Manteno board nixes change of counsel

MANTENO – At Monday’s Manteno village board meeting Mayor Annette LaMore proposed the hiring of new legal counsel, Tiffany Thompson.

Thompson, of KGG LLC law firm in Joliet, was born and raised in Manteno. She gave a brief presentation before the board and said, “It would be an honor and pleasure to serve the village.”

The vote to appoint new counsel to replace Joe Cainkar was shot down by a 4-2 vote with Michael Barry and Peggy Vaughn the only trustees voting for the change. When asked why new counsel was being considered LaMore said, “We need to make changes.”

Trustee CJ Boudreau said the village is in litigation, and it wasn’t a good time to change counsel.

“It just didn’t feel right,” Boudreau said.

Gotion sign, tour

A variance was granted for Gotion to erect two signs on the outside of its plant at 333 S. Spruce St. The signs are larger than what is allowed by the village. The Gotion signage was approved by a 5-1 vote with Peggy Vaughn as the single dissenting vote.

The ordinance limits signage to 64 square feet, and the new signs are more than 24 square feet larger. One sign will be on the northeast corner of the building, and the other will be on the east side.

Board members recently toured the Gotion factory. Boudreau noted that the factory employs 206 people and plans to expand to 700 within the next two years. Only 10 to 15 of those employed were from Manteno, Boudreau said.

In his closing comments, Boudreau affirmed that “Gotion is here to stay. ... They’re going above and beyond to make sure it is safe.”

Barry said he learned a lot during his tour of Gotion.

“If Gotion was more transparent about exactly what was going on out there, I think that would be a great thing,” he said. “... It would benefit everyone in this room, it would benefit Gotion and it would benefit the residents to see exactly what’s going on there. You will know more exactly what’s going on as far as safety.”

Trustee Joel Getsky raised several points in his closing comments, first of which addressed personal attacks made on him by public commenter Robert Forsythe who among many things said “You [Getsky] try to act like you’re the king. You look like Buddah.”

Gesky said village ordinance limits commenters to three minutes and to refrain from personal attacks.

Getsky also mentioned that LaMore has not yet signed Village Administrator Chris LaRocque’s contract which was passed by the board after being amended. LaMore said that she “was not comfortable” signing it though it was confirmed that the contract remains valid with or without the mayor’s signature.

Getsky also accused the mayor of creating a hostile work environment for LaRocque by repeatedly making use of the Freedom of Information Act requests to attain 5,400 pages worth of documents. The request was made three times, the latter two for specific pieces of information contained within the 5,400 pages.