A non-profit government accountability group is questioning the Village of Tinley Park's apparent rush to settle a lawsuit following the election loss of Mayor David Seaman and his coalition of village board candidates.
“This lawsuit has been hanging over the Village’s collective heads for some time, but the Village seems to be rushing to settle it now while the current Mayor and Board are still in office, which appears to leave the new incoming Mayor, Jacob Vandenberg, and newly-elected trustees no say in the matter,” the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW) posted on their Illinois Leaks website recently.
The suit stems from a proposed low-income housing project that would have been developed by the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation of Ohio. The ECW says that while the project violated the village’s zoning code, some village officials worked to change the code through measures that did not follow statutory requirements. Because the code was never properly changed, the project could not go through as planned, leading the Buckeye firm to sue the village. The ECW describes the lawsuit as "meritless and retaliatory."
“Is the rush to settle this now, with a vote scheduled for the next board meeting, a way for the current Mayor and Board to make the issue go away while they still hold the reins of power in Tinley Park?” the Illinois Leaks post asks. "Does settling now mean records will be sealed and that the public will never know everything the Mayor and Trustees did wrong during the Buckeye scandal?"
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