Four trustees called a special meeting for seven in the morning. The mayor arrived, read a prepared statement calling the meeting illegal and naming Trustee Gesky "and the other three members of the Manteno Choice Party," said she would veto whatever it did, and left before the first vote. The board elected a mayor pro tem and a recording secretary, because it has no clerk, and then transacted three items in about twenty-five minutes.
We had not covered this meeting. We are covering it now because on September 21 the mayor vetoed all three of its actions, which makes what actually happened here the thing everything else turns on.
Updated September 22, 2026, evening. The morning version of this page said three people spoke in public participation and put a candidacy announcement in the mouth of Bill Barnes, the speaker the Daily Journal names. Four people spoke. The candidacy line belongs to an unnamed late speaker whom the chair closed out before recognising "Bill." That was an attribution error, and it was ours; section 4 is rewritten. Also corrected this evening: the mayor's September 16 statement named only Gesky by name; the "four signed" call is now graded Disputed because the mayor said on September 21 that "it wasn't in writing"; the August 17 board meeting was at 6:00 p.m.; the $60,000 figure was stated by the mayor in open session on September 8; and the fire chief's name is Petersen.
The veto and the law behind it are on the September 21 page. New here? Start with the Fact Check.
Graded September 22, 2026, and corrected the same evening (see the note at the top), against the Village's recording, the posted agenda and the Manteno Village Code. A grade describes the state of the evidence on that date, not anyone's honesty. Nobody named on this page is accused of any crime.
Three agenda items, all carried 4 to 0. Roughly 12:40 to about 16:30 on the recording, after a moment of silence for former Trustee Wendell Phillips, which another trustee asked Boudreau for at 12:07.
Trustee Boudreau, chairing, explained what the amendment records: "we are reflecting in these minutes the mayor at that meeting tried to adjourn the meeting. However, she did not have the majority to adjourn the meeting. Only two voted in favor, four voted against. So therefore the meeting was continued on… That's when we moved to approve the engagement of new lawyers to defend the four trustees in the lawsuit brought by the mayor. And then a motion to reconsider the veto to approve Cainkar for legal matters when it comes to lawsuits and then negotiations with the village staff." ⚠
Motion by Crockett, seconded by Zimbelman. Crockett yes, Zimbelman yes, Gesky yes, Boudreau yes.
This is the contested one, and the trustees did not hide what it was for. It is a change to the official record of what the board did on August 3 after a motion to adjourn failed 2 to 4, and what the board did next is the subject of pending litigation. The mayor's position is that this is rewriting history; the trustees' position is that the minutes did not record what happened. Our August 3 page is here, and the underlying dispute is here.
Boudreau, introducing it: "Is there any discussion needed on this one? This is simply just a change of date. If you look at the packet that was provided last meeting, it wasn't approved because the date was said August 7th and the meeting took place on the 17th. So, just correcting the date." ⚠ Motion by Gesky, seconded by Crockett, 4 to 0.
The agenda backs this up. The Village's own notice lists the August 3 item as a motion to approve an amendment to previously approved minutes, and the August 17 item as a motion to approve the minutes. The second is a first approval of a document that had failed on a typo, not a revision of the record. It matters because on September 21 both items were vetoed for the same stated reason, that the trustees were "changing the record to approve their appointment for village attorney," and that reason does not describe this item. Graded on the September 21 page.
Source: September 16 agenda.
Gesky: "there are regular inspections required out of Gotion and part of Trustee Barry and myself's conversation along with Chief Peterson [Petersen] was that we need to continue that and we need to have people who are qualified to do those inspections. So that's why both myself and Trustee Barry were in favor of having B&F do it." ⚠ And on circulation: "these contracts and proposals were emailed to the entire board quite some time ago. I believe it's almost a week ago. So there's plenty of time for people to review those." ⚠
Boudreau noted that Trustee Barry, who was not present, supported it: "I know Joel, you've talked to Trustee Barry. He's in favor of this. Also, he said he's unfortunately not able to be here today." ⚠ Motion by Crockett, seconded by Zimbelman, 4 to 0.
Trustee Barry, who missed the meeting for a work conflict, confirmed to The Daily Journal, September 17 that he was "in 100% agreement" with the B&F contract. In the paper's paraphrase, the firm will handle commercial inspections on request and assist as needed with building and zoning work, and the contract sets rates for various tasks. That is five of six trustees on the record in favour.
The board: The B&F agreement spends money, so it was vetoable and was vetoed. The override is four trustees at the next regular meeting after the written objection is received, Monday, October 5, 2026, by roll call recorded in the journal (65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-50); the four who voted for it on September 16 are enough. If the objection was never delivered in writing, the item took effect on its own (3.1-40-45). Passing it gives the Village inspections under a written contract while the director's office is filled the lawful way: the president nominates, the board consents (§ 1-22-1), and the board can state the funding line in writing.
