Discovering Why Some GOP County Board Members Were Not at the Special Meetings

Cary Village Trustee Jim Cosler reached out to some nearby McHenry County Board members to discover why they did not attend Wednesday’s McHenry County Board meeting on patronage hiring and the privatization of Valley Hi. What he found is below:

Below are the Republicans who missed the meeting, minus Donna Kurtz, whom Craig Wilcox reported at the after meeting was out of town, and John Reinert, who arrived just after the second meeting was adjourned:

If other readers know why other County Board members were no shows, please share your information in the comment section.

= = = = =
Donna Kurtz writes,

“This was a very important meeting so although I was out of town I planned my day around being available to attend via call in.

I made the necessary arrangements with the County Administrator prior to the meeting and I called in for the meeting at approximately 6:50 pm CST.

“I was placed on hold until the meeting started.

“Since the quorum requirement was not met I was not able to confirm my attendance publicly because the meeting was cancelled.

“Craig Wilcox and Jeff Thorsen were informed of my remote call in situation prior to the meeting.

“I look forward to attending when the meeting is rescheduled.”


Comments

Discovering Why Some GOP County Board Members Were Not at the Special Meetings — 22 Comments

  1. Cal, Jim Cosler posted on the Cary-Grove Politics Facebook group page that he wanted to reach out to board members unable to attend the special meeting.

    Since I had already reached out to few, I was sharing what I found out with him on the Cary-Grove Politics Facebook group page.

    Jim and I are going to get together and talk.

  2. This is B.S.

    First of all, all meetings are posted only 2 days in advance.

    That is the requirement under the Open Meetings Act.

    The Chairman has been routinely delaying the posting of meeting agendas until the last possible moment all year so changes cannot be made.

    I suspect he did the same thing here so there would be that excuse.

    Second, the date of the meeting was made known to each member a week or more in advance as each one was approached individually, and asked to sign the Call for the meeting.

    THE DATE IS ON THE CALL FOR THE SPECIAL MEETING! “GOP Members of County Board Seek Two Special Meetings Wed. Night Posted on 08/22/2017 by Cal Skinner”.

    Some people had signed it as early as the 11th, almost two weeks in advance. Those who did not sign had refused to sign but they all knew about it.

    Third, there seems to have been a awful lot of people who were “late”.

    These same people are not “late” to the regularly scheduled meetings.

    Why are they “late” to this one?

    It’s at the same time in the evening.

    Each of these “late arrivals” had refused to sign the Call for the meeting. That should tell you something.

    So if it is the intention of these members to attend there is a simple solution.

    Reschedule the meeting.

    Had Reinart, Gott, Chris, and Kurtz all been there there would have been a quorum.

    Let’s give everyone plenty of notice and reschedule it.

    Problem solved.

  3. @ Swampbuggy:

    You hit it right on the nose when you said “Each of these “late arrivals” had refused to sign the Call for the meeting. That should tell you something.

    So if it is the intention of these members to attend there is a simple solution.

    Reschedule the meeting.

    Had Reinart, Gott, Chris, and Kurtz all been there there would have been a quorum.

    Let’s give everyone plenty of notice and reschedule it.

    Problem solved.

    An old friend once said “excuses are like assholes; everybody’s got one”

    Remember them in March. Primary election = You’re fired

  4. Thanks Frierbas.

    If you will look at the Call for the meeting, you will see that ALL of the members’ names are preprinted on it.

    This is unlike previous Special Meeting calls which usually just have 8 or ten lines for members to sign with no names under them as only 8 signatures are needed.

    So when the circulator gets the requisite number of signatures, he or she stops and just files it.

    I believe the Call for the Special Meeting at which there was a vote on the countywide elected Chairman resolution was done that way.

    Someone could check on that.

    This Call crammed all 24 names onto one page for a reason.

    It was to show who was refusing to sign.

    Everyone was supposedly approached and asked to sign.

    No exceptions.

    The ones who didn’t sign had refused upon being asked.

    They weren’t just omitted.

    The date for the meeting was included on the Call, as it has to be to be valid.

    Circulators were going around to the Board Members’ HOMES to get the signatures.

    If anyone tries to tell you they didn’t know about it…….

    You can be the judge of that.

  5. Well, Kurtz is excused as far as I’m concerned.

    Christensen, ok, well we’ll see what he does in the future.

    What is Bates’ excuse?

    Was she at a Jack Franks’ fundraiser?

