Clark Co. Park District – No budget for review – comparing public commenters to ISIS –

Clark Co., IL. (ECWd) –
During the June 30, 2015 Clark County Park District Board of Commissioners meeting, the board chose to table two items related to leasing of park district property (reportedly to Larry Yargus), because there was not enough information available at meeting time.
During public comment, I asked that the board direct their Executive Director to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests as the law requires – I have one that was due five or 6 weeks ago.
Ms. Thomas directed her public comment time to ask several of the commissioners to resign immediately for their parts in various violations of law and policy, including, but not limited to Joe Ewing’s fraudulent election petitions. Read and listen below:
-Read the below comments if you wish, they are located here.

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During the budget discussions, where there was never any budget for the public to review, another person spoke up about the “July 3d” Celebration and asked if there would be a line-item for it in the budget. The Board stated that there was a line item for that, but then the conversation turned to the limited circle of people that donated money towards the event, even thinking that donations are not public funds. The reality is that nobody asked, or even made it known there were any people soliciting donations – let alone communicated in any way where donation could be accepted.
This comment went from donations, to get rid of FOIA and Public Comments, to blaming a board that has only been in office for 60 days for the mismanagement [in part] of his father-in-law for the past years b.s. budgets., to trying to shame people for not collecting donations, to saying he had a $50 donation check in his pocket (when it should be with the park district), equating public commenter with ISIS and Communists, wanting the board to stop nonresidents from speaking during public comment time, and a few others.
For the most part, this was nothing but a rant, and an attempt to blame everything on Wallace, when it is Keuhnel who is the finance committee chairman, and Keuhnel who earlier this year said “After not having enough money, we went back and added money [on paper]… to get the income to look a little better, to get it to have a break even budget.“.
That is the same thought-process as was used for the years when Larry Yargus was on the board. Here is a refresher of the wildly exaggerated claims of the finances of the District in a Yargus/Stepp/Davidson campaign ad (click here). Remember when they said every year had a positive budget? Yeah, but they failed to say what actually happened because they thought you were too ignorant to figure it out.
On the other hand, he did bring up some good points at the beginning of his comments, which had been brought up in previous meetings, and even during public comment of previous meetings where the old board, including Larry Yargus, couldn’t find the time to have any budget committee meetings for months on end.
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There is another meeting on July 7th, 6 p.m. in the Park District office.
Remember this for the 2017 elections, it is the MAJORITY of the board making these bad decisions.