Terrorist Alert?

The mild-manner Aileen Seedorf a “terrorist?”

That’s what Huntley School Board President Shawn Green told Daily Herald reporter Jameel Naqvi.

Here’s the article’s headlines:

District 158 school board flap erupts
Board leader calls two members ‘terrorists’

How does Naqvi get Green to say such off the wall things?

I thought terrorists tried to kill people. Physical violence is definitely part of the common definition.

Yet Green seems to think elected officials’ asking serious questions, the answers to which he and the school board majority does not want the public to learn, is like a terrorist attack.

Green’s accusation could be dismissed out of hand as utter nonsense, but let’s think about it some more.

Naqvi does come up with a threat of violence in his article.

But it was against Seedorf and fellow board member Larry Snow:

“Seedorf said in a police report filed Nov. 15 that during one of these exchanges, board Vice President Tony Quagliano threatened Seedorf and Snow with violence.”

Quagliano made an admission to such a threat to Naqvi, although I sense his characterization of it as a comment that Seedorf and Snow ought to be spanked is not the whole truth.

Spanking a grown woman and a man? Spanking is what one does to children, isn’t it?

Probably another reason the board majority is pleased that no recording exists of most of the secret meeting in which Quagliano made what Seedorf characterized as a threat.

The Northwest Herald’s Tom Musick got this from the police:

”’It’s not verbatim, but it was something to the effect that the individual wanted to come over there and smash [her] head,’ Algonquin Deputy Police Chief Ed Urban said of the alleged threat.”

Anyone who has ever talked to Seedorf knows that she is not your ordinary public official. Nor was she your average citizen.

The boldest thing I saw her do while being an active citizen was to hand a piggy bank to the board president to symbolize her concern for the district’s spending.

While she is no one’s doormat, she is invariably self-effacing.

I have yet to hear her raise her voice, although tonight’s 6 PM board meeting might be a trying test.

Green and minority board member Snow have been verbally sparring for a long time. It is clear neither respects the other.

Snow keeps bringing up questions that Green and the five-board majority just don’t want to answer like these:

  • whether the forensic audit deserves to be called that, even though it was supervised by CPA board member Tony Quagliano.
  • whether School Superintendent John Burkey deserved the maximum raise possible, regardless of the aggregated performance ratings of the seven school board members.
  • whether there is a permanent loss of state aid to education because of school board actions.
  • how did school officials manage to fail to follow the law that secret board meetings shall be tape recorded.
  • why Green and Burkey did not put the items Snow wanted discussed on tonight’s agenda.
  • why a power of attorney was granted to a member of the board of education other than its president.

Another items in Naqvi’s article that easily could have made separate stories:

Snow filed a criminal complaint with the McHenry County state’s attorney’s office about fellow board members, which Snow did not deny to Naqvi.

Read this paragraph carefully:

”In response to Seedorf’s filing the police report and Snow’s lodging the complaint, board President Shawn Green on Wednesday said Snow and Seedorf were ‘terrorists running roughshod over the rest of us.’”

The reaction of the minority of two?

“’It’s irresponsible language and it’s typical of Mr. Green,’ Snow said. ‘This is how he talks privately. He can’t help himself.’”

“Seedorf echoed her frequent board ally.

“’Mr. Green is going over the top,’ Seedorf said. ‘(That’s an) understatement.

“’This isn’t a comment I’d expect from a person who thinks he can run a school board.’”

If you want to see someone run roughshod over fellow public officials, attend the meeting tonight at six and watch Green carefully. After his outrageous accusations, he may be on better behavior than before, but I have certainly seen him “run roughshod” over Snow.

= = = = =
The top picture is of Huntley School Board President Shawn Green looking hostilely at fellow board member Larry Snow. Aileen Seedorf can be seen holding up a piggy bank to make a point during the public comment time before she was elected to the school board. In the photograph of the three board members, Larry Snow is on the left, Keven Gentry in the middle and Shawn Green on the right. The head shots at the bottom are of board members Aileen Seedorf and Larry Snow.


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