|
Did you know…
Lincoln currently has a City Council structure that was changed
approximately 15 years ago from an efficient and effective
Aldermanic Committee System to an autocratic Mayoral System whereby
the Mayor and his friends can and have held closed meetings
unbeknownst to the other seven of the eight Alderpersons as there
are no checks and balances established for transparency and equal
treatment of all. And since the IL Open Meetings Act is not always
adhered to, the remaining Alderpersons are left out of all of the
discussions. This practice has yielded many flaws these past years:
lack of transparency in City transactions, business decisions made
ahead of time by a chosen few excluding the other Alderpersons from
these important meetings. This also greatly impacts the Citizens who
are not notified and allowed to attend and give their input.
No publications of City Council Executive Session meetings is
provided to the public in the appropriate timeframe after each
Executive Session meeting for the Citizens and others to review the
issues discussed in these clandestine meetings. Employees and/or
persons involved are never allowed to attend to respond in these
sessions when accusations have been made against them nor even have
a chance to respond after the Executive Session Minutes are provided
only to the Mayor and Alderpersons. This is both US and IL due
process violations -- non-transparent meetings held where isolated
decisions were made. This is how the City ended up with the:
1) Two or more IDOT Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) Audits that involved the
City repaying funds misappropriated within the eight years after I
completed my two terms as Mayor and when I returned as City
Administrator nine years later. In my role as City Administrator, if
I hadn’t asked to attend the meetings being held with IDOT Internal
Auditors, this issue would have been downplayed and the Citizens
never wiser. In all my years working in some capacity with the City
of Lincoln, I had never known the City to be audited for its MFT
funds and then cited to repay those funds.
2) The quietly advertised and then quietly awarded City “grant” to a
friend of the Mayor wanting to renovate the Lincoln Theatre complex
which received unanimous approval by the Lincoln City Council with
the then City Attorney omitting a vital City-protecting “claw-back
clause” in the award document to protect City Taxpayers from being
held responsible for the full debt of the “grant” if the Grantee and
his partners went bankrupt with the project. Even the way the
monthly checks were given to the Grantee were unconventional. I also
discovered an 11th payment made to the grantee group while the City
only had a record of ten payments. The City of Lincoln is still
paying approximately $176,000.00 per year for 17 years to cover the
project debacle and the grantee has moved on to another State. We
are strong and will pull ourselves out of the muck and mire from
this travesty, but in the meantime other much-needed monies
drastically needed for sewers, streets, alleys, sidewalks, and
building projects have been funneled to the $4 million payback;
again, depriving our Taxpayers of the services they pay for and
haven’t received.
3) Failure of completion of the City’s portion of the Fifth Street
Road Project. This has been a 29-year-expensive catastrophe.
Again, this “new” and “improvised” city government we all are
subjected to is not working. I know this because I have devoted 16½
years as City Council Recorder, eight years as Mayor, 2½ years as
City Administrator, 2½ years as a Logan County Board Member, 26½
years as a State of Illinois Executive, and 7½ years as a Social
Security Administration Liaison to Baltimore, MD, and Chicago, IL.
My State SSA team and I led the Nation with Guam, the Virgin
Islands, etc., included in the USA’s jurisdiction for four
continuous federal quarters and brought in over $40 million to
assist Illinois individuals with disabilities obtain substantial
gainful employment and continue working at jobs they were trained
for, enjoyed, and were assisted with personal assistants whenever
required. Our State was then able to move a large number of
individuals receiving SSI (Social Security Income) to earn their own
good wages, assisting society with their beneficial job skills. I am
using my Team’s SSDI/SSI project as an example to show that it
really takes a team to work collectively with respect for one
another and in harmony to achieve great successes for the greater
good. My parents were great examples of following the “Golden Rule,”
and has been my work ethic all my life and given my various teams
over the years rewarding outcomes. It is my strong opinion this is
what the City Council needs to re-establish.
Another example of working together is the Robert’s Sysco economic
development project. The City Council, County Board, Robbie Roberts,
SYSCO-Houston, and Private Citizens who gave up their homestead
property in order to bring the SYSCO plant into fruition. Two
generous Citizens/Developers and their Families gave the City and
County $25,000.00 each towards the project, the City ran the
required infrastructure to the property, and the County Board
purchased the land with a loan from the City. We worked together
with the Lincoln/Logan County Economic Development Partnership and
met with various Legislators and the IL Department of Commerce and
Economic Opportunity Staff to obtain further grant monies to see the
project through. This took great cooperation on everyone’s part and
has been a success. We need to let people and businesses know we are
open for economic development and work together. When we work
together, things get accomplished.