    I can vouch for Mary McCann! She was at an adult coloring book contest at the Woodstock Library ….her ‘creations’ are dull and the only colors she uses are black and mauve. She can’t even stay within the lines, but claims this is her ‘artistic licence’

    I can also vouch for Nowak …. he was in his attic, grooming his prize pitbull-chihuahua mix, “Sgt. Wimp” the one with three legs, (not Chan-Chan, his older pitbull-chihuahua mix — the one that eats other dogs’ feces).

    John ‘Sweet Onionboy’ Jung was getting yelled it by his wife (for a full two and a half hours!) bc he didn’t peel a bunch of sweet onions and can them on the weekend … and they all went ‘bad’ and reeked up his joint. He can’t be blamed! His wife took away his car keys and ‘grounded’ him for the whole week.

    What’s Gottemoller’s excuse? Oh, here it is, I forgot:

    he was making an old ‘pan’ of Jiffy Pop. [Unfortunately, his corn expired in 1996, and the vegetable oil had become spoiled.

    he texted me the mess: http://www.howtomakepopcorn.com/story_image/image/165/short3/Jiffy-pop.jpg

  6. It’s really convenient how they all came in mere moments too late.

    It’s almost as if they were sitting in their cars in the parking lot (just in case a quorum was made so they could rush in and vote no) and came in after the meeting adjourned to pretend like they really wanted to vote but had other commitments.

    Put the resolutions on the agenda for the next regular board meeting.

  7. Translation: Some of the members don’t have the guts to admit that they didn’t have the guts to show up and vote.

    Holy doubletalk, Batman!

  8. The resolutions can’t be put in the agenda for a regular meeting because the Chairman controls the agenda items for those meetings.

  9. Ms. Kurtz was to be handled by phone.

    She set it up but because there was not a forum and the meeting cancelled, she could not voice in.

    If the meeting continued, she could have.

  10. They need to schedule a special meeting right after the next regular meeting.

    I’d love to hear the excuses for no-showing that meeting.

    They also need a special meeting to address the Chair’s stranglehold on setting the agenda for regular meetings.

    Any committee chairman should be able to put an item on the agenda if the majority of his committee agrees.

  11. Reschedule the special meeting regarding the patronage hires and Valley Hi outsourcing.

    With the addition of Donna Kurtz, Chris Christensen, and Joe Gottemoller, there would be a quorum of 13.

    The other 10 being Yvonne Barnes, John Hammerand, Jim Heisler, Michael Rein, John Reinert, Jeff Thorsen, Chuck Wheeeler, Tom Wilbeck, Craig Wilcox, & Mike Walkup.

    It would be interesting if the other 11 then showed up and if there would be a tie vote, to be broken by Chairman Jack Franks.

  12. One would think the Chair would have to recuse himself from voting on the issues.

  13. The resolution would fail if there were a tie, so Big Chief Many Chins could recuse himself and it would have the same effect as if he had voted no.

  14. Did Sue see the other in the parking lot?

    Or perhaps she saw Franks wave then off from the 2nd level windows?

  15. Billy Bob wins for the most concise assessment of the situation!

  16. Cindy is right about all this – it’s all BS.

    Crooks everywhere and doesn’t matter what party they allegedly are for.

    McHenry County is a mini DC.

    Nothing gets accomplished except their special projects to line their pockets.

    Follow the money when Valley Hi gets sold off.

    Excuse me, I have to go puke. This happens every time I think about the scum bags!

  17. Not a single member from district 6 bothered to show.

    Very disappointing.

    I’ll be voting for any challenger in the spring and spreading the word.

    These board members are scared of the great and powerful bully on the playground.

    Show up and vote yea or nay.

    At least bring it out in the open for discussion.

    It’s called transparency.

    It’s called doing the job you were elected to do.

  18. I received an email from Donna Kurtz explaining her call in situation for this meeting.

    Her explanation is totally acceptable to me.

    In her words, the meeting was “very important”.

  19. Primary coming up, Dist 6 needs some big change!

    Earsel and Orville would be our best choices, in my option.

    Some of our 4 reps wouldn’t call back to discuss why they did not attend.

  20. Wow, I know Larry Smith.

    He presents himself as a kind of modern-day Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

    But unlike the character in the Jimmy Stewart movie, he doesn’t stand for much.

    He’s sort of a poser.

    He’s also a terrible poker player and not-so-good driver.

    I can overlook these shortcomings.

    But I cannot overlook his spinelessness.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *