The change log: every edit we make, on the record

Why: MantenoIllinois.com now lives inside The Bourbs, the Kankakee County local news publication at BradleyIllinois.com, at bradleyillinois.com/manteno/. Every page keeps its file name, so an old MantenoIllinois.com link maps to the same page here. No finding, grade, source, quote, or document changed. What changed is presentation and labels:

• Look: The Bourbs site header and footer on every page, with this record's own menu directly under the header, and The Bourbs typeface (Inter) and green palette. The blue and amber used for the Village president and the trustees are unchanged, as are the colors for flags and fact-check verdicts. The picture book keeps its storybook type.
• Labels: page titles, the copyright line, and the "About this record" notes now name The Bourbs instead of MantenoIllinois.com. The notes now describe this record as what it is: original reporting by The Bourbs, the news organization that publishes BradleyIllinois.com and The Bourbs Daily newsletter, and the records as obtained under FOIA by The Bourbs as news media.
• Bylines: every page now names its reporter and editor, Stan Gromer, editor and publisher of The Bourbs.
• Privacy note: it now says "these pages" rather than "this site", because it describes this record, not the rest of BradleyIllinois.com. These pages still set no cookies, run no analytics, and use no trackers. The typeface loads from Google Fonts, which sets no cookies. The Bourbs footer adds a newsletter sign-up box that sends your email address only if you submit it.

Why: this site has spent three months saying what is broken in Manteno's government. It should say, at the same spot, how it gets fixed with the tools that already exist. So it now does. The Toolbox takes each open problem (the agenda, the clerk, the administrator and building director, the two attorneys, vetoes, special meetings without a clerk, quorum failures and the 1974 arrest rule, unposted minutes, bills and payroll with two empty offices, the lawsuit, the license plate readers, the auditors' last bill) and sets out what the board can do on its own, what the president can do on her own, and the vote each takes. Every section runs on the same arithmetic, set out once at the top: a quorum is four of seven, an ordinance or spending item is four of seven including the president, a veto reaches only ordinances and spending or liability motions, an override is four trustees at the next regular meeting, and restoring a removed officer is two-thirds of all members authorized to be elected, which on the plain text is five. Every statute and code section on the page was read live on September 22, 2026, including Ordinance 26-02 on remote attendance, which the board passed over the mayor's veto in June and which cannot create a quorum. Each meeting page and each hub page now carries a short green "How this gets fixed, with the tools they already have" box at the point where the problem is described, linking to the matching Toolbox section. The Toolbox is in the menu under The Story. The boxes, page by page:

• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "The village has no one running it" card: fix-line, nomination and consent for administrator and director (1-19-2, 1-22-1), clerk vacancy the same way (1-8-3); links toolbox.html#administrator and #clerk.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "License plate cameras, and no vote" card: fix-line, surveillance ordinance under 65 ILCS 5/1-2-1 and 11-1-1 at least as strict as 625 ILCS 5/2-130, or ratification by motion; links #alpr.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "The lawsuit" card: fix-line, board resolution that the Village never authorized the suit (not vetoable), or one confirmed nomination; links #lawsuit.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "Who is the village attorney" card: fix-line, president nominates someone four will confirm or re-nominates Cainkar; board cannot self-appoint; missed 5-to-10-day report is the strongest ground; links #attorney.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "Police sent after a trustee" card: fix-line, replace Rule 21 with a fine by ordinance (3.1-40-20); remote attendance needs a physical quorum of four (5 ILCS 120/7); links #quorum.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "Who controls the agenda" card: fix-line, ordinance amending 1-6-5 (four of seven, overridable) or one-meeting suspension of the rules under 1-6-7 (not vetoable); links #agenda.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "The August 3 override" card: fix-line, veto must be a written objection at a regular meeting; override is four trustees at the next regular meeting (3.1-40-50); links #veto.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): "The forensic audit" card: fix-line, paying or disputing the invoice is a four-of-seven spending vote; written dispute by motion or pay; links #audit-bill.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): Gotion card: no box (resolved).
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): After the nine cards: one paragraph introducing the Toolbox page ("Every problem above has a lawful fix...") linking toolbox.html.
• index.html (8 card fix-lines, 1 intro paragraph, 1 footer link; 130,905 -> 135,666 bytes): Footer "Notes": link "The Toolbox: how each problem gets fixed" added under the Fact Check link.
• lawsuit.html (1 box; 49,591 -> 51,096 bytes): "Where it stands" section, after the current status box and before the resolved August 17 note: .fixbox, board resolution that the suit was never authorized (majority of those voting, not vetoable); one confirmed nomination or re-nomination of Cainkar moots the case; trustees' strongest ground is the missed 5-to-10-day report; links #lawsuit and #attorney.
• legal.html (3 boxes, 1 sentence; 46,573 -> 50,100 bytes): Disputed Question 1 (June 25 special meeting under 1-6-3), inside "What the law says": .fixbox, callers serve and post the call themselves (1-6-3; 5 ILCS 120/2.02); president fills the clerk vacancy by nomination and consent (3.1-10-50(f)(3); 1-8-3); links #special and #clerk.
• legal.html (3 boxes, 1 sentence; 46,573 -> 50,100 bytes): Disputed Question 2 (power to appoint or reinstate), inside "What the law says": .fixbox, board consents, cannot self-appoint (Pechous; Westmont), may retain legislative counsel under 1-9-4; president ends it by nominating someone four will confirm or re-nominating Cainkar; confirmed successor displaces a holdover (3.1-30-5(d)); links #attorney.
• legal.html (3 boxes, 1 sentence; 46,573 -> 50,100 bytes): Disputed Question 3 (did the removal stick), inside "What the law says": .fixbox, rest on the missed report (automatic restoration, FOIA 26-173 admission); 1-5-5(E) caps temporaries at two per fiscal year (AG Op. 94-012); one nomination ends it; links #attorney.
• legal.html (3 boxes, 1 sentence; 46,573 -> 50,100 bytes): Two-thirds denominator paragraph (Question 3): one sentence added after the parenthetical: the trustees do not need to win the denominator question if the missed report is established, and the president can end it with one nomination; inline link to #attorney.
• claims.html (5 boxes; 115,951 -> 120,487 bytes): c1 (June 25 meeting validity): .fixbox before "What would settle it", callers do the clerk's part under 1-6-3 with proof of service; mayor nominates a clerk; links #special and #clerk.
• claims.html (5 boxes; 115,951 -> 120,487 bytes): c2 (5-to-10-day notice claim): .fixbox before Sources, missed report restores the officer automatically (FOIA 26-173), avoiding the denominator question; one nomination ends it; links #attorney.
• claims.html (5 boxes; 115,951 -> 120,487 bytes): c3 (holdover theory): .fixbox before Sources, board consents but cannot self-appoint, may retain 1-9-4 counsel; confirm a successor to displace a holdover (3.1-30-5(d)); 1-5-5(E) two-per-year cap; links #attorney.
• claims.html (5 boxes; 115,951 -> 120,487 bytes): c28 (mayor can veto the Cainkar vote): .fixbox before Sources, only ordinances and spending or liability motions are vetoable, in writing at the next regular meeting (3.1-40-45; 1-5-7); override is four trustees at the next regular meeting (3.1-40-50); links #veto.
• claims.html (5 boxes; 115,951 -> 120,487 bytes): c37 (records withheld as privileged): .fixbox before "What would settle it", the Village can designate any employee as FOIA officer (5 ILCS 140/3.5) and answer with a section 9 written denial; links #clerk.
• audit.html (1 box; 34,961 -> 36,116 bytes): "Scope & who did it" finding, after the passage on the partly paid final invoice: .fixbox, four-of-seven spending vote; written dispute by motion citing the contract term, or pay; mayor puts the invoice on the bills list with the contract and statement of work; links #audit-bill.
• Verification: Every toolbox anchor used (#administrator, #agenda, #alpr, #attorney, #audit-bill, #clerk, #lawsuit, #quorum, #special, #veto) exists as an id in toolbox.html.
• Verification: grep -c 'class="fixbox"\|class="fixline"': index 9, lawsuit 1, legal 3, claims 5, audit 1.
• Verification: No em-dashes in any of the five files. html.parser tag-balance check: 0 errors on each file. Diff against backups shows additions only (legal.html has one line lengthened by the bridging sentence; nothing removed).
• july20.html (2 boxes; 81,132 to 83,556 bytes): j8 ("we are all in charge of the agenda"): #agenda. Ordinance amending 1-6-5 (four of seven, four trustees override) or a one-night suspension of the rules under 1-6-7 (majority present, not vetoable); the mayor can adopt a written procedure or place trustee items herself.
• july20.html (2 boxes; 81,132 to 83,556 bytes): j10 (the veto announcement and the TRO): #veto and #attorney. A veto is a written objection returned at the next regular meeting; four trustees override by roll call in the journal; the board's strongest ground is the missed 5-to-10-day report under 3.1-35-10; the mayor ends it with one nomination four trustees will confirm, or by re-nominating Cainkar.
• august3.html (4 boxes; 88,062 to 93,064 bytes): a2 ("I made the agenda"): #agenda. Same two routes as above.
• august3.html (4 boxes; 88,062 to 93,064 bytes): a5 (LaRocque suspension): #administrator. Removal runs through 3.1-35-10 (written charge, report 5 to 10 days later, or restored); restoring over the president's objection is two-thirds of "all members authorized by law to be elected", on the plain text five of seven, undecided; the board's levers are the budget and bills list (four of seven), the salary (1-19-10) and consent; the board cannot self-appoint; the mayor's route is the written charge and report, or a nomination.
• august3.html (4 boxes; 88,062 to 93,064 bytes): a21 (bills failed 2 to 4): #money. A bills list is a four-of-seven spending vote; the code's chain is the administrator's written approval of every bill (1-21-5) and president plus clerk countersignature on every warrant (1-5-9); the board can require the written approval and decline lists without it; the mayor should nominate the two offices and, until then, put a 1-21-5 designee in writing.
• august3.html (4 boxes; 88,062 to 93,064 bytes): a28 (the override, one box for the a25 to a30 cluster): #veto and #rules. Override is four trustees at the next regular meeting after the written objection is received, yeas and nays in the journal (3.1-40-50); a written objection starts the clock, and a veto never returned in writing is not a veto (3.1-40-45, last sentence); the four-trustee override count is not the two-thirds of 3.1-35-10 (five of seven on the plain text); the mayor's route is a written veto or a nomination.
• august17.html (1 box; 40,625 to 42,150 bytes): c3 ("the mayor had the power to order it", covering c2 and c3): #quorum. Replace Rule 21 with a fine by ordinance under 3.1-40-20 (four of seven, vetoable, overridable); remote attendance exists (1-6-10, Ord. 26-02, passed over veto 4 to 2 June 15) but requires a physical quorum of four first (5 ILCS 120/7), so it could not have cured August 17; the mayor's tool is to schedule meetings members can attend and allow remote attendance when four are in the room.
• august20.html (2 boxes; 37,377 to 39,730 bytes): a3 (appointment tabled, August 25 special meeting cancelled): #administrator. Nominate plus consent (1-22-1, 1-19-2); the board's lever is the salary line in writing (four of seven) and consent with reasons; the president breaks a 3 to 3 tie; nominate at a meeting the members can attend.
• august20.html (2 boxes; 37,377 to 39,730 bytes): a9 (what was decided behind closed doors, covering a2 and a9): #minutes. Approve within 30 days or by the second regular meeting after, post within 10 days of approval (2.06(b)); minutes approval is not vetoable; direct the clerk or recording secretary to post; standing rule that closed-session motions cite the exception; the mayor puts them on the agenda, signs and sees them posted.
• september8.html (4 boxes; 56,240 to 60,869 bytes): s1 (appointment failed 2 to 3): #administrator. Board cannot self-appoint; its objection was the budget line and the budget is its tool (four of seven); salary under 1-19-10; B&F override October 5; the mayor nominates again, may re-nominate Paicz, breaks a 3 to 3 tie; posting is optional.
• september8.html (4 boxes; 56,240 to 60,869 bytes): s8 (trustee comments removed): #agenda. Rule 18 neither requires nor forbids a comment period; ordinance amending 1-6-5 or a one-night suspension under 1-6-7 (not vetoable); the mayor can put the item back herself.
• september8.html (4 boxes; 56,240 to 60,869 bytes): s9 (Flock cameras never voted on): #alpr. A services contract can be signed under the administrator's discretionary authority in 1-21-6 without the board; fix is an ordinance under 1-2-1 and 11-1-1 requiring board authorization and rules at least as strict as 625 ILCS 5/2-130 (four of seven, vetoable, overridable); lower the 1-21-6 threshold to zero for surveillance; agendize the chief's session; the mayor brings the contract and Policy 434 for ratification.
• september8.html (4 boxes; 56,240 to 60,869 bytes): s16 ("August 7" minutes failed, last posted June 25): #minutes. Same calendar and tools as above; PAC review within 60 days (120/3.5).
• september9.html (3 boxes; 55,092 to 58,718 bytes): n2 (can the mayor fill these jobs without the board): #administrator and #clerk. Every Title 1 office is president nominates, board consents (1-5-5(A), 1-19-2, 1-22-1, 3.1-30-5); clerk vacancy the same (3.1-10-50(f)(3), 1-8-3); the board holds consent, the budget and the salary; the mayor nominates all three, breaks a 3 to 3 tie; waiting until April leaves the bills chain empty.
• september9.html (3 boxes; 55,092 to 58,718 bytes): n4 ("why aren't we paying Vasselli"): #attorney. Board's tools are consent and declining invoices for counsel it never approved, plus legislative counsel under 1-9-4; it cannot hire a village attorney on its own; strongest ground is the missed report under 3.1-35-10; the mayor ends it with one nomination or by re-nominating Cainkar; November 12 otherwise. Placed after the card's last paragraph because its settle line sits mid-card.
• september9.html (3 boxes; 55,092 to 58,718 bytes): n11 (chief offers a public session on Flock): #alpr. Agendize the session; ordinance as above; lower the 1-21-6 threshold; the mayor brings the contract and policy for ratification.
• september16.html (4 boxes; 49,896 to 54,570 bytes): s3 (B&F contract approved 4 to 0): #veto and #administrator. Vetoable because it spends money; override is four trustees on October 5 by roll call in the journal; if the objection was never delivered in writing it took effect; then fill the director's office by nomination and consent with the funding line stated; the mayor can negotiate the contract she said on September 17 she supports.
• september16.html (4 boxes; 49,896 to 54,570 bytes): s6 (recording secretary because no clerk): #clerk. Clerk vacancy is nomination plus consent in one meeting (3.1-10-50(f)(3), 1-8-3), as done for Orth on June 1; the board cannot name a clerk without a nomination; FOIA officer can be any employee by motion (5 ILCS 140/3.5); the mayor puts a nomination on the next agenda.
• september16.html (4 boxes; 49,896 to 54,570 bytes): s7 (was the meeting illegally called): #special and #clerk. Two trustees may call; until a clerk is seated the callers serve the signed call in person or by registered letter, post notice and agenda 48 hours ahead and send it to the press (120/2.02), and keep proof of service; the mayor nominates a clerk and attends.
• september16.html (4 boxes; 49,896 to 54,570 bytes): s8 (Gesky: "she controls the agenda on Mondays"): #agenda. Special meetings work but must be repeated; ordinance amending 1-6-5 (the four who called the meeting have the votes to pass and override) or a one-night suspension under 1-6-7; the mayor adopts a written procedure or places trustee items.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n1 (vetoed all three, one box for section 1): #veto. Only ordinances and spending or liability motions are vetoable (3.1-40-45; 1-5-7 speaks of ordinances); the minutes motions stand and should be posted within ten days; the B&F contract is reconsidered October 5 and passes on four trustees by roll call in the journal (3.1-40-50); the mayor's veto must be a written objection returned at a regular meeting.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n8 ("It should have been approved by me"): #special. No approval step exists in 1-6-3; callers serve and post themselves until a clerk is seated; the mayor nominates a clerk and attends.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n13 (the amended minutes, one box for section 3): #minutes. Minutes approvals are not vetoable; the Act's calendar; approve outstanding sets and direct posting; standing rule on closed-session citations; PAC within 60 days.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n16 (temporary clerk under 1-5-5(E)): #clerk. Board cannot name a clerk without a nomination; insist on the lawful route because a clerk seated without consent leaves warrants and notices open to challenge; FOIA officer designation under 5 ILCS 140/3.5 as a separate staff job since the $4,000 clerk pay cannot be raised mid-term; the mayor nominates Pickrel for one roll call (3.1-10-50(f)(3), 1-8-3); resignation on file in writing, signed and notarized (3.1-10-50(a)).
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n18 ("building inspector" is a different position, one box for section 5): #administrator. Director is nomination plus consent (1-22-1); no "building inspector" office; board's levers are the budget line in writing, the salary (1-19-10) and consent; B&F override October 5; the mayor nominates Paicz as director at a regular meeting with the funding line stated and breaks a 3 to 3 tie; the 30-day temporary officer in 1-5-5(E) covers dismissal or abandonment, not retirement, twice a fiscal year at most.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n32 (November 12 court date): #lawsuit. Board resolution that the Village never authorized the suit and directs no funds be spent on it (majority of those voting, not vetoable); consent to an attorney nominee moots the case; the mayor dismisses and nominates or takes it to judgment.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n34 (trustees still have no comment period): #agenda. Same two routes; the mayor can put the item back herself. Added beyond the brief's list because the card identifies the same dysfunction the other pages box.
• september21.html (8 boxes; 134,974 to 144,508 bytes): n39 (one person verifying payroll, one box for section 9 covering n39 and n40): #money. Bills list is four of seven and can be required to carry the 1-21-5 written approval; second payroll signer by resolution (majority of those voting); code thresholds are $3,000 / $3,000 to $10,000 with the president's written approval / emergency with four trustees' consensus (1-19-5(O), (P); 1-21-6(H)) and an informal $5,000 email rule cannot replace them, though an ordinance can change the number; written reconciliation of leave and pay owed; the mayor nominates the two offices and puts a 1-21-5 designee in writing until then.

What this is: every published page, about 85,000 words, was checked line by line against the Village's own posted minutes and agendas, the FOIA productions, the meeting recordings, the Illinois Compiled Statutes as they read on ilga.gov today, the Manteno Village Code, and the newspaper record. The Master Question Register that sits behind the site was triaged the same day. The biggest corrections first: the mayor did announce a veto from the chair on July 20 (we had said she did not, working from a caption file that cut off before she said it); the Village's own June 15 minutes record a 4 to 2 vote to reinstate Cainkar that night, which the site had never carried; a Shaw Local quotation we attributed to the paper about the mayor having "led" the Gotion lawsuit does not appear in the article; the "no serious improprieties or fraud" sentence was the reporter's, not the auditors'; the "Arrest her" line on the August 17 page reads on the captions as the police chief asking a question, not the mayor giving an order; and on the plain text of 65 ILCS 5/3.1-35-10 the two-thirds needed to restore a removed officer is five of seven, not four of six, which cuts against the trustees and which we had framed the other way. Every item is below, page by page. Where a fact was wrong, the page says so in place. Two earlier entries today are superseded in part: the "third speaker" named as Bill Barnes on the September 16 page was a different man (four people spoke, and the candidacy line belongs to an unnamed speaker), and Daniel Bourgault was not "named publicly for the first time"; our own July 20 page has carried his name since July.

