Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Oswegoland Park District board member suggested a target of 20 percent in cost reductions, but other board members disagreed, saying staff is already working to cut expenses.
Should the Oswegoland Park District set a formal goal for spending cuts, and stick to it? That’s the question raised by Board Member Len Wass last week, during the park district board’s regular meeting. And though other board members did not take to the idea, saying the district is already holding the line on costs where it can, Wass still believes it’s a good one. Even though the district kept the tax levy the same in 2012 as it was in 2011, Wass said, the district’s portion of his tax bill went up. That, he said, is due to a declining tax base, and the only way to combat that is to trim spending. So Wass proposed passing a board resolution to set a goal of reducing district expenses by 20 percent. It is the second time he has proposed a …
Monday, May 28, 2012
The Kendall County state's attorney delivered his decision on a violation that occurred in executive session last year. Commissioner Len Wass informed Weis of the violation.
Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis has delivered his decision on allegations that the Oswegoland Park District violated the Open Meetings Act in an executive session last December. In a memo dated May 16, Weis said he reviewed the minutes, audio recordings, and written transcripts of a closed-door session that took place on Dec. 28, 2011. Weis concluded that portions of the meeting did, in fact, violate the Act by straying from the allowable topics for an executive session. “A review of the relevant transcript shows that a lengthy discussion regarding the conduct of board members was done in executive session in violation of Section 2 of the Act,” Weis wrote. It was Park District Board Commissioner Len Wass who initially alerted …
Friday, August 26, 2011
Deep division on the Oswegoland Park Board surfaces on Thursday night.
As much as Commissioner Len Wass may want them, term limits on the Oswegoland Park District Board are not likely to happen anytime soon. The reasons are twofold. First, the district’s attorney has said state statute doesn’t allow the park board to impose term limits on its members, and the board majority led by longtime commissioner and President Bob Mattingly have no interest in doing so, either. Wass and his fellow commissioners clashed on that and other issues at Thursday night’s meeting, which included more debate on overspending at the Park District. “There is no statutory basis for imposing term limits on the office of park commissioner” in the park code, said Mattingly,reading from an email from the board's attorney. “Unlike some …
William Gutierrez
6:52 pm on Friday, June 1, 2012
I wonder where the money for grants comes from? I'm going to take a wild guess and say that grants are funded by TAXES. So the money isn't free. It's great that they get grants but that money has to come from somewhere. So I would careful in thinking that grant money is somehow not connected to TAXES. more ›