The mayor: A veto is a written objection returned at a regular meeting; a statement read aloud is not enough on its own. Or she can negotiate the contract she told the paper on September 17 she now supports, and bring it and the director's appointment to a regular meeting with the funding line stated.
The Toolbox: vetoes and October 5, in full → · The administrator and building director →
This is the only one of the three items that a village president can lawfully veto, because it creates a liability and provides for the expenditure of money. The reasoning is on the September 21 page. It is also the item where the accounts of who received the contract diverge: the mayor said the trustees never sent it to her, and both Gesky here and Trustee Barry on September 21 said it went to the whole board by email.
The opening ten minutes. A statement, a departure, and a board improvising around two empty offices.
The statement ran roughly five minutes. It opened: "Yet again, Joel Gesky and the other three members of the Manteno Choice Party are trying to illegally hold a meeting of the Manteno Village Board of Trustees to ram through their agenda without any oversight." ⚠ It closed: "Gesky knows what he is doing. He is violating the law, violating his role as trustee, and violating the trust of the citizens of Manteno." ⚠ In between: "I want to be clear that this meeting is illegally called and while I do not believe it is legally required, I will veto every action taken by the board at the supposed special meeting." ⚠
Then, from the table: "Since the mayor is leaving the meeting, I guess we need to appoint pro tem." ⚠ A motion to make Trustee Boudreau mayor pro tem passed on a voice vote.
The pro tem step is provided for. Manteno 1-5-4: "During a temporary absence of the president or his inability to act, the board of trustees shall elect one of its members to act as president pro tempore who, during his absence or disability, shall possess the powers of the president." Rule 1 of section 1-6-5 says the same thing for a meeting: "if he be not present the board of trustees shall elect a temporary chairman from among themselves who shall act in his stead."
Two things follow from the departure, and they cut in different directions. The mayor was not there for the explanation that the August 17 item was a date fix, which is part of why the September 21 veto statement describes it wrongly. And the board proceeded to make decisions with the village's chief executive absent from the room by her own choice, which is not how anyone would design this.
Roll call: Boudreau, Crockett, Gesky and Zimbelman present. Trustee Barry was recorded as unable to attend. Trustee Vaughn did not answer. The mayor had left.
Manteno 1-6-4: "A majority of the corporate authorities shall constitute a quorum to do business." The corporate authorities are the president and six trustees, so seven, and a majority of seven is four. 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-20 is identical. Four trustees present is a quorum, and all four voted on every item.
It is fair to observe, as a resident did, that a 7:00 a.m. Wednesday meeting is the reason two trustees were missing. It is also fair to observe that the August 17 board meeting failed for want of a quorum at 6:00 p.m. (the 5:00 p.m. slot that day was the Finance Committee), and that the village's four morning committee meetings run at exactly this hour.
Boudreau: "we need to appoint a recording secretary since we do not currently have a clerk." ⚠ Trustee Gesky volunteered and was elected on a motion by Crockett, seconded by Zimbelman. It was the first item on the posted agenda, so the vacancy was known and planned around in advance.
The board: A recording secretary is a stopgap. The clerk is an elected office, and a vacancy is filled by the president's nomination with the board's consent, in one meeting (65 ILCS 5/3.1-10-50(f)(3); § 1-8-3), as the board did for Steven Orth on June 1. The board cannot name a clerk without a nomination; it can consent, or withhold consent and say why. The FOIA workload that drove the last clerk out does not have to sit on the $4,000 clerk: any employee can be designated FOIA officer by motion (5 ILCS 140/3.5).
The mayor: Put a clerk nomination on the next agenda. That is the whole procedure, and a clerk seated any other way leaves every warrant she countersigns and every notice she serves open to challenge.
The same vacancy is the centre of the legality argument. Section 1-6-3 says a call for a special meeting "shall be presented to the clerk." There was no clerk to present it to. Gesky, in closing comments: "no, it was not delivered to the clerk because quite honestly, who is our clerk? We don't have one. We've gone through four, five clerks in the last year." ⚠ Five days later the mayor appointed a temporary clerk on her own authority, and that appointment has a problem of its own.
Both sides put their case on the record that morning. Here they are next to each other.
The mayor's case, read from the statement, correctly quoting section 1-6-3 in full and then: "The village clerk was not involved at all in the calling of the September 16th special meeting. The law is clear and Gesky is refusing to follow it." ⚠
Gesky's answer, in closing comments: "each elected official was served. There was a request by four trustees signed. No, it was not delivered to the clerk because quite honestly, who is our clerk? We don't have one… we took every process that was necessary to make this meeting legal." ⚠ On September 21 he added the detail: hand delivery on the Sunday, 48 hours out, to Trustee Barry's house, to Trustee Vaughn in person, and to the mayor at her home.
