Future Is In Your Hands

If you read this blog, you know how badly Lisle needs change.  You know about 8 consecutive years of reckless deficit spending.  About 10 years of tax increases.  About pay to play, secret board meetings and the "Glink stink".  About the plan to bring gambling to Lisle.  You know that as long as trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young remain in power nothing will change.


There is an election April 5, and early voting for that election is available to you now.  Don't wait until April 5 unless you have to.  Vote at the Village Hall this week - Monday hours are from 7:30 a.m. till 6:30 p.m., and Tuesday thru Friday hours are from 7:30 a.m. till 4:30 p.m.  Make sure all voting age members of your family vote.  Every vote counts.  Joe Broda was reelected mayor in April 2009 by a margin of only 233 votes. Of the 13,761 registered voters in Lisle, only 3,485 voted in that election.


Electing Ledvora and Wilkie to the Board of Trustees will not solve all of Lisle's problems overnight - after all, it took 10 years to get into the mess we find ourselves in.  But electing Ledvora and Wilkie is a necessary first step in the right direction.  If we don't take this first step, we have only ourselves to blame for continuance of Lisle's downward spiral.

What Goes On In Lisle Stays In Lisle?

If you live in Lisle, what's your vision of what Lisle could be in the future?  What would you like to see Lisle become, if you were dreaming about a great place for your kids and grandkids to grow up in?  Something like Wheaton? Naperville? Maybe even Oak Brook or Winnetka?

Think again.  Your mayor and trustees Cawiezel, Boyle and Young have a very different vision -- one that sees a Lisle more like Gary, East St. Louis, and Joliet.  One that relies on gambling as a principal source of revenue.

One of the reasons why they've been paying exorbitant legal fees recently is their interest in bringing gambling to Lisle -- below is from a list of invoices submitted to Lisle by the Ancel Glink law firm in February:

What Ed Young Doesn't Want You To Know: Part 3 -- the Meijer property

Ed Young was a founding member of CRADL, the group that prevented Meijer from opening a "box" store on a 67.5 acre site on Maple avenue.  Perhaps that was the right thing to do at the time, but that was more than 10 years ago.  For more than 10 years, that 67.5 acre site has been vacant.  That site could have been generating $1MM + in sales tax revenue for Lisle every year, year after year (almost enough to offset the cost of the "Taj Mahal").

Year after year for more than 10 years, Ed Young and the Lisle trustees have done nothing to encourage any kind of commercial development of the property.  Instead, year after year Ed Young and Lisle trustees have increased the property tax levy to make up for the "opportunity cost" of the sales tax revenue which could have been generated on the 67.5 acre site.

A 26,867 % "Return On Investment"

How's your 401k doing these days?  Can you match a twenty six thousand, eight hundred sixty seven percent return?  Have you been able to turn $1,500 into $403,000?  If not, perhaps you should consult with Ancel Glink.

You remember Ancel Glink - the law firm that some Illinois towns decided they could no longer afford.  The Lisle Village Board paid Glink $31,000 for the month of February - that's $403,000 annualized.  Nice work if you can get it.

Boyle & Young: Two Peas In A Pod

Readers have pointed out that Ed Young is not the only Lisle trustee who engages in "disingenuous misstatements" ... point well taken.  Consider, for example, Young's colleague Mark Boyle.

Boyle has been a trustee since 2007, and he has acted in lock step with Young for 4 years.
Boyle and Young both claimed that fiscal responsibility is "key issue #1" in their campaigns, and Boyle was right there with Young during the last 4 years of reckless deficit spending.

Boyle and Young both claimed to be interested in open and transparent government (Boyle used that exact phrase in his interview with the Daily Herald).  While Boyle and Young paid lip service to the idea of open and transparent government, these have been their actions:

1. On June 3, 2009 they participated in a secret meeting in violation of the Open Meetings Act
2. Through the remainder of 2009, they engaged in an elaborate scheme to deliberately circumvent legally mandated oversight and approval processes, keeping Lisle citizens in the dark
3. On Dec 20, 2010 they passed a resolution (without discussion) to keep all closed session meeting minutes and the audio recordings of those meetings closed - and not just the recent closed session meetings - but ALL closed session meetings back to 1983.  yes that's 1983 --  27 yrs. of secrets that must remain secret.

