Three days after a regular meeting collapsed for want of a quorum, all six trustees came back for a special meeting and agreed on everything they voted on. They also spent 54 of the meeting's 76 minutes behind closed doors, came out, tabled the one appointment everyone had come for, and scheduled another special meeting for August 25 to finish it. That meeting never happened.
This page was added September 9, 2026 to close a gap in our coverage. It sits between the August 17 meeting and the September 8 meeting, and it is where the appointment fight that dominated September actually started.
Graded September 9, 2026; corrected September 22, 2026 (see the notes marked "Corrected" in cards 1, 5, 6 and 9). A grade describes the state of the evidence on that date, not anyone's honesty. Residents who spoke in public comment are engaged on the facts of their claims, with respect for the concern behind them. Nobody named on this page is accused of any crime.
Roll call at 1:49 put Barry, Boudreau, Crockett, Gesky, Vaughn and Zimbelman in the room. Every roll call that followed (the motion to go into closed session, the two motions taken on return, the motion to table the appointment, the bills, and adjournment) carried with all six voting yes. One caveat, added September 22, 2026: on the motion to table, the captions record five yes votes and Crockett's name without an audible answer; the mayor then says "motion carries." Unanimity on that one vote is inferred from that announcement, not heard. On a board that had produced 2–4 splits, a declared adjournment over a failed vote, and a quorum failure inside three weeks, this was the outlier.
Worth noting for the record: nothing about the August 20 votes was contested at the time. The disagreement came later, on September 8, when the minutes of this meeting passed only 4–1.
Stream: closed session moved at 17:30, entered at 18:06, board returns at 1:12:21. Total runtime 1:17:57.
The stated basis was read into the record before the vote, 5 ILCS 120/2(c)(1), "the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees." That is a proper citation for a discussion about hiring a specific person, and reading it aloud before the vote is what the Act asks for.
What the Act does not cover is the budget question that later consumed the September 8 meeting. Appropriations are open business. On September 8 the mayor initially answered a trustee's funding question with "we're going to be talking about that in executive session," then gave the figure in open session when pressed. The closed-session minutes and the verbatim recording of this meeting, which the Act requires be kept, are the only way to know which subjects were actually discussed here.
The board approved these closed-session minutes unanimously on September 8. Semi-annual review for release is required under 5 ILCS 120/2.06(d). Requested.
After the closed session the board returned, passed two motions unanimously, and then hit the appointment. The mayor: "Motion to appoint Jim..." A trustee: "I'll make a motion to table." It carried. Then: "because they want the motion for Jim Paicz, now I've been asked to have a special meeting, another special meeting on Tuesday, August the 25th at 6 PM where we will handle this motion." ⚠
The board: The director of building and zoning, like the administrator, is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the board (§ 1-22-1; § 1-19-2); neither side can fill the office alone, and the board cannot self-appoint. What the board controls is the money: every appropriation and every bills list is four of seven votes (65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-40), so it can put the salary line for the post in writing before the vote, and it can consent, or withhold consent with its reasons on the record.
The mayor: Nominate, at a regular meeting the members can attend, with the funding line stated. If the trustees split 3 to 3 she breaks the tie. Cancelling the August 25 meeting and moving the vote onto a date a trustee had said he could not make is the opposite of that.
The Toolbox: the administrator and building director, in full →
That meeting was cancelled. The Village's meeting index lists August 25 Village Board (Special Meeting) as cancelled, along with the Public Works Committee and General Government committee meetings the same day. The appointment did not reach a vote until September 8, nineteen days later, when it failed 2–3 with the one trustee who had committed to voting yes away at a golf match.
Sources: meeting stream; Village meeting index; September 8 coverage.
Trustee CJ Boudreau used public participation to explain his August 17 absence, an open house at the school where he teaches, and then said this: "I am the golf coach for the boys and girls team. So September 8th, which is our next village board meeting, I have a golf match at Reed-Custer. So I will not be able to make that one either." ⚠
Why it matters in hindsight: he said it on August 20, in public, nineteen days ahead. The appointment was then rescheduled onto that exact date. On September 8 the mayor told the board Boudreau had met the candidate and intended to vote yes but could not attend or join by Zoom from a golf course. The motion failed by one vote, 2–3.
Two residents criticized the August 17 absences in blunt terms, one suggesting a trustee who cannot attend should resign. A third speaker, Karen Brzezicki, pushed back specifically on Boudreau: "Mr. Boudreau did put in in advance that he was not going to be at the meeting and he was at work. So whether or not he showed up, he followed protocol." ⚠ The mayor's reply from the chair: "but not showing up everyone else or not giving any kind of notice or letting people know, that was actually pretty rude." ⚠
Corrected September 22, 2026: this card used to say one absence was attributed to sickness and "the rest remain unexplained on the public record." That was wrong. The administrator read out all four on the August 17 tape (30:17 to 31:01): Boudreau emailed (work, the open house); Gesky called about a child's school event; Crockett texted that he was sick; Zimbelman messaged that she was not feeling well. Two sick, not one. Boudreau was not the only one who had given notice; he was the one whose notice a resident stood up to defend. What remains open is whether those explanations are the whole story, and the August 17 minutes were not posted until the board approved them September 16 (the mayor vetoed the approval September 21). The same correction is on the August 17 page.
