Residents Excluded from Having Say on Wheatland Meeting Agenda

Leaders of a Wheatland Township transparency group are livid the township board plans to meet Friday to draft an agenda for a special meeting without allowing the group -- -- to participate.

Citizen group leaders Debra Holscher and Mike Crockett have told township officials they've been consulting with legal experts to get advice on the agenda wording for the meeting, which was approved by residents who attended the April 12 annual town meeting.

“This meeting is completely the opposite of what the electors called for at the town meeting,” Holscher said. “The last word we left with (them) was that two citizen representatives were going to meet with Supervisor (Todd) Morse to craft wording for the agenda for the special meeting.”

Notice for the Friday meeting was posted at township hall late Wednesday afternoon.

Township officials have the right to call a special meeting if they give 48 hours' notice, according to a representative for the Better Government Association.

“It is within the letter of the law, but that doesn’t mean it’s in the interest of transparency,” said Emily Miller, the BGA's policy and governmental affairs coordinator.

Holscher said Morse has been pressuring her to meet with him and township attorney Keri-Lynn Krafthefer to hammer out the language for the agenda. Holscher and Crockett have been seeking legal advice from their own experts, she said, to “word our agenda in order to honor the wishes of the electorate.”

Morse did not return Plainfield Patch calls to discuss the issue Wednesday evening, and board trustees could not be reached for comment.

Holscher, a retired academic administrator, fears the township officials and attorney want to slant the wording to benefit the faction that favors building a new $1.5 million town hall, she said.

"This is a matter of totally crossed swords,” Holscher said. “The township supervisor once again is trying to usurp the authority of the voters and skew it to where he can control things.”

At the April 12 meeting, Holscher put together a coalition of 17 people who signed a petition calling for a future special meeting to “discuss overturning new building plans,” she said.

She made a motion, which carried 62 to 24, to halt all proceedings and expenditures on the new building until officials could complete a detailed needs-assessment analysis, including price tags, and to document options to lease or buy an existing building.

State law says special meetings must be held no less than 14 days and no more than 45 days from the time they were petitioned. April 26, two weeks after the town meeting, would have been the first day it could have been held. Leaving a window for the mandated 10 days to post notice of the meeting, May 17 would be the last.

“By my calculations, April 26th is the minimum fourteenth day described above and well within the allotted time frame,” Holscher told Morse in an e-mail she sent him Tuesday.

Holscher calls Morse’s pressure to resolve the agenda wording before the group was ready “abusive.” Several times, the supervisor has called her early in the morning, insisting they meet that day, she said. During one call, he raised his voice to her, she said.

“I’m not going to cave in to this abuse and let the people down,” she said.

Holscher said she learned about the special meeting in an e-mail from township employee Jay Madalon at about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday.

“Since we haven’t heard back from you in a timely fashion, Todd Morse has set up a Special Town Meeting for Friday, April 29, 2011 at 7:00 PM,” the e-mail said.

Holscher and Crockett represent a growing number of Wheatland residents who are questioning the need to build a new town hall and favor looking into the purchase or lease of an existing structure.

Crockett said he doesn’t understand the reason for rushing the agenda issue. He and Holscher are working as quickly as possible to get themselves up to speed on the legal issues involved, he said.

“You seem to have some urgency regarding getting together to clarify the agenda,” Crockett told Morse in an e-mail sent Wednesday morning. “It’s always nice to know where you stand as a taxpayer and citizen before you act.”

To Holscher, who calls herself a “true conservative,” the town hall issue cuts to the heart of what it is to be a conservative. She said she questions the values of the Republicans who make up the entire Wheatland Township board yet do not uphold the party line on fiscal responsibility.

“I’m tired of these people painting themselves as conservatives while they bleed the taxpayer for their own piggy banks, their own pet projects and their own political aspirations,” she said.