Do the actions of Mark Boyle and Ed Young match their words about open and transparent government?  Now that you know the facts, decide for yourself -- then vote accordingly in April.

What Ed Young Doesn't Want You To Know -- part 2: Fiscal Responsibility (NOT)

More on Mr. Young's "disingenuous misstatements"...

PDF

More Glink Stink

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20100817/news/308179847/

http://mchenrycountyblog.com/2010/04/20/ancel-glink-bills-grafton-township-36432-for-march/

http://mchenrycountyblog.com/2010/12/12/grafton-township-court-order-fires-pam-fender-and-ancel-glick-part-2/

The Glink Stink

The stench from the Lisle Village Hall has made its way to Island Lake. Island Lake trustees still take their responsibilities seriously, and have taken action to oust Ancel Glink as their village's law firm.

Remember Ancel Glink?  Yes, they are the firm that knows how to get business from small town politicians like the Lisle mayor.  They are also the firm that drafted those outrageous PZC rules to remove citizens rights, and worked on state legislation (with state representative Connelley and Senger) to silence dissent and take away the right to free speech.

One village has trustees that take action to remove the stench -- the other (Lisle) continues to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to Glink (I guess the Lisle trustees have a lot of Vicks in their nostrils).

Attorney General or "Attorney Specific To Cook County"?

The Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, has seen fit to chastise Oak Park officials for failing to comply with the Open Meetings Act.  Funny that she never commented on the illegal meeting held by Lisle trustees (led by Joe Broda and Ed Young) on June 3, 2009.

Oh, that's right -- Lisle is in DuPage County -- where politicians don't have to comply with the law.

Candidate Forum or More Dirty Tricks?

On March 23, 2011,  The Lisle Chamber of Commerce is planning to hold a "Candidate Forum" for Village of Lisle Trustee candidates.  Yes, this is the same organization (led by Mr Althoff) that sponsored the dirty tricks attack recently.


Will the "forum" agenda and format be determined by Althoff?
Will Culloton be the sergeant-at-arms?


Knowing what we know about Lisle's "Chamber of Deceit", do you think they deserve to retain nonprofit status and tax exemption?

Chamber of Deceit and It's Tangled Web

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."    ~ Sir Walter Scott

Readers of this blog are aware of the role Tom Althoff (Lisle Chamber of Commerce) played in the deceitful attack on one of the candidates for trustee in the upcoming Lisle election.  But did you know that prior to the release of the attack on March 7, Althoff presented the attack plan to Dan Garvy, Director of Parks and Recreation at the Lisle Park District?  Althoff was seeking Board approval of the plan (yes, this is the same attack that promoted the candidacies of 3 current trustees: Cawiezel, Boyle and Young).  You can decide for yourself what Garvy's response was - all you need to know is that the attack plan went ahead (and we have heard nothing from Garvy or any of the trustees denouncing the lies in the attack).


So far, we have the DuPage County Board, the Lisle Chamber of Commerce, the Lisle Board of Trustees and the Lisle Park District Board all swimming in the same cesspool with Culloton.

More on Culloton

Sometimes when you turn over a rock, all sorts of snakes appear.


It seems that Mr.Culloton (the head "plumber" for the DuPage County Board and political supporter of several Lisle trustees) has had another interesting assignment, in addition to the work he did for George Ryan.  Culloton started his "media spin artist" company in January 2010. His first contract was with METRA, a few months BEFORE the Pagano story broke. Metra subleases office space to Culloton Strategies.  Pagano was set to be fired by the Metra board in early May 2010 - he stepped in front of a train and killed himself.