• Home page, corrected: the overview and Fact Check link quoted Shaw Local as saying Mayor LaMore "led the Concerned Citizens of Manteno lawsuit." The April 5, 2025 article does not say that. It says she "was the driving force behind the suit for the Concerned Citizens," and quotes her, as mayor-elect, saying "the village is part of the lawsuit, I have to walk away from that." The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the overview and timeline said the audit was approved "4 to 3 with Mayor LaMore casting the deciding vote" on August 5, 2025. The Village's minutes show a 3 to 3 trustee vote broken by the mayor on Monday, August 4, 2025. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the timeline dated the audit presentation May 23, 2026. It was presented at a special meeting on May 20; May 23 is the newspaper's date. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the timeline, overview and footer disclaimer said the auditors "reported finding no serious improprieties or fraud." That sentence is the reporter's in the Shaw Local story, not a quote from the auditors. The written report neither found fraud nor cleared anyone, and when asked whether anybody was getting arrested the auditor said "That's not my call." The pages now say that. The error was ours.
• Home page, added: the June 15, 2026 vote the site had never recorded. Per the Village's posted June 15 minutes, after the 4 to 2 failed Vasselli confirmation, Trustee Gesky moved to disapprove the removal and reinstate Cainkar; it passed 4 to 2, Barry and Vaughn voting no, and Gesky said the board "will not recognize Mr. Vasselli." The same minutes record the board overriding the mayor's veto of Ordinance 26-02 by 4 to 2 that night. "The three votes that defined the standoff" is now four votes, and the "Who is the village attorney" card counts three votes for Cainkar.
• Home page, corrected: the overview said the board voted "4 to 1" to retain Cainkar at the "July 7" meeting. It was 4 to 1 with one abstention, on July 6. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the overview said the No Gotion Illinois "About" page lists the mayor's bloc "as the village officials supporting the movement." It is a full roster of the board with party labels: LaMore, Rolniak, Barry and Vaughn tagged "Freedom Party - No Gotion" and the four other trustees "Choice Party - Pro Gotion." A roster with labels, not a supporters list.
• Home page, corrected: the "In court" thread card still said the case was continued to September 21, "now twelve days away," and that we would not report a refiling until the docket showed one. Rewritten to the current state: the case returned on August 17 and September 21, the trustees' response was filed the morning of September 21, Vasselli has 14 days to reply and Daniel Bourgault seven days after that, and arguments are set for 10 a.m. Thursday, November 12.
• Home page, corrected: the "On the calendar" block listed September 21 court and board items already past and the September 22 Public Works and General Government committee meetings, which the Village posted as cancelled on September 16. Now lists Oktoberfest (September 24 to 27, not October 24 to 27 as the page said), the September 25 deadline to file the Public Access Counselor request on Manteno's ALPR audit-log denial (being filed this week), the October 5 regular meeting (override vote and the director appointment), Vasselli's brief due about October 5, the trustees' reply about October 12, and the November 12 hearing.
• Home page, corrected: the "After July 21" timeline entry said no new court date had been set. It now records the August 17 and September 21 settings and the November 12 hearing. The Deep Files lawsuit blurb and the timeline intro ("through the August 17 arrest order") updated to match; the timeline now runs through the September 21 veto.
• Home page, corrected: the Crystal Wolfe card called her the sitting Village Clerk. She was appointed August 20 and resigned after about two weeks, per Shaw Local (September 18); on September 21 the mayor named former clerk Allen Pickrel as temporary clerk. The Village's roster still lists Wolfe, which is why the card was literally true and materially misleading.
• Home page, corrected: the Steven Orth card and the June 23 timeline entry said the date of his resignation had not been publicly reported. The Village's posted June 25 minutes record that he gave notice on Tuesday, June 23; his formal letter is dated July 14 (FOIA 26-168), and he served through August 28. Added that Trustee Barry's sworn affidavit says the Village "had no sitting Clerk" on June 25, which bears on the code's requirement that a special-meeting call be presented to the clerk. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the August 12 special meeting was at 8:00 a.m., not 7:00 a.m. (the 7:00 a.m. session was the committee meeting), in the timeline, the meetings list and the running log. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the Transparency Record said that before June 15 Vasselli was "simply a private attorney in Oak Brook with no relationship to the Village." The Village has since produced a Vasselli Law engagement letter dated June 4, 2026, signed by the mayor alone at $220 an hour, and an invoice with entries from June 8. The privilege point is reframed: the question is whether a mayor's unilateral engagement, never consented to by the board, creates a privilege for the Village. The error was ours.
• Home page, corrected: the Transparency Record said section 9(a) of FOIA requires a public body to identify each withheld record. Section 9 requires a written denial giving the reasons, "a detailed factual basis for the application of any exemption claimed," the specific exemption with supporting legal authority, and the names of those responsible (5 ILCS 140/9(a)-(b)); it does not itself require a document-by-document index, though a court may order one. We overstated the statute.
• Home page, corrected: "Twelve meetings since June" to eleven, the number actually listed.
• Home page, corrected: the June 22 entry described "a four-person group text thread." The phone header reads "4 People," which counts the other participants; it was five including the mayor, and Trustee Barry was a member, which is how he had the same thread.
• Home page, corrected: "the Village has posted no minutes for any meeting after July" understated it. The last board minutes posted are for June 25, 2026; there are none for July 6, July 20 or any later meeting.
• Home page, corrected: the June 2025 timeline entry now names the nominee the board rejected 4 to 2 on June 16, 2025, attorney Tiffany Thompson, per the Village's minutes.
• Home page, corrected: "Keri Rolniak" to Kerri Rolniak; "Chief Rick Peterson" to Petersen, noting that the Village's September 21 agenda spells it Peterson and that the motion as read said "Fire Protection Bureau" while the code office is the fire prevention bureau.
• Home page, corrected: the September 21 entry said the committee meeting "is streamed but is not linked from the Village's own meetings index." Neither the committee recording nor the board recording is linked from the index.
• Home page, added: the $12,270.92 "Final Audit Invoice" figure from the August 12 special-meeting agenda to the forensic audit card.
• Home page, corrected: the August 20 running-log entry called Boudreau's thanks to the administrator "the earliest on-camera confirmation we can find that he was leaving"; Trustee Barry had said "Mr. LaRocque is retiring" on camera on August 17.
• Home page, removed: 106 em-dashes, replaced with commas, periods, colons or parentheses.
• The Lawsuit, corrected: two stale passages ("as of the last update none had been docketed and no new date was set"; the wildcards paragraph's "the Village may refile" and "a fourth village clerk taking office") contradicted the page's own status box. Both now match it: the case returned August 17 and September 21, the trustees' response was filed September 21, and arguments are set for 10 a.m. November 12.
• The Lawsuit, corrected: the status box implied Daniel Bourgault was newly on the case. He appeared for the trustees at the July 21 hearing, per Shaw Local, and our July 20 page has carried his name since July.
• The Lawsuit, added: a paragraph on the votes the filing is fighting, including the June 15 4 to 2 disapproval vote the page had omitted, and the two-thirds question.
• The Lawsuit, corrected: the site's two-thirds framing. 65 ILCS 5/3.1-35-10 requires two-thirds "of all members authorized by law to be elected" of the corporate authorities, which for a village is the president and six trustees, seven, so on the plain reading the threshold is five votes and each four-vote disapproval is one short. Where the legislature meant to exclude the mayor it said so (3.1-40-50, "alderpersons then holding office"). No published case decides it; Manteno Code 1-5-5(F) cannot lower a statutory threshold. The site had led with 4 of 6 and treated 5 of 7 as the outlier. The error was ours.
• The Lawsuit, removed: 62 em-dashes.
• Legal Analysis, corrected: the page said the board "rejected Vasselli in June 2025 and again June 15, 2026." The June 16, 2025 rejection (2 to 4) was of attorney Tiffany Thompson; Vasselli was first nominated June 15, 2026. "You have turned me down twice" stays as the mayor's words. The error was ours.
• Legal Analysis, corrected: the page said 65 ILCS 5/3.1-10-50(e) "on its face applies after two rejections." Section 3.1-10-50 is "Events upon which an elective office becomes vacant," and subsection (e) governs filling a trustee vacancy; it has no application to the appointed office of village attorney. The only temporary-appointment power for an appointed officer is 3.1-30-5(d) and Manteno Code 1-5-5(E), which apply after death, disability, a disqualifying conviction, or dismissal from or abandonment of office, cap a temporary officer at 30 days, and bar any person from being temporarily appointed more than two times in one fiscal year. The mayor's own sworn affidavit says she acted under 1-5-5(E), the same section the September 21 page addresses for the clerk; AG Op. 94-012 approved exactly this kind of limit. The error was ours.
• Legal Analysis, corrected: the two-thirds denominator paragraph, as above, now leads with the plain reading (5 of 7) and includes the June 15 vote.
• Legal Analysis, corrected: the callout called Westmont v. Lenihan "the trustees' own best case on removal procedure." Westmont favors the mayor on both points it decides; its ordinance was mayor-with-consent, structurally the same as Manteno 1-9-2, and the real Manteno distinction is 1-9-4. The error was ours.
• Legal Analysis, corrected: "the first court date, a case management conference, is set for July 30, 2026" replaced with the current status and the November 12 hearing.
• Legal Analysis: Updated the "Last updated" stamp from August 17 to September 22, 2026. Removed 42 em-dashes.
• Videos, corrected: "The six meetings" and "Meeting 1 of 6" numbering. The page now holds eleven meetings, with short entries and recordings added for August 20, September 8, September 9, September 16 and September 21 (board and committee recordings).
• Videos, corrected: "Trustee Barry walked out during roll call" on June 25. Per the Village's minutes he read an objection after roll call and left during the mayor pro tem vote. The error was ours.
• Videos, corrected: the August 12 special meeting time to 8:00 a.m.
• Videos, corrected: the August 17 entry said the chief himself raised that Zimbelman was sick; the message was reported at the dais before he went.
• Videos: Updated the "Last updated" stamp from July 17 to September 22, 2026. Removed the em-dashes.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c29, c31 and their sources): Shaw Local's April 5, 2025 article was quoted, in quotation marks, as saying LaMore "led the Concerned Citizens of Manteno lawsuit." That sentence is not in the article. The article says she "was the driving force behind the suit for the Concerned Citizens, but she said she's stepping away from that role." Her actual words, as mayor-elect, were "the village is part of the lawsuit, I have to walk away from that." The phrase "confirming she was previously in a leadership role" was our inference presented as her admission and has been removed. The errors were ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c16): the card said the auditors themselves "reported finding no serious improprieties or fraud." That was the newspaper's sentence. Added the auditor's "That's not my call" and the report's own disclaimer. The error was ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c31): the card cited "5 ILCS 120/2 on public officers' duties" for conflict of interest. That section is the Open Meetings Act's closed-session provision. The statutory conflict provisions, 50 ILCS 105/3 and 65 ILCS 5/3.1-55-10, reach only financial interests in contracts; a non-financial affiliation is a common-law fiduciary question. The error was ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected and regraded (c26): the card said the "Dennis Rebelletti" match was "name-only and should not be asserted," and floated a private CCOM board member with the first name Julie as a possible match. The Village's own August 3 production (Vasselli Law invoice #2024072819) identifies Dennis Reboletti and Julie Diemer of Vasselli Law. The Julie Holda lead is retired entirely and we regret naming a private individual on a first-name match. Regraded from Unverified to True, with context.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c37): "Vasselli was a private Oak Brook attorney with no Village relationship" before June 15 replaced with the June 4, 2026 engagement letter and the reframed privilege question; the section 9(a) sentence corrected as on the home page. The errors were ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c22): "$570,000 plus $39,000 in personal assets" to the audit's "$570,000, including $30,000 in personal assets." The error was ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c29): the 2025 annual report lists three directors (Piker, Ludwig, Forsythe), not "four other directors." The error was ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c29): the "Chinese Communists" quote attributed to the Daily Journal could not be located in the April 2, April 5 or March 11, 2025 articles; the card now says so and no longer asserts it.
• Fact Check: Corrected and regraded (c33): the No Gotion Illinois About page is a full board roster with party labels, with the four opposing trustees on the same page, not a list of supporting officials. Regraded from Verified to True, with context.
• Fact Check: Corrected and regraded (c32): 3.1-10-50(e) does not apply to an appointed office (see the legal page entry); the June 2025 rejection was of Tiffany Thompson. Regraded from Disputed to False as to the statute cited.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c4): the two-thirds line now leads with 5 of 7 as the plain reading and includes the June 15 vote; the temporary-replacement rule is attributed to 3.1-30-5(d) and 1-5-5(E), not 3.1-35-10. The errors were ours.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c38): "45-45 bars an unadmitted foreign LLC from maintaining suit; revocation under 45-35 ends admission."
• Fact Check: Corrected (c6): Orth's dates from the June 25 minutes and his July 14 letter; the clerk succession updated through Wolfe and Pickrel.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c11): the claim as recorded in the June 15 minutes was "the past 10 months," not "the past year"; added the June 4 engagement letter; removed the lapsed PAC-window line.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c17): "with no explanation" taken out of quotation marks; the audit's words are "We did not find any explanation from the Engineer."
• Fact Check: Corrected (c18): the HomeStar figure to "$30.5M of about $31.2M."
• Fact Check: Corrected (c20): the findings were presented two days after May 18, on May 20, not "the following week."
• Fact Check: Corrected (c21): the audit records were produced June 3, a day after the agreed June 2 date.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c28): added the September 22 status (case back before the judge; November 12 hearing); the July 21 "no new court date" line is no longer the last word.
• Fact Check: Corrected (c1): "first conference July 30" to the November 12 hearing.
• Fact Check: Unified the three "as of" dates (July 16, July 18, July 31) to September 22, 2026. Removed 180 em-dashes, including in the JSON-LD claim text, which mirrors the cards.
• The Forensic Audit, corrected: "Approved 4-3" to a 3 to 3 trustee tie broken by the mayor on August 4, 2025. The error was ours.
• The Forensic Audit, corrected: the presentation date from May 23 to May 20, 2026. The error was ours.
• The Forensic Audit, corrected: the "Start here" box and the footer disclaimer attributed "no serious improprieties or fraud" to the auditors; it was the reporter's sentence. Added "That's not my call" and the report's disclaimer. The error was ours.
• The Forensic Audit, corrected: "Kevin Nugent Construction, owned by the former mayor's brother" and the Tenco ownership line to "which the auditors state is owned by," noting the auditors cite no source for either relationship.
• The Forensic Audit, added: the August 12, 2026 "Final Audit Invoice" figure of $12,270.92 from the special-meeting agenda.
• The Forensic Audit, added: Administrator LaRocque's May 20 rebuttal per Shaw Local ("reached out to five or six other banks" and "none came back with better deals"; bids "always opened in front of the contractors") beside the Gesky and Cainkar rebuttals.