Boudreau, closing his comments: "as this will hopefully be his last meeting, I want to thank Chris LaRocque for his 14 years of service to our village... Chris, you've done so much for us and have it kind of set up on the pathway forward. Obviously, big shoes to fill." ⚠
Corrected September 22, 2026. This card originally called Boudreau's thank-you "the earliest on-camera confirmation we have found" that the village administrator was leaving, and said "sixteen days earlier the board had suspended him." Both were wrong. The earliest on-camera sign is three days earlier, on August 17, when Trustee Barry said "Mr. LaRocque is retiring and we got a lot of things to get figured out here by the end of the month" (29:32), and the August 17 Finance Committee agenda listed "Chris LaRocque Retirement." And it was the mayor, not the board, who suspended him: she announced on August 3 that she had suspended him five days without pay "for insubordination," which was seventeen days before this meeting. By September 8 the mayor was telling the board the village had been without a code enforcement officer "since Mr. LaRocque retired," and the Village's staff directory still listed him in the job. We have requested the separation record and effective date.
Sources: meeting stream; Village staff directory, checked September 9, 2026; September 8 coverage.
Boudreau's number was close. The Village's own recording of the August 17 meeting, the one with no quorum and the police sent to a trustee's house, has drawn about 6,800 views as of September 9, several times the traffic on an ordinary Manteno board meeting. His reading of it: "those views are not for support. Those views are for entertainment. So we can all do better. We should do better." ⚠
Context worth adding: a village of roughly 9,200 people generating that kind of viewership for a board meeting is not only entertainment. It is also what civic attention looks like when residents cannot get answers any other way. As of September 22 the last board minutes the Village has posted are for June 25; the August 3 (amended) and August 17 minutes were approved September 16 and that approval was vetoed September 21.
The motion was for $123,948.81 including TIF #3 at $0. Before the vote a trustee asked about an HR Green line item: how does the village recover engineering work done for Gotion? The answer from staff: "Anything that comes through that they've done work for Gotion, we invoice Gotion and then they send us a check." ⚠ A second question covered an MSA general engineering contract line tied to a parking lot the village is considering.
Checkable, and worth checking. If the Village fronts Gotion's engineering costs and invoices afterward, there is a receivable: how much has been billed, how much collected, and how old the balance is. Requested.
Two motions passed unanimously immediately on return from closed session, before the appointment was tabled. The auto-captions capture the roll calls but not what the motions were. We are not characterizing votes we cannot identify. What the tape does give (added September 22, 2026): going into closed session, the mayor said the discussion was "an important one before we vote on whether or not we're going to accept our two appointees" (17:00) ⚠, and on August 17 she had said she planned to appoint Crystal Wolfe as village clerk. Wolfe was in fact appointed clerk on August 20. So one of the two unexplained motions was almost certainly the Wolfe appointment. That is our inference, not something the captions state.
The board: The Open Meetings Act sets the calendar: minutes are approved within 30 days or by the second regular meeting after, whichever is later, and a body with a website posts them within 10 days of approval (5 ILCS 120/2.06(b)). Approving minutes spends nothing and cannot be vetoed. The board can approve any outstanding minutes at a regular meeting and direct the clerk, or in the clerk's absence the recording secretary, to post them, and it can adopt a standing rule that every closed-session motion be read with its statutory citation, as this one was.
The mayor: Place the minutes on the agenda, sign them, and see that they are posted. The Act's duties fall on the public body as a whole; she presides over it.
What settles it: the open-session minutes of August 20, which the board approved 4–1 on September 8 and which the Village has not posted (as of September 22 the last board minutes on the Village site are June 25). Requested, along with the closed-session minutes and the verbatim recording the Open Meetings Act requires be kept.
Public participation, 2:19–8:25.
Jake Smith came to talk about the 30-mile walk he has organized every year since 2020 for mental health and suicide awareness, held that year on Sunday, September 6. Emily Herman, who runs a mail club for young adults with cancer and walked all 30 miles the previous year while in treatment, spoke to ask the community to stop trading rumors about her and about another resident, and to let public participation be "a neutral time to share events, information, ask questions, and make suggestions on how to improve our lives together." ⚠
The walk happened on September 6, and both of them, Smith and Herman, walked it. On September 8 the board thanked them, and the police department provided an escort down Main Street for the final mile. We are recording it here because it is part of the same public record as everything else on this page, and because it is the part of these meetings that nobody argues about.
The gap this meeting left in the record.
Minutes and recordings: open-session minutes for August 20; closed-session minutes and the verbatim recording; and the semi-annual 2.06(d) review determining whether the closed-session minutes may be released.
The cancelled meeting: the notice and agenda posted for the August 25 special meeting, the cancellation notice, the time it was posted, and any communications about cancelling it, including the attorney advice the mayor cited on September 8.
The administrator: the separation, retirement or resignation record for the village administrator, with effective date and any agreement.
Gotion receivables: all invoices issued to Gotion for engineering and consulting work fronted by the Village, and payments received against them.
Productions will be published here as they arrive.
If a verdict here is wrong, or you hold the minutes, the cancellation notice, or any document referenced at this meeting, we want to see it. Name and email are optional.