Shelby Co., IL. (ECWd) –
Who’s on first?
Such a simple question can only be answered with full disclosure, which appears to be a problem for Shelby County Highway Engineer Alan Spesard.
Alan Spesard – County Highway Engineer since 1999
Alan Spesard – City of Shelbyville salaried City Engineer
Alan Spesard & Keith Petard – Partners in Shelby Engineering LLC.
Since 1999, Spesard has been using county facilities to operate his private Engineering firm at no cost, alleging the county approved such action. If that is true, the board members allowing such a violation of law need to be held accountable. According to IDOT records we have obtained, there is a ton of explaining to do.
“Shelby Engineering is a local partnership formed in 1999 between two individuals (Keith Petard and Alan Spesard). The partnership was formed with the intent to provide needed and affordable engineering services to local agencies in Shelby County. To accommodate that intent the local agency, Shelby County, has allowed the partnership to use their facilities during non-working hours at no cost. The downtown field office is being used free of charge. Shelby Engineering’s primary client is the City of Shelbyville (nearly 90%) with the remaining workload consisting of Motor Fuel Tax maintenance programs for several villages and cities in Shelby County. Shelby Engineering hires technicians (Chad Petard, Cam Spesard, Brandon Zimmerman, Trevor Pruemer, Reed Best and CJ Hayes) on an as-needed basis.”
During today’s County Road and Bridge meeting, I asked a few questions since Spesard has refused to answer any of our questions we sent him. It became clear very quickly, County Chairman Bruce Cannon has no clue of the depth of the malfeasance we have uncovered by the Highway Engineer.
The first part of the public comment has a lot of background noise from the equipment being operated but it clears up a couple of minutes into that portion of the meeting.
Probably the only thing I can agree with during this interaction is that it’s probably best for Spesard to not answer any questions without legal counsel.
Spesard did confirm he will be turning in his resignation with the City of Shelbyville, and that Shelby Engineering has removed themselves from doing business with the city.
Stay tuned for a series of articles on what we have found in just a few weeks of investigation.