Isn't it amazing how the same people's names keep turning up whenever there's malfeasance, skulduggery, or criminal behavior going on behind the scenes?

Cawiezel, Boyle & Young Supporters Take The Low Road - In The Gutter With Culloton

Can't beat a candidate on the issues?  Roll out the dirty tricks!

Don't just distort his record, lie over and over.

Make sure you have a set of "plumbers" that would make Haldemann and Ehrlichman proud: Ray Kinney (a Naperville businessman and Chamber of Commerce member) and Tom Althoff (President of the Lisle Chamber of Commerce).  Put them under a third rate publicist (Dennis Culloton) whose qualifications include:

• he lives in Naperville
• he was George Ryan's press secretary
• he has not stopped feeding at the public trough since Ryan went to prison - he is currently employed by the DuPage County Board
• while he takes your tax dollars, he launches malicious, deceptive attack emails (and somebody pays him to do it)

Here are some of the details: http://lisle.patch.com/articles/not-all-endorsements-are-authentic-in-this-years-election

Is it just a coincidence that emails from "electedofficials@villageoflisle.com" started appearing simultaneously with Culloton's lies?  You decide.

Can Lisle and DuPage politics get any scummier?  We'll see -- in the meantime, here are the statements from Cawiezel, Boyle and Young renouncing Culloton's dirty tricks: Young and Boyle have said that Culloton "is not working for them".  I guess that means there is no proof that they hired him, although his attack clearly endorsed them.

 

One thing is clear -- Cawiezel, Boyle and Young are running scared, and you can expect any kind of behavior from a frightened animal.

What Ed Young Doesn't Want You To Know: Part 1 - levees

We located a copy of the Lisle Patch article that Ed Young had pulled. There is so much material here that it requires multiple posts to set the record straight. Let's deal with Young's comment on Lisle's levees first (this was a topic covered in "the real state of the Village" here and here).

Young said the levees have not been repaired for many years, and the Village Board has been trying to address this. "I'm concerned that they haven't been repaired and if they should breech, that would be catastrophic," Young said.

Here are the facts about the levee debacle:

• The levee problem was identified shortly after the turn of the century.
• In 2005 DuPage County paid to have engineering work on levee maintenance completed (Page 350http://www.co.dupage.il.us/finance/budget2010/2010FinancialPlan.pdf )

River - Dumoulin Flood Control Project - Property Reimbursement

Village of Lisle

The River - Dumoulin Flood Control Project is comprised of several different project components. A total of four pump stations will be constructed along the East Branch between Lacey Avenue and Burlington Avenue in Lisle. In addition, several areas of the levee system will be raised to their original design elevation. In order to repair the levee, permanent easements will be needed from property owners along the length of the levee. These easements are needed for access and construction and to make sure that structures or plantings are not placed on the levee in the future that would affect the integrity of the levee.DuPage County has an IGA with Lisle to reimburse property owners up to $1,500.00 for the permanent easements required for the levee repair project.

2005

• From Village Of Lisle "Floodplain Information and Protection": "Funding was available, and the engineering work was completed. Then it was discovered that the easements used to construct the levee were all temporary easements which had long ago expired. Today, the river levees areowned by around 55 private property owners, and there are few easements to allow maintenance or inspection" Ed Young has been a trustee since 1999. The levee problem was identified shortly after the turn of the century, and DuPage County provided funding for the levee engineering work in 2005. 
• Ed Young, Broda, and Lisle trustees ignored the levee problem prior to 2005, resulting in no easements being available when the levee engineering work was completed. Ed Young continued to ignore the need for easements from 2005 through 2010, even though DuPage County offered funding to help acquire the easements!

Now that Ed Young has to run for reelection, he is "concerned" about levee maintenance. Where was he in 2000? in 2001? in 2002? in 2003? in 2004? in 2005? in 2006? in 2007? in 2008? in 2009? in 2010?