• The Forensic Audit: Updated the "Last updated" stamp from August 17 to September 22, 2026. Removed 14 em-dashes.
• No Gotion, No flipbook, corrected: "Maanteno" to Manteno; "36-claim fact check" to 39.
• No Gotion, No flipbook, corrected: the stale footer links (Home, Fact Check, Videos, July 20) to the link set the shared nav uses.
• No Gotion, No flipbook, removed: 7 em-dashes. spot.html was not added to the sitemap; it is not linked from the site navigation, which points to nogotionno.html.
• sitemap.xml: Updated the lastmod dates for claims, legal, audit and videos to 2026-09-22.
• July 20 page, corrected: the mayor did announce a veto of the Cainkar appointment at this meeting, at 53:42 ("Under old business tonight, I'm vetoing the Cainkar appointment that was made at the last meeting"). Our earlier version said she did not veto anything. It relied on a caption capture that was cut off at 51:40. This was our error. Card j10, the short version, the court-section header and the corrections note are rewritten; the question of whether a one-sentence oral announcement is a written return under 3.1-40-45 stays on the August 3 page (a30).
• July 20 page, corrected: card j11 had joined a sentence from the mayor's letter (40:20) to a sentence from Trustee Barry (1:14:38) as one quotation credited to the mayor. They are now shown as two quotations from two speakers. This was our error.
• July 20 page, corrected: "all seven officials lined up behind the same written safety ultimatum" now says the trustees did, with the mayor's own letter on the same theme, and notes her July 24 statement to Shaw Local that the trustees' document was not authorized.
• July 20 page, corrected: the corrections note said the page was updated July 22 with the court ruling; the ruling was confirmed July 31.
• July 20 page, corrected: j8 restores the dropped sentence "We can talk about whatever we would like to." and names the trustee as Joel Gesky (the mayor addresses him as "Joel").
• July 20 page, corrected: j17 now quotes the mayor's actual words ("the village trustees chose to spend the majority of over $25 million that it received from Aqua before my tenure as mayor") instead of a paraphrase inside quotation marks.
• July 20 page, added: j22 notes that Clerk Kerri Rolniak resigned effective Nov. 30, 2025.
• July 20 page, added: j16 notes that Shaw Local reported 390 Gotion employees on July 24, 2026, matching the higher figure said at the meeting.
• July 20 page, added: j11 and j12 reconcile that Gotion already held an occupancy permit "granted through BNF technical" per Gesky (1:12:05), so the leverage is pulling an existing permit; j11 flags the Nov. 19 vs Nov. 21 fire-district letter date as unresolved.
• July 20 page, corrected: j29 "close to zero" softened to "usually, when the party changes."
• July 20 page: Not changed: the Morris cross-reference in j28 already points to j24, which is the Morris card on this page; no fix was needed.
• August 3 page, corrected: a30 said the July 20 agenda "had no Old Business section." It had an empty "9. Old Business" section and an "Old Business" sub-item under the President's Report, which is where the veto announcement was placed. The card's reasoning is rewritten around that; the point that an oral announcement is not a written return is unchanged.
• August 3 page, corrected: a22 said the Village's meetings index had "no July 14 entry." There is a July 14, 2026 Planning Commission row; the card now says "no board or committee meeting."
• August 3 page, corrected: a1 said we had "probed for amended versions (none exist)." A re-upload, August-3-2026-1.pdf, was posted August 18 and is textually identical; the July 30 original is unchanged.
• August 3 page, corrected: the statement that 3.1-35-10 "lets two-thirds of the board restore the officer" (a5) now follows the statute's text: two-thirds of all members authorized to be elected of the corporate authorities, president and six trustees, so five, with no case deciding it. The veto-override count in a28 (four trustees, president excluded, under 3.1-40-50) is unchanged, and a28 now flags the difference.
• August 3 page, corrected: the administrator-removal sentence is in Manteno Code 1-19-4, not 1-19-2.
• August 3 page, regraded: a15 from True to Mixed. The card had replaced the speaker's word "residential" with "[fire-department]" and graded the corrected sentence True. Her actual words are restored; nobody at the July 20 meeting cited NFPA 1710 or 1720 (the only NFPA cite that night was a resident's "NFPA 600").
• August 3 page, corrected: a25 said "a chair whose motion to adjourn fails"; the chair called for a motion, Barry moved and Vaughn seconded. The two spliced timestamps (1:30:32 and 1:35:36) are now shown as two quotations.
• August 3 page, added: a13 flags "$31 million" as a caption-dependent figure, most likely "$3.1 million."
• August 3 page, corrected: a14 now quotes the speaker's actual chemical list as captioned rather than a shorter list she did not give.
• August 3 page, corrected: a4 no longer says the match between LaRocque's agenda and the website agenda was "on the mayor's own telling"; she said only that he "replaced it with his own agenda," and the match is our inference from the server record.
• August 3 page, added: a21 notes the posted agenda listed 10(C) Lee's Rentals balance and 10(D) Greene final invoice as separate items.
• August 3 page, added: a27 notes the pro tem question was raised aloud at 1:31:01 and 1:33:29 with no audible vote.
• August 3 page, corrected: "3.1-40-30 makes the mayor the presider, nothing more" now notes the section also gives her a vote in three listed situations.
• August 17 page, corrected: the headline and card 2 put "I just gave you direction. Arrest her." in the mayor's mouth as one sentence. On the captions those are two turns; "Arrest her?" is a question, most plausibly the chief's. The mayor's own words are "Chief, could you send somebody to Annette's house to see if she's available?" (31:22) and "Well, bring her in. Bring her to the meeting" (32:08); the chief: "Well, the only way I can bring her in is by arresting her" (32:10); the attorney: "Yeah, that's what the code says, rule 21" (32:18). The headline is now "The night the police were sent after a trustee, for a quorum," the page title and social tags match, and card 2 presents the exchange as a labelled sequence exactly as the captions break it, saying plainly that the captions carry no speaker labels and that we have asked for the audio. This was our error.
• August 17 page, regraded: card 2 from True to "True as to the direction to send police; the word 'arrest' on the tape is the chief's and the attorney's."
• August 17 page, corrected: card 6 and the short version said one absence was explained and three were not. All four were explained on the tape by the administrator (30:17 to 31:01): Boudreau emailed, 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. This was our error.
• August 17 page, corrected: card 4 said the police chief raised the message that Zimbelman was sick. A woman at the dais, unidentified on the captions, reported it (31:00); the chief relied on it.
• August 17 page, added: card 1 cites the roll call on the tape (17:09 to 17:29: Barry and Vaughn answered; the other four silent) and no longer waits on the minutes.
• August 17 page, added: card 3 records the mayor's question "So do the trustees wish to use this ordinance…?" (28:33) and a trustee's "maybe we should try and find them and bring them in" (28:58), with no motion or roll call, and Barry's "Mr. LaRocque is retiring" (29:32).
• August 17 page, corrected: all 34 em-dashes removed.
• August 20 page, corrected: card 6 called Boudreau's thank-you the earliest on-camera sign the administrator was leaving; Barry said "Mr. LaRocque is retiring" on August 17 (29:32) and the August 17 Finance agenda listed "Chris LaRocque Retirement."
• August 20 page, corrected: card 6 said "the board had suspended him"; the mayor suspended him, announced August 3, seventeen days earlier, not sixteen. This was our error.
• August 20 page, corrected: "the first full board of the month" is now "the first meeting since Aug 3 with all six present"; all six voted August 3.
• August 20 page, corrected: card 5 repeated the August 17 error on unexplained absences; same fix as the August 17 page.
• August 20 page, added: card 1 notes that on the motion to table the captions do not capture Crockett's vote and unanimity is inferred from "motion carries."
• August 20 page, added: card 9 quotes the mayor's "before we vote on whether or not we're going to accept our two appointees" (17:00) and her August 17 statement that she planned to appoint Crystal Wolfe, and says, as an inference, that one of the two unexplained motions was almost certainly the Wolfe appointment.
• August 20 page, corrected: "Both walks happened" now has its antecedent.
• August 20 page, corrected: the stale minutes lines now read that the last board minutes posted are June 25; the Aug 3 (amended) and Aug 17 minutes were approved Sept 16 and vetoed Sept 21.
• August 20 page, corrected: all 17 em-dashes removed.
• September 8 page, corrected: card 1 said the appointment "would have failed 3 to 3" with Boudreau present. Under 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-30(i), applied to villages by 3.1-45-5, the president may vote to break a tie, so it would have passed 4 to 3. This was our error.
• September 8 page, corrected: the page said a Request for Review on the license plate cameras was "pending" and "filed" with the Public Access Counselor (short version, section 3, requests). It had not been filed. The page now says it is being filed this week.
• September 8 page, corrected: Oktoberfest is September 24 to 27, 2026, this week, not October 24 to 27. This was our error.
• September 8 page, corrected: the resident said "federal trade zone" as captioned, not "foreign," and "our legislation just passed a bill"; Bourbonnais announced its search five days before the meeting, not six.
• September 8 page, added: the Chamber card now says Ashley Peterson is both the Chamber's President/CEO and the Village's Marketing and Community Relations Director.
• September 8 page, corrected: the Gotion visit card no longer says "unannounced"; the trustees and the chief were stopped at the door, and Barry said the MOU allows entry at any time.
• September 8 page, corrected: "Manteno Fire Protection District" to Manteno Community Fire Protection District.
• September 8 page, added: the minutes card notes the Village hosts the Aug 12 notice under the filename "August-7-2026-Special-Meeting.pdf," and the stale "no minutes after July" line now says the last board minutes posted are June 25.
• September 8 page, corrected: all 21 em-dashes removed (one — entity remains, inside the quoted title of the Village's Plan Commission agenda item).
• September 9 page, corrected: section 4 cut the police chief's answer before its last sentence. Restored: "So, not our information, but they might have their own information." The paragraph no longer reads him as conceding the FOIA finding; the Village's own sharing roster is what shows the sharing. This was our error.
• September 9 page, corrected: the treasurer's "special committee meeting" is no longer tied to the August 17 police order. The 5 p.m. body that day was the Finance Committee of the Whole, whose posted agenda has no legal-bills item; which meeting she meant is not established.
• September 9 page, corrected: the PAC request on the cameras was described as pending; it is being filed this week.
• September 9 page, corrected: "A trustee: 'Where does that data go…'" and "The mayor asked the two right questions" now read "a speaker at the table" and "someone at the table," since the captions carry no speaker labels.
• September 9 page, added: Oktoberfest dates (September 24 to 27) where the page mentions it.
• September 9 page, added: the note on Mr. Barnes says he appears to be the same audience member who described Monee's business videos and answered "we have an HR."
• September 9 page, corrected: the "no minutes after July" line now says the last board minutes posted are June 25.
• September 9 page, corrected: all 41 em-dash entities (—) removed.
• September 16 page, corrected: section 4 said three people spoke and put a candidacy announcement, "That's a FOIA request" and "two of our trustees can't make it" in the mouth of Bill Barnes. Four people spoke: Reichart, Martin, an unnamed late speaker whose lines those are, and then "Bill," recognised at 20:03, whose lines ("what is your endgame… you guys are single-handedly destroying it… you think you're mayor, you're not") are the only ones the Daily Journal attributes to Bill Barnes. The card, the section header, the short version and the "two residents spoke" line are rewritten; the Barnes candidacy report from the Daily Journal is kept only for the lines that are his. This was an attribution error and it was ours. The page carries an "Updated September 22, 2026, evening" note.
• September 16 page, corrected: the mayor's September 16 statement named only "Joel Gesky and the other three members of the Manteno Choice Party"; the September 21 statement named all four.
• September 16 page, regraded: "four trustees signed" the call, which the page said was "not disputed by anyone," is now Disputed, trustees' account: the mayor said on September 21 "It wasn't in writing and it wasn't served by the clerk."
• September 16 page, corrected: the August 17 board meeting was 6:00 p.m., not 5:00 p.m.
• September 16 page, corrected: the $60,000 figure was stated by the mayor in open session on September 8 and is no longer called unverified; the previous officer's pay still is.
• September 16 page, corrected: Chief Petersen (agenda spelling "Peterson" noted).
• September 16 page, corrected: the recording range for the three votes is 12:40 to about 16:30, not 12:07 to 15:00; the moment of silence was requested of Boudreau by another trustee.
• September 16 page, corrected: "nothing a trustee asked for" on the September 21 agenda now notes New Business B was put together by Barry, per the mayor.
• September 16 page, corrected: Daily Journal indirect speech attributed to Barry is presented as the paper's paraphrase, not in quotation marks.
• September 16 page, corrected: the "no minutes after July" line now says the last board minutes posted are June 25.
• September 21 page, corrected: Daniel Bourgault was not "named publicly for the first time"; the July 20 page named him from the July 21 hearing.
• September 21 page, regraded: claim n7 ("Four signed this one") from True to Disputed, trustees' account; the mayor said "It wasn't in writing." The short version says the same.
• September 21 page, corrected: "Two hours later" is about 27 minutes later (54:23 to 1:21:31).
• September 21 page: Regraded and rewritten: the "Purchasing from Village Employees" card. The agenda item is "Approval of Overages on Projects or Purchasing from Village Employees," the committee discussed it for about two minutes as purchases by staff (a $5,000 email threshold), and the conflict-of-interest framing is withdrawn. This was our misreading.
• September 21 page, corrected: the $60,000 salary was stated by the mayor in open session on September 8; the page no longer says it first appeared in the newspaper.
• September 21 page, corrected: the Ord. 24-18 description. It amended 1-5-5, 1-7-2 (bonds), the deputy-clerk paragraph of 1-8-4, 1-9-2 (village attorney; law firm may hold the office) and 2-2-2; it was prepared by Louis F. Cainkar, Ltd. and passed Feb. 3, 2025 under the Nugent board; it did not amend the clerk's $4,000 paragraph.
• September 21 page, added: where the page discusses the Daily Journal's September 21 story, that the Village's June 15, 2026 minutes record a 4 to 2 vote to disapprove the removal and reinstate Cainkar that night, which our working notes had wrongly flagged as a discrepancy. The paper was right.
• September 21 page, corrected: "two residents" at the September 16 meeting to four members of the public; the "two of our trustees can't make it" line is attributed to an unnamed late speaker, not Bill Barnes.
• September 21 page, corrected: Chief Petersen, with the agenda's "Peterson" spelling noted, and a note that the motion as read said "Fire Protection Bureau" while the code office is the fire prevention bureau.
• September 21 page, corrected: "ordinances five times" to "ordinance seven times, singular and plural, items once"; "1954 twice" to once; "about eight minutes later" to about five; "With about 25 minutes left" to "with about 25 minutes before the board meeting"; "named former employee" to identifiable; Gesky's recording-secretary question came before 1-5-5(E) was read.
• September 21 page, corrected: the Sunday-delivery arithmetic. Sunday to Wednesday 7 a.m. clears 48 hours by about a day, and Gesky's own "48 hours prior" does not fit a Sunday delivery; both are his figures.
• September 21 page, corrected: the Sept. 22 Public Works and General Government meetings were 7:00 a.m. and were cancelled.
• September 21 page, corrected: Daily Journal indirect speech (Wolfe "gracious and accommodating," LaMore "part of the blame") is presented as the paper's paraphrase.
• September 21 page, added: the "Miss Nent" departure is inferred, and only inferred, to be Yvette Nugent, Building Department administrative assistant per the Village staff page.
• September 21 page, corrected: the employee the mayor named from the dais is now named once, plainly, as Ashley Peterson, Marketing and Community Relations Director, so the page is consistent with the Gesky quotation that names her.
• September 21 page, corrected: the "no minutes after July" lines now say the last board minutes posted are June 25.
• September 21 page, corrected: "Alan" inside the Gesky quotation is shown as Allen [as captioned, "Alan"].