This is the same way our City established and maintained the Lincoln
Art, Wine, and Balloon Festival scheduled for years to be held on
the third weekend of August each year. While I was involved as City
Council Recorder, Logan County Board Member, and City Mayor, all the
work was completed by volunteers, and is the only way to keep a
festival on-going year after year. We have many other annual events
held in our City and Council each year, and people love to attend
them. But all the persons participating on these Committees need to
be volunteers and not paid for working at them. The City Council
also needs to be fair and consistent in subsidizing these festivals’
costs to assist them to be able to continue for another successful
year, but there has to be limits as to the hand-outs by the City.
The Festival Committees need to help the City by holding fundraisers
to keep the City’s investment costs down. During the City’s annual
budget preparation time – usually February to mid-April, the various
Festival Representatives seeking money grants from the City need to
come before the City Finance Committee and provide the City with an
Income and Expense document before the City ever decides to hand
money over to them and how much. This was the procedure years ago
when the City Council Finance Committee held its budget preparation
meetings on Saturdays, sometimes for a period of a month.
I love my family and friends, enjoy people, helping others, and
being involved in our civic issues. I hold a BA degree in Legal
Studies/Political Studies from the University of IL-Springfield
which complements my desire to be involved in governmental issues
and see fairness and equal treatment for all returned to our City. I
also served as a Budget Analyst for the State and hold an IL CIAO
(Certified Illinois Assessing Officer) designation as a Supervisor
of Assessments, etc.
The point is, I know what I am talking about in regard to the
success of the Aldermanic form of government versus what we have now
at City Hall as a hodgepodge practice of holding a meeting called a
“committee meeting” when the key players -– the Alderpersons elected
for the “committee structure purpose” and the Public, are not
invited to attend nor sometimes even know these meetings are being
held. This practice violates the: IL Open Meetings Act, Robert’s
Rules of Order, Ethics in Government, Government Best Practices,
Honesty, Efficiency, and Effectiveness. Without these practices in
place, the City Council is allowing lack of respect, bullying,
harassment of Employees, Alderpersons, Citizens, and Presenters who
wish to introduce timely/concerning issues to the Council. This
practice leaves local governing wide open for mistakes; thus my two
examples provided above.
[to
top of second column] |
The practice of providing the City Council Members
with a detailed Monthly Line-item Budget Report has not been in
practice/effect for these past years when the City changed its type
of governing style. The budget monies are the property of the
Citizens and Taxpayers, and keeping us in the dark is not
appropriate or legal. The Monthly Line-item Budget Report used to be
provided to the City Council Alderpersons, Mayor, and Department
Heads, and the Public could review a copy of it at City Hall, made
available on the first day of the new month so everyone interested
could review how the City’s budget, by line item, stood with its
finances from month to month. All income and expenses for the
previous month should be reported and sent to all Parties mentioned
above for on-going assessment and adjusting of the Committees’ and
Department Heads’ budgets they supervise. The budget is a living
document and needs to be monitored by all and updated throughout the
month. The budget needs to be balanced, and every penny accounted
for.
That practice demonstrates complete transparency of the City’s
regular budget and its accompanying appropriations budget.
Consent agendas that do not thoroughly explain where our precious
tax dollars are being spent and incomes received need to be revamped
to meet IL transparency laws,
Timeliness and more detailed explanations of what will be presented
in the upcoming meeting agendas need to be implemented.
There is no doubt, hands down, that the previous Aldermanic form of
government in Lincoln, IL, was and is the most fair, transparent,
and effective type of government where all Alderpersons participate
in the process rather than being kept in the dark and the City run
by only a few elected officials who do not include the other seven
of the eight
Alderpersons apprised prior to upcoming presentations, ideas,
emergency spending, and other funding issues just immediately prior
to requesting a vote. These important issues are never discussed at
length ahead of time with a designated and officially established
committee as is practiced in an Aldermanic form of government. The
Aldermanic process will take the appropriate legal steps assigned to
and discussed with a particular Committee and voted on, if agreed,
and allow the Committee Chair to place the item on one of City
Council’s Tuesday Council-of-the-Whole (COW) agendas for additional
discussion with the City Council prior to voting on the issue. In a
Monday voting meeting, in the instance of additional discussion
being required by the Committee, a motion can be made by the
Committee Chair or Committee Member of that particular Committee to
table the issue to take it back to the original Committee for
further discussion, or motion and vote to defer the item to the next
structured voting meeting held on the next Monday meeting night for
further action. The Particular Committee has the option of meeting
again within that time period to determine how it wants to proceed
with the agenda item.