We all know that politicians never lie to voters. Let's be kind to Mr Young and call his comments on the levees disingenuous misstatements. You can decide for yourself whether they are deliberately deceptive -- but does it really matter? Is this not a prime example of how incompetent "leadership" got Lisle into one mess after another since 1999?

There are many more "disingenuous misstatements" from Mr Young that will be dealt with in subsequent posts, but not till later this week. The author needs to go on a business trip for a few days, to earn money to pay for the 8.2%+ property tax increase that Ed Young and Lisle trustees intend to ram down the throats of taxpayers in tonight's budget hearing (to finance a 9th consecutive year of deficit spending).

Why Ed Young Does Not Want To Meet You

The Lisle Patch publication has been running a "Meet The Candidate" series on candidates for the Village Board.  One of the candidates, Ed Young, had his profile removed from the "Meet The Candidate" pages.  Why would a candidate not want his profile to be known to the voters?  Well, it turns out that Ed Young has established quite a track record in 12 years as a trustee, and some of that record was coming to light in the comments of Lisle residents responding to his profile.  So Ed decided to return to the shadows, hide his profile, and hope that voters would not have the time to learn the truth about his record.


Here are some of the reasons Ed doesn't want to "meet" you:

1. Young and Joe Broda have presided over 10 years of increases in the property tax levy and 8 consecutive years of deficit spending
2. During 8 years of spending more than they took in, Young and Broda have drastically depleted the Village's reserve fund, putting Lisle in a precarious financial position
3. The current budget proposal calls for yet another deficit ($991,000+) -- Young's comment on the budget is:  "I believe we have made all the cuts we can without cutting services."  He refuses to consider any of the remedies businesses have to use when they face declining revenues (restructuring, staff reductions, outsourcing) -- this in spite of glaring failures and inefficiencies in Lisle Village staff performance.
4. Young supported the outrageous and abusive rules change in the Lisle Planning and Zoning Commission hearings and pushed through an illegal Tax Increment Financing scheme. 
5. On June 3, 2009 a secret meeting of the Lisle Village Board was held to discuss a Tax Increment Financing scheme - the meeting was illegal, in violation of the Open Meetings Act.  Taxpayers were not told of the meeting and were not allowed to participate, but proponents of the TIF were included in the meeting. No minutes were kept (another violation of the law). Ed Young not only actively participated in the illegal meeting, but he led the move to make it clandestine by making the motion to move the meeting to "Executive Session".

When a candidate wants to hide his record from voters, one has to wonder about issues related to personal integrity. More on that part of Ed Young's track record in a subsequent post.

Thank you, sir! May I have another?

Readers of this blog are aware of Lisle's fiscal crisis and one potential solution.

Lisle is at an inflection point - the 2011/12 Lisle budget will determine whether runaway deficit spending will continue and whether Lisle residents will be burdened with the highest property taxes in DuPage County to support the deficit spending.  The Budget Hearing is scheduled for March 7 at 7 pm.  This will be, far and away, the most important meeting for Lisle residents in 2011.  In view of the impact of the 2011/12 budget on Lisle taxpayers, the room should be packed for this meeting, with people standing in the aisles.  Every person attending should stand up and demand that the Village Board give these crucial budget discussions the time and attention they deserve.  Budget discussions are far too important to relegate to a few evening meetings of the Village Board – serious, in depth reviews of assumptions, projections, and alternatives merit day-long meetings on Saturdays, with full participation by taxpayers. 

Those of us who joined college fraternities experienced hazing rituals, including the one where a pledge, after being thwacked with a paddle, is expected to say vigorously: "Thank you, sir! May I have another?".  The Lisle Village Board has engaged in reckless deficit spending for 8 consecutive years -- if you do not attend the March 7 budget hearing, you are sending a loud and clear message to the Village Board: "Thank you, sir! May I have another?"

A Realistic, Fiscally Responsible Budget For Lisle

PDF

PDF

Say It Ain't So, Joe (Lisle's fiscal crisis)

Source: Lisle "Draft Budget #2"

PDF        YouTube