Why we are publishing all of it: the standard we grade the Village by is that the record has to match the document. Ours did not, in these places. The full audit file is kept with the research and every one of these lines points at the page it changed.

• Two names were wrong and are fixed everywhere. The former clerk is Crystal Wolfe, not "Crystal Wolf." The temporary clerk is Allen Pickrel, a former village clerk, not "Alan Pickerill." Both came off auto-captions, where we could only hear the names, and both are corrected against The Daily Journal, September 18. This is the same auto-caption failure mode that produced the September 13 corrections, in a different shape: not the wrong speaker, the wrong spelling.
• The compensation reading is confirmed, from the primary actor. Our September 21 page argued from § 1-8-4 and 65 ILCS 5/3.1-50-5 that the Manteno clerk is entitled to $4,000 a year and cannot lawfully be paid more during the term. Wolfe's resignation letter, as reported, says she took the job understanding the clerk position "which had a yearly salary of $4,000" would be her function, and the paper reports the administration wants to raise the clerk's pay to $8,000 after the spring 2027 election. That is the statute being followed. The card now carries her own account.
• Wolfe blames nobody, and we have said so. She told the paper that staff, trustees and the administration were all "nothing but kind," and that she left because the FOIA officer role "altered her job function drastically" and is a full-time job. Neither the mayor's account nor Trustee Crockett's is endorsed by the person they were arguing about, and the card now says that plainly.
• A reversal we did not have, and it sharpens a card. On September 17, the day after the special meeting, the mayor told the paper she was reversing course and would back the B&F hiring, calling the role "critical to the village," with a vote expected Monday. The story's web address still reads mayor-vows-to-block while its headline now reads "After threatening veto, Manteno mayor now favors hiring code enforcement firm." On Monday no approving vote was agendized and the contract was vetoed. Added to both the September 21 and September 16 pages.
• A number we said was missing turns out to exist. We wrote that no salary for Jim Paicz had been stated in any open meeting. True of the meetings, but the paper reports the mayor offered the post at $60,000 a year. The card is corrected and still asks for the personnel action itself, because a newspaper account is not a record.
• The court date is now sourced, and there is more in it. Judge Lindsay Parkhurst set the hearing for 10 a.m. November 12. The trustees are represented by attorney Daniel Bourgault, named publicly for the first time. (Corrected in the third entry below: our own July 20 page had carried his name since the July 21 hearing.) Their response to the suit was filed that Monday morning; Vasselli got 14 days to respond, Bourgault 7 to reply. That card moves from "pending docket check" to confirmed.
• (Superseded in part by the third entry: four people spoke, not three; the candidacy and "FOIA request" lines belong to an unnamed speaker, and Bill Barnes was recognised separately afterward.) The unnamed third speaker on the September 16 page is named. He is Bill Barnes, who the paper reports is running for trustee under the mayor's Manteno Freedom Party. His quotes match the recording word for word. We name the affiliation because a candidate criticising the officials he will run against is context a reader needs, and it was not said in the room. On the September 9 page, where a "Mr. Barnes" gave the unverified "$1.6 million in deficit" figure, we have added a note saying we have not confirmed it is the same person.
• And the mayor's own reason for ending trustee comments. "I got tired of it." Asked whether she would reinstate it: "If a miracle happens." Trustee Barry's answer, that trustees can still speak in their committee reports, is on the card beside it, because it is right and it explains why every exchange we quoted from Monday happened inside a committee report.