In addition to the Mayor’s duties of: presiding over the City
Council Meetings, greeting and serving as Ambassador for proposed
Developers, Citizens, etc., to bring forth to the appropriate
Committee Chair for further action, the Mayor is responsible for
keeping the City Council in alignment with the meeting agendas each
week, and gavel down on any unruly individuals disrupting, bullying,
or harassing others.
At the first meeting of each fiscal year, the Mayor is responsible
for proposing an Alderperson to serve a one-year term as Mayor
Pro-tempore. This nomination is approved or disapproved by the eight
Alderpersons and will be continued in that vein until a Mayor
Pro-tempore is elected at that meeting.
If I am fortunate to be elected again for a third term, beginning
May 1, 2025, one of my duties will be to provide all current and
incoming Alderpersons with a list of the eight established
Committees and their functions within the City Council structure and
ask each Alderperson which Committees they are interested in
Chairing, serving as Vice-Chair, or serving as a Member. At the May
1st Meeting, the Mayor will then announce the assignments of each of
the eight Alderpersons to serve as Chair and Vice-Chair of a
Committee and then serve as a Member on an additional two Committees
throughout the year. The responsibilities will be evenly rotated and
assigned by the Mayor, and the Citizens of each Ward will receive
equal and fair representation by their particular Alderpersons and
the Mayor moving forward.
If the City Council agrees -- as was followed in my eight years’
serving as Mayor, each Committee, as needed, will be assigned
one-half-hour meeting time frames to be held on the four meeting
nights per month. If a Committee Chair believes more time needs to
be allowed for her/his particular Committee, the Chair will request
it and establish the time frame and date of the future meeting while
in that Council Meeting for all to hear and schedule accordingly. A
formal scheduled announcement will be sent from the City Clerk’s
Office and all Citizens are welcome to attend these Committee
meetings, including the appropriate Department Heads involved, and
in adherence to the IL Open Meetings Act of only three Alderpersons
allowed to attend a Committee Meeting at one time.
Presently, the City Council does not operate under structured
committees (other than the ones I created and established while
serving as City Administrator for 2½ years until April, 2020, for
the former and current Mayor.) As I mentioned earlier, the City
functioned for approximately 130 years whereby the Alderpersons were
allowed to do their jobs and serve as the direct line of
communication to their Wards’ Constituents. This way, the
Alderpersons also knew what was going on affecting their Wards and
the City they were elected or appointed to manage. The ordinances
were followed and discipline occurred when warranted. That is an
example of City government functioning legally and efficiently.
I am also calling on the other Candidates for the Mayor’s
position to hold a Debate with me. Just let me know where and when,
and we can get this set up. The Public will always be welcome.
Again, please think strongly about who you believe your next elected
Mayor, Alderpersons, and other Elected Officials should be to best
serve our City to pull us out of the muck and mire and get us back
on track with more responsible leadership and fairness to all. Our
city needs leaders with governmental experience, friendly people
experience, working knowledge of Robert’s Rules of Order,
business-minded economic development growth, ethics, and common
sense to assist our City move forward. Our Alderpersons need to be
allowed to properly do their jobs as stipulated by law and achieve
better communication with their Wards, and together all of us work
towards returning Lincoln, IL, to its previous quality of life.
You may reach me via email at: bethkavelman.for.mayor@gmail.com,
217.816.0865, or by texting me at this number. I am respectfully
asking you for your vote in the upcoming Republican Primary Election
to be held on February 25, 2025, and the General Election on April
1, 2025, if I am fortunate to be elected in the Primary. I am asking
for your positive suggestions to improve Lincoln, IL, because I care
about our City -- the City where I was born and reared and my
Children and Grandchildren have been born and reared. I also welcome
your volunteerism to assist us in getting Lincoln out of its slump
and back to positive and healthy economic productivity.
Have a Great 2025! God Bless Lincoln, Logan County, and You.
Beth Davis-Kavelman, Re-Election Candidate for Mayor of Lincoln, IL [Text from file received]
|