Why a second entry the same day: we published the September 21 and September 16 pages this morning off the recordings, the agendas and the code. The Daily Journal's coverage of the same period existed and we had not read it. It corrected two names, supplied a salary we said was missing, confirmed a statutory reading we had derived on our own, and contained a change of position that neither meeting recorded. Reading the local paper before publishing is not optional, and this is the entry that says we did not.

• New page, September 21 Update: forty-seven graded claims covering both of Monday's meetings. The lead is the veto. Mayor LaMore vetoed all three actions taken at the September 16 special meeting and told the board that Village Code § 1-5-7 lets her return "an item considered at a board meeting." We pulled 1-5-7. It is titled Approval And Veto Of Ordinances and its text says the president inspects "all ordinances" and returns "such ordinances as he shall not approve." Nothing done on September 16 was an ordinance.
• New page, September 16 Update: a meeting we missed. We had no page for the September 16 special meeting. It was on the Village's own meetings index all along, with its agenda and a link to the video. We are publishing it six days late rather than backdating it, because it is the meeting the veto is about and because our coverage audit should have caught it.
• A reader found a second meeting we did not have. Manteno held two meetings on September 21: the Public Safety and Finance committees at 5:00 p.m. and the regular board meeting at 6:00. The Village's meetings index lists both committee rows with an agenda link and no video link, so our check of the index missed it entirely. The stream exists on the Village's own channel. A reader sent it. It is now section 9 of the September 21 page, and the lesson is recorded on the page: the index's Video column is not a reliable guide to what was recorded.
• The biggest thing in that committee meeting had nothing to do with the fight. The finance committee chair told the room that with no village administrator "there's one person that's verifying payroll in the village," that staff have left owed vacation time and pay, and that "I don't think anybody in this room knows how much vacation time someone's owed, how much pay they're owed, or how that process works." Nobody disagreed. It is graded True and it is on the request list.
• An open question from September 10 is now closed, and it went the other way from our provisional read. On the September 9 page we wrote that the mayor's formulation, village-hall staff appointed and department heads not, "is the reverse of the ordinary Illinois arrangement," and that we would not call it wrong until we had read Manteno's own code. We have now read it. The code is: the president appoints officers and department heads with the board's consent (§§ 1-5-5(A), 1-19-2, 1-22-1, 2-2-2), and the administrator hires everyone else (§ 1-19-5(H)). The September 9 card has been updated with a dated box saying so, and the homepage staffing thread now reads "Answered" rather than "Unsettled."
• What we got right and are keeping. Where the mayor's September 21 statement matches the code we say so: the village administrator is an officer requiring trustee consent, which is what she told the board, and 1-19-2 says exactly that. The board also unanimously confirmed a mayoral appointment the same night, to Chief of the Fire Prevention Bureau, using the ordinary advice and consent procedure.
• Two things we are refusing to state as fact. We cannot establish from the captions whether the mayor or the attorney read § 1-5-5(E) into the record on the temporary clerk question, so we name nobody; the finding is about the citation, not the citer. And we are not calling the committee's executive session an Open Meetings Act violation on the strength of an auto-caption: no exception citation is audible at the vote, the Act also allows it to be satisfied in the minutes, and Manteno has posted no minutes since July. That card says "Open, pending the minutes" and will come down if the citation is there.
• Site plumbing: both new pages added to the Updates menu on every page, the sitemap, the homepage meeting grid, the timeline and the running log. "Where things stand" refreshed to September 22. The homepage now carries the October 5 override date.

Why this one is long: a veto is the one unilateral power a village president has, and the scope of it is set out in two short passages of text that anybody can read. Where a claim can be checked against a published ordinance, checking it is not a matter of opinion, and we have linked every section so readers can do it themselves. We also missed two meetings in six days, one of them because we trusted an index column. Both of those are our errors and both are recorded above.

• The correction, as it came in. A reader wrote through the tip form on the September 8 page: "email exchange between Trustee Barry and the mayor referenced at the table. It was Trustee Crockett who emailed Mayor LaMore and received no response." She is right. Three separate things in the recording confirm it: the trustee who sent the email said he could not vote yes on the appointment, and Barry voted yes while Crockett voted no; that trustee twice addresses Barry in the second person ("Mike, quite honestly, I sent this email to the mayor several weeks ago. Zero response."); and he asks whether the mayor and "the finance committee chair" have prepared an amended budget, which Barry, the finance chair, would not say of himself. The Daily Journal's account of the same meeting independently reports Trustee Crockett raising the budget objection and Trustee Barry arguing for the appointment.
• Five more attributions were wrong the same way, and we found them only because the first one sent us back through the meeting line by line. All now corrected on the September 8 page: the $30,000-offset argument (Barry, not Crockett); the Zoom call with B&F Construction Code Services (Barry and Gesky, not Crockett and Gesky); the September 1 Gotion fire-brigade inspection and the whole Gotion report, including "the strongest fire brigade agreement in the state of Illinois" and the "just because they had six last Tuesday" caveat (Barry, not Crockett); and the "one call-out in the past year" remark, which we could not pin to a named trustee at all and have made anonymous.
• Why it happened, plainly. YouTube's auto-captions carry no speaker labels. On a meeting where five people interrupt each other, that is a trap, and we walked into it. We had already flagged the risk on the September 9 page; we should have applied the same caution to September 8. Going forward, no name goes on a quote from this source unless the recording itself identifies the speaker, someone says the name, the chair calls on them, or the vote makes it unambiguous.
• One framing fix on the September 9 page. The same reader noted that our summary line, "the village is not paying the mayor's attorney, and the treasurer said why," read as though the treasurer had volunteered it. The mayor asked the question. The claim card always said so; the summary now does too.
• One attribution strengthened, not weakened. Re-checking the same passage showed the mayor turning to a trustee by name, "So Joel, maybe you can answer that", so the statement that the board does not recognize her appointed attorney is now correctly attributed to Trustee Gesky rather than left anonymous.
• Thank you. This is what the tip form is for, and it worked exactly as intended. Corrections are always welcome, including, especially, the ones that make us look careless.

Why this one gets a long entry: putting the wrong trustee's name on a public criticism of the mayor is not a typo. Crockett asked a budget question and got no answer; Barry argued the opposite side and voted the opposite way. Saying it was Barry misdescribed what both of them did, and it stood on the site for two days.

• New page, September 9 Update: twenty graded claims from the 7:00 a.m. committee of the whole, the mayor saying she will appoint the vacancies rather than post them and will not hire a village administrator before April's election; the treasurer stating on the record that the Village is not paying the mayor's attorney because the August 17 meeting died for want of a quorum; the mayor saying she found her attorneys "through friends from another community"; the police chief's first on-camera answers about the license plate cameras; and the ordinary business, trees, accessible parking, pickleball lights, a gaming licence, that the meeting handled without a fight in its first half hour.
• Correction to the September 8 page. We reported the mayor's statement that Trustee Boudreau had met the code enforcement candidate, approved of him and intended to vote yes. On September 9 Boudreau, present, disputed that: "I never said I was going to vote for him. I said I wanted to discuss, and I'm not against the guy. It was just more of the money." The September 8 card now carries a dated note and a link to both statements side by side. We are not adjudicating between them; both are on tape.
• Two numbers we are refusing to launder. A member of the public told the September 9 meeting the Village is "$1.6 million in deficit." Nobody in the room challenged it. It is published on the new page graded Unverified / Open, with a plain statement that we are not adopting it and are pulling the budget and the audit. The same treatment is given to an unattributed claim from the room that Joliet and Wilmington "have all been abused" on ALPR.
• A caution specific to this page. YouTube did not generate captions for the September 9 meeting until roughly twenty hours after it ended, and those captions carry no speaker labels. Several exchanges are two or three people talking at once. Where we could not establish who was speaking, the page says so and does not put a name on it, including one quote about refusing to deal with the mayor's attorney that we have left out entirely until the audio settles who said it.
• Site plumbing: September 9 added to the Updates menu on every page, the sitemap, the homepage meeting grid, the timeline and the running log. "Where things stand" refreshed to September 10, the staffing thread now carries the appointment dispute, the camera thread is marked answered by the chief, and the village-attorney thread records the non-payment.

Why: the September 8 meeting showed the village had run out of staff. This one showed how it intends to replace them, and the answer, appointment rather than posting, no administrator until after the election, is a bigger decision than the vote that failed the night before. It also produced the first thing on this story that looks like an opening: a police chief volunteering to hold a public session on the cameras.

• New page, September 8 Update: twenty graded claims from the September 8 regular board meeting, the code enforcement appointment failing 2–3 with one trustee at a golf match; the village left with no administrator, no code officer and no posted jobs; the $30,000 stipend already sitting in the budget; the removal of trustee comments from the agenda, in the mayor's own words; the surprise 9 p.m. inspection of Gotion's fire brigade; a resident's license plate camera complaint; and the state e-bike law taking effect January 1, 2027. Each claim carries its source.
• New page, August 20 Update, a meeting we had not covered. Checking the Village's own meeting index against our coverage turned up a special board meeting on Thursday, August 20 that we missed entirely. It is where the code enforcement appointment was tabled, where the August 25 special meeting (later cancelled) was called, and where a trustee thanked the departing village administrator for fourteen years of service. It is also where Trustee Boudreau announced, nineteen days in advance, that he would miss September 8. We have gone back and written it up rather than quietly skipping it.
• Coverage audit. We reconciled every Manteno meeting on the Village's published index from July 20 forward against what this site had published. Result: one uncovered board meeting (August 20, now fixed), and confirmation that the August 25 board meeting and both August 25 committee meetings were cancelled, that the August 17 Public Safety Committee was cancelled, and that the September 9 Plan Commission meeting, whose only new business was battery energy storage zoning, was cancelled.
• "Where things stand" rebuilt for September 9 and expanded from seven threads to nine. Two new threads: the staffing vacancies, and the license plate cameras. The Gotion thread's open item, the August 31 fire brigade staffing deadline, is now answered and marked as such. The agenda-control thread now records the removal of trustee comments.
• Timeline extended with August 20, August 25, September 8 and September 9. Cast updated: Crystal Wolfe added as Village Clerk (the fourth in about fifteen months); Steven Orth moved to former; Chris LaRocque's entry updated to record his departure and the vacancy. What we're watching rebuilt around the September 21 court date, the September 21 and 22 committee meetings, the September 25 Attorney General deadline, and Oktoberfest.
• One number we are not resolving yet. The September 8 agenda states the payment of bills as $309,689.86; the stream's auto-captions render the figure read aloud as $39,689.86, twice. We are publishing the agenda figure and flagging the gap on the September 8 page rather than picking one. The warrant list will settle it.

Why: a site that grades other people's records has to notice when its own has a hole in it. The August 20 meeting was not a minor one, it is the origin of the appointment fight that defined September, and skipping it would have made the September 8 vote look like it came out of nowhere. The audit that found it is now something we will run every time.

• Three new pages. The Lawsuit, Legal Analysis and The Forensic Audit were each lifted out of the homepage and given their own page, with their own summary, address and search listing. The text was moved intact, not rewritten. "Looking Ahead," the labeled-opinion handicap of how this ends, now sits on the lawsuit page where it belongs.
• The homepage is now a front page. It opens with Where things stand, a board of the seven live threads in this story, each stating plainly what is settled and what is not. Then the overview, the cast, the timeline, every meeting we have covered with a summary of each, what we are watching next on the calendar, the running log of published developments, and three cards into the long reads. The document library, transparency record and sourcing all stay where they were. The old in-page menu links now point at the new pages, on every page of the site.
• New on the lawsuit page: a "where it stands" box recording that a hearing took place the morning of Aug. 17 before Judge Parkhurst, that opposing counsel received an extension to prepare a brief, that about 20 residents attended, and that the matter is continued to Monday, Sept. 21 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 204. The box states plainly that the mayor did not name the case and did not say the word "refiled," that two different cases fit her description, and that we are not reporting a refiling until the docket settles it.

Why: the homepage had been carrying the entire investigation in one scroll, which meant the newest thing on the site was buried below several thousand words of legal analysis. A reader arriving after hearing something at a meeting should see what just happened first, and be able to go as deep as they want from there.

• New page, August 17 Update: four of six trustees absent, no quorum, and the mayor directing the police chief, over the chief's three requests for confirmation, to arrest a trustee who had reported being sick. The page publishes the verbatim text of Manteno Code §1-6-5, Rule 21 (verified against the current American Legal codification, 2026 S-12), walks through the five limits built into the rule, the power belongs to a majority of the trustees present, not the president; sick members are exempt; notice and a refusal must precede any arrest, and grades six claims. Wired into the Updates menu and sitemap.
• Published as preliminary: quotes are auto-caption transcriptions marked ⚠ pending a line-by-line audio check; the attorney who read the rule is deliberately unnamed until identity is confirmed; grades on the "who directed whom" question are held at Disputed until the minutes and journal are produced. FOIA requests for the minutes, the police incident/CAD records, and the related communications are being filed and will be published here.
• Timeline extended (homepage): three new entries carry the record past July 21, the August 3 walkout and 4-0 override, the August 12 special meeting where the mayor stated on camera that "it is my meeting and it's up to me what's on the agenda" (with trustees using the word "censored" three times), and the August 17 arrest order.
• Correction, June 22 timeline entry: the group-text participant we had described as "a Dennis Rebelletti (an outside participant not otherwise identified in the records)" is now identified: Dennis Reboletti, an attorney billing through Vasselli Law, documented in produced invoice #2024072819 (6.0 hours, board meeting plus travel). The thread's contact card spells the name "Rebelletti"; the invoice spelling is Reboletti.
• Videos page: retitled "The six meetings" and extended with the August 12 special meeting and the August 17 regular meeting, each with the same context treatment as the first four.
• Site plumbing: the August 17 page joined the Updates menu on every page; three pages (the book page, the Spot page, and the 404 page) received the shared navigation's dropdown styling they were missing, so the menu no longer renders unstyled there; sitemap updated.

Why: as far as we can find, no Illinois village has ever gotten past the knock on the door under a rule like this, and this one was invoked against a trustee the rule's own text arguably exempts. That is worth documenting precisely, the night it happened, with the rule's full text rather than a paraphrase.

• Two quotes restored to what was actually said. Card a3's trustee quote now reads "posted on the next board agenda" (our brackets had silently upgraded his wording to the statute's "reconsidered" language; the analysis, not the quote, is where that distinction belongs), and card a8 restores the mayor's own hedge, "presumed to have been supported by her husband", which our ellipsis had dropped. Card a2's floor quote now brackets "[Rules of]" as supplied words.
• Grade change, a29 (legislative counsel): Mixed → Disputed. We had presented §1-9-4 as a near-win for the trustees without disclosing that the two closest cases lean the other way: Westmont v. Lenihan (1998) enjoined trustees who retained a firm over a veto, reading 65 ILCS 5/8-1-7(b)(2) to require the mayor and board to act together, and Sampson v. Graves upheld Harvey's ordinance partly because the mayor sat in the approving body, in a home-rule city, which Manteno is not. The §1-9-4 distinction is real; no court has tested it. The card now says all of that.
• Citation corrections. Dropped Dunne v. County of Cook from a28 (it protects override thresholds from dilution; it contains no denominator arithmetic and was miscited). Softened "the arithmetic is airtight" and "Illinois courts… on nearly identical facts, by name", and disclosed Fullerton's private-association origin, MacMahon's three dissents, and that Golden v. Toluca was limited to its facts by Rudd.
• Roti's predicates now flagged. The Council Wars case turned on an audible roll-call demand, a journaled roll call, and an elected temporary chair. The closest thing on Manteno's recording is "let it be reflected that I voted no", the substance of the roll-call right §1-6-5 Rule 7 and 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-40 give any one trustee, but not Roti's clean record. Cards a26-a28 now carry the distinctions instead of leaving them for opponents to find.
• Two wrinkles added to the override arithmetic (a28), one for each side: 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-30(iii) arguably puts the president in supermajority votes (no court has applied it to a veto override), and Manteno's own Rule 8 counts a present trustee who refuses to vote "as voting with the majority", on which reading the override was 6-0, not 4-0.
• The suspension and agenda cards now engage the strongest contrary provisions we could find instead of resting on absolutes: §1-5-6 (president supervises appointed officers) is named as the mayor's best textual hook, answered by §1-5-14's cap and §1-19-5(H)'s placement of the code's only "suspend" power with the administrator; §1-19-5(C), the code's only agenda mention, is quoted and addressed in a2. The a27 "cure" was corrected: a §1-6-3 special meeting may not satisfy 3.1-40-50's "at that regular meeting" language.
• Site plumbing: the homepage and Fact Check page now share the same navigation as the rest of the site (the Updates menu was missing from both); the Videos page gained the full August 3 meeting recording as Meeting 4, its broken tip-form script was repaired, and all four YouTube embeds now load after the page parses so content blockers no longer eat them.
• Smaller fixes: Highway 9 completion "late 2027" → IDOT's "end of August 2027"; the fire district staffing count is now attributed to the district's published materials; NFPA 1710/1720's consolidation into NFPA 1750 noted; Perlman's "40 years with the firm" vs. 41 years since admission flagged rather than silently reconciled; IML guide now quoted with the half that favors the mayor ("in most communities, the agenda is established by the Mayor or the Clerk") alongside the half that doesn't.

Why: before this page gets cited in PAC filings or court papers, we attacked it the way the mayor's lawyers would: every case pulled to primary source, every quote re-checked against the tape. Most of it held. Where our own brackets, omissions, or one-sided citations shaded the record, that's now fixed, and logged here under the same rule we apply to everyone else.

• New page, August 3 Update: 33 graded claims from the August 3 board meeting: the dueling agendas, the LaRocque suspension, the signed Gotion fire-brigade MOU (ratified 6-0), the failed 2-4 bills vote, and the disputed adjournment followed by the 4-0 veto-override votes. Wired into the Updates menu and sitemap.
• Correction: On August 2 we reported that Gotion had not signed the fire-brigade MOU, based on an unsigned draft circulating in photos, the item's listing on the August 3 agenda, and the mayor's July 24 "not authorized" statement. Per Trustee Barry's on-the-record account on August 3, Gotion signed on Friday, July 31 at 2:55 p.m., the day before the article we were correcting. Our narrower point stands (no binding two-party agreement existed until the board's 6-0 ratification August 3), but "Gotion has not signed it" was wrong when we published it. Details on card a10.
• Verified with server evidence: the agenda posted on the village website (August-3-2026.pdf) has been unchanged since Thursday, July 30 at 4:33 p.m. and contains the veto items 9(A)/9(B); no amended version has ever existed at that address. This grounds cards a1, a4 and a8.

Why: the August 3 meeting produced the sharpest legal collision of the year, a chair declaring adjournment over a 2-4 vote and a veto override taken after she left, and the claims from that night needed the same card-by-card treatment as July 20. The correction runs because our no-silent-edits rule applies most of all to us.

• Confirmed: the Village's lawsuit was dismissed. Shaw Local/The Daily Journal (July 21) reported that Kankakee County Circuit Judge Lindsay Parkhurst dismissed the Village's entire suit against the four trustees (26CH21) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, the Village had moved for an emergency TRO without ever filing an underlying complaint ("no complaint was filed to vest the court with jurisdiction"). The judge did not decide who represents the Village, so the Cainkar-vs.-Vasselli question is still open. We upgraded c28, the Looking Ahead box, the hero status line, the Lawsuit section, and the Timeline from "provisional" to this confirmed result.
• Correction (we got the reason wrong while it was developing). On July 21–24 we described the dismissal as being "on the pleadings", on how the complaint was written, and drew an echo to the 2024 dismissal of the CCOM complaint. That was inaccurate: there was no complaint on file at all, so the defect was jurisdictional, not a poorly-drafted pleading. We've fixed the wording in c28 and removed the CCOM "improper pleading" echo. This is exactly the kind of miss our provisional labels existed to contain, flagged, now corrected in the open.
• Graded our own handicap. The Looking Ahead section promised to grade its predictions in public. The case died at the threshold on July 21 before the July 30 conference; we added a dated grading note (we correctly rated "a TRO granted on the spot" least likely; our "dies at the threshold" endgame was essentially right, though the actual defect was more basic than the authority-to-sue theory we emphasized). Original scenarios left unedited beneath the note.
• Timeline: the July 21 entry now records the dismissal; the old "July 30, first day in court" entry became "What's left: will the Village refile?" because the dismissal mooted that conference.

Why: two things a fact-check site owes readers happened at once, a confirmed result to grade, and one of our own descriptions turning out wrong. Both are on the page. The bottom line the record now supports: the mayor's court route to remove Cainkar was thrown out on a basic procedural failure, and unless the Village actually files a complaint, Cainkar stays.

• Re-checked; still unconfirmed. Three days out, we again searched Shaw Local/The Daily Journal, The Vedette, WFAV and WVLI and looked for the written order. No outlet has published the July 21 hearing result, and the docket remains behind a registered-account login (re:SearchIL / county eAccess) we don't have. The 26CH21 dismissal report stays labeled provisional.
• Refreshed the "as of" dates on the c28 note, the Looking Ahead box and the July 21 timeline entry to July 24, so readers can see the claim is still being actively tracked rather than abandoned.

Why: the next hard date is the July 30 case-management conference, which should generate coverage and a clear record. We'll grade the July 21 result then, or sooner if the order surfaces.

• We could not independently confirm the July 21 dismissal, so we downgraded it. We searched the outlets that cover Manteno (Shaw Local/The Daily Journal, The Vedette, WFAV, WVLI) and checked for the written court order. As of July 22, no outlet has published the hearing result and we do not yet have the order. Yesterday's note stated the Village's suit (26CH21) "was dismissed on the pleadings" as settled; we have reworded both the c28 note and the Looking Ahead box to mark that report as provisional and not yet independently confirmed, and to spell out what's still open (whether any dismissal was with or without leave to refile, and whether the judge ruled on who represents the Village).
• Timeline filled in: added July 20 (no veto; the mayor said she sought a TRO and denied a CCOM leadership role on the record) and July 21 (the representation hearing was held; result pending) entries to the main Timeline, which previously jumped from mid-July to July 30.
• Housekeeping: "Last updated" set to July 22 on the main and Fact Check pages.

Why: the whole site rests on not stating things we can't back up. A hearing result we can't yet confirm from a written order or a second source has to be labeled as such, even when it's our own reporting, and even when we think it's right. When the order lands, we'll grade it.

• c28 (veto): updated with what happened, the mayor did not veto at the July 20 meeting; she said she instead sought a temporary restraining order, with a hearing on the Village's legal representation set for July 21 at the Kankakee County Courthouse. The fight moved to court.
• Developing (July 21): the Village's lawsuit against the four trustees (26CH21) was dismissed on the pleadings at that hearing. Added a clearly-labeled developing note to c28 and the Looking Ahead box; we flag that whether it was dismissed with leave to refile is still being confirmed from the written order, which we'll post. (Written conservatively pending the order.)
• c29 re-graded from "True, with context" to "Disputed." At the July 20 meeting the mayor flatly denied ever holding a CCOM leadership role ("I have never had a leadership position with CCOM…"). That, plus our finding that she holds no formal CCOM office, means the word "leader" is genuinely contested, a news outlet used it, the subject denies it. We present both and let readers judge. c31 softened to match.
• c34: added the mayor's July 20 statement putting a Gotion-related motive for the firing partly on her own record (she cited Cainkar's advice to approve Gotion and the absence of safety contracts).
• Looking Ahead: added a July 21 update box, the veto didn't happen, the representation fight went to court on an expedited track ahead of July 30.

Why: we watched the July 20 meeting recording. The biggest change cuts in the mayor's favor, she publicly denied the "CCOM leader" claim, so we moved that grade to Disputed and put her words on the page. That's the standard: when the record changes, the grade changes, even when it helps the person the claim is about.

• Main page, new "Transparency Record" section: documents that on the core attorney-removal request (FOIA 26-133), the Village withheld records under attorney-client privilege, with the FOIA officer's July 2 email stating Mayor LaMore herself determined what was privileged, and no index of withheld records provided. Presented with the fairness caveats (privilege is permissible; the question is contested and unadjudicated; the requester is this site's affiliated reporter) and a link to the full Fact Check entry.
• Fact Check, three new claims (c37–c39): the FOIA-withholding record (c37, "Supported, with context"); 333 South Spruce LLC, the entity that owns the Gotion plant land, showing "REVOKED" Illinois status as of May 8, 2026 for never filing an annual report (c38, Verified); and OSHA's January 2026 complaint inspection of the plant with two contested citations totaling $15,131 (c39, Verified).
• Sharpened for fairness: c29 and c31 now note that state corporate filings show Mayor LaMore held no formal office or directorship in CCOM at any point, her role was as an activist, not an officer. c26 adds the Julie-Holda lead (a CCOM founding director named Julie), explicitly flagged as a first-name match only, not an assertion.
• c21 resolved: the FOIA-timing claim previously left the audit-response question "pending" a record; our correspondence audit found the Village requested a two-day extension on May 27 that the requester agreed to, so the response was an agreed extension, not a late one. Updated to say so.
• Structured-data (ClaimReview) entries added for c37–c39; "last updated" bumped to July 18.

Why: a full audit of our FOIA correspondence with the Village surfaced how the withholding was handled, and public-records pulls (Secretary of State, OSHA) turned up documented facts no one had reported. Where the new facts cut in the mayor's favor, she holds no formal CCOM office, we said so in the same breath.

• Fact Check: added a new topic section, "The CCOM/Gotion background," with eight claims (c29–c36): LaMore's pre-mayoral leadership role in the CCOM lawsuit (c29); the CCOM lawsuit's full procedural history and its collision with the attorney dispute (c30); the open conflict-of-interest question (c31); the mayor's 65 ILCS 5/3.1-10-50(e) temporary-appointment theory (c32); the No Gotion Illinois website's list of supporting village officials (c33); Cainkar's January 2026 CFIUS statement months before his removal (c34); the Michigan (Green Charter Township) parallel, including Gotion's $24M damages claim there (c35); and the "admit guilt and the lawsuit goes away" claim (c36).
• Main page: added a CCOM/Gotion background paragraph to the Overview; added the mayor's § 3.1-10-50(e) statutory theory to the legal Q&A with a link to c32.
• Both tip forms: rebuilt to submit in-page (AJAX) with a visible success/failure message, previously, clicking Send could appear to do nothing.
• New: this change log page; linked from every footer. Structured-data (ClaimReview) entries added for c29–c36.

Why: readers asked how the attorney fight connects to the Gotion dispute, and whether the mayor's history with the group suing the Village matters. We researched it; here's what's documented and what isn't.

• Corrected: sewer-sale proceeds figure ($24.3M → $25.3M, per the audit); date of the mayor's signed meeting call (June 24 → June 23, the signature is hand-dated June 23); the lawsuit filing date on the Videos page (July 10, not July 14); a reversed color-coding on the June 15 vote bar.
• Clarified: the mayor's veto of the July 6 vote is announced, not yet cast; the forensic audit was approved on a divided 4–3 vote with Mayor LaMore casting the deciding vote; the June 2025 first rejection of a counsel change added to the timeline ("you have turned me down twice").
• Fact Check: c15 re-graded from "False" to "Unsupported" to match our own rubric, absence of a record isn't affirmative disproof. Added the Juneteenth note to c21; added the effective-date counter-argument (favorable to the mayor) to c2 and the main page's Q3; added the "soft spot in the trustees' position" callout (unilateral-retention problem under Westmont).
• Added: "Looking Ahead", a clearly-labeled opinion section ranking July 30 scenarios and endgames, with a standing promise to grade our own predictions publicly.
• Privacy & hardening: YouTube embeds switched to privacy-enhanced (no-cookie) mode; privacy notice added (no cookies, no analytics, no trackers); spam honeypot on forms; accessibility and contrast fixes; custom 404, robots.txt, sitemap; ClaimReview structured data for all 28 claims.

Why: a full adversarial review of the site against the primary documents. Six factual errors found and fixed; several one-sided framings balanced. The errors were ours; the log says so.

• MantenoIllinois.com goes live with three pages: the main record (overview, timeline, the three votes, the legal fight in six questions, the forensic audit, the document library), the Fact Check (28 claims graded against primary records), and Videos (the three key meetings with timestamped guides).
• Built from FOIA productions obtained from the Village (26-106, 26-133, 26-138 and related), the court filing, county land records, Illinois statutes and case law, and on-the-record local reporting, all cited inline.

Why: so neighbors can read the primary records and reach their own conclusions.