The board: Section 1-6-3 lets any two trustees call a special meeting; the clerk's part is to serve the notice on the president and trustees. Until a clerk is seated the callers can do that part themselves: a signed written call, served on every official in person or by registered letter, with the notice and agenda posted 48 hours ahead and sent to any news outlet that has asked (5 ILCS 120/2.02), and the proof of service kept. Then the meeting cannot be attacked on the one ground raised, that it was not in writing and not served by the clerk.
The mayor: Nominate a clerk, which ends the argument for good. And attend: her own reading of § 1-6-3 into the record confirms that two trustees may call a meeting without her.
The Toolbox: special meetings without a clerk, in full → · The clerk vacancy →
What the text settles, and what it does not: the same ordinance the mayor read aloud says special meetings may be called "on call of the president or any two (2) or more trustees." Whether a signed written call exists is itself disputed: Gesky and Crockett say four trustees signed one; the mayor said on September 21, "It wasn't in writing and it wasn't served by the clerk." We have asked for the document and have not seen it (corrected September 22, 2026: an earlier version said "four trustees signed" as if nobody disputed it). 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-25 likewise gives the power to "the mayor or any 3 alderpersons," which in a village is the president or any three trustees. The trustees' authority to call the meeting is in both texts. Full analysis on the September 21 page.
No court, and no Public Access Counselor, has decided any of this. We are grading it Disputed and will change that the moment an adjudicator says something.
"Why did we have a special meeting instead of waiting for next Monday? Well, as the mayor's told us, she controls the agenda on Mondays and will not allow us to put on the agenda anything that we wish to discuss. So the only way for us to get those through is through calling a special meeting. That's exactly what we did." ⚠
The board: The special meeting works, but it has to be repeated every time. The board "shall determine its own rules of proceeding" (65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-15), so the permanent fix is an ordinance amending § 1-6-5 that says how items get on the agenda, for example any two trustees by written request a set number of days ahead, and restores a trustee comment item: four of seven votes, and four trustees can pass it over a veto at the next regular meeting. The four who called this meeting have exactly the votes to do both. For one night, a majority of those present can suspend the rules under § 1-6-7, and that motion cannot be vetoed.
The mayor: She presides and prepares the agenda in practice. She can end the dispute by adopting a written agenda procedure with the board, or by placing trustee requests on the agenda.
That he said it is certain. Whether it is a fair account of agenda practice is a separate question, and it is the one worth chasing. Manteno's code does not assign control of the agenda to anyone: section 1-6-5 Rule 18 sets an order of business, and 1-19-5(C) makes it a duty of the village administrator to "assist the president and committee chairmen with the preparation of the agenda." The village has no administrator. In practice the September 21 agenda carried the mayor's appointment and her veto; the one trustee item on it, New Business B, was, in the mayor's words, put together by Trustee Barry. Trustee comments have been off the agenda since before September 8.
This is the mechanism behind the whole fight. If trustees cannot get an item agendized at a regular meeting, the special meeting is the tool the Municipal Code leaves them, and it requires no one's permission. Both things follow from the same fact.
Four of the Village's six standing Committee of the Whole meetings are scheduled at 7:00 a.m. by the schedule printed on the Village's own board agendas: Public Works and General Government on the fourth Tuesday, Planning and Zoning and Properties and Recreation on the second Wednesday. The committee meeting the mayor herself attended and spoke at on September 9 began at 7:00 a.m.
And this meeting was as public as any other. It was live-streamed, the recording is on the Village's channel, the agenda was on the Village's website, the Village's meetings index links both, and four members of the public spoke during public participation. Graded in full on the September 21 page.
The timing criticism is still legitimate and we are not brushing it aside. Seven in the morning is hard for working people, and two trustees missed it. A resident made that point better than anyone on the dais did, and it is quoted below.
Four people spoke: two who signed up, a late arrival, and then a fourth recognised by the chair as "Bill." Roughly 16:44 to 21:36. (Corrected September 22, 2026, evening: the morning version said three spoke and merged the last two.)
George Reichart, first speaker: "first of all, I come in here, there's no agenda at the door for the public. So it makes me feel like we're not wanted here. And there was no sign-up sheet for participation for the public here. Joel got me a sign-up sheet, but I didn't realize that's the way we conduct things here." ⚠ He also criticised how the agenda was written: "It looks like a five-year-old wrote it up. There's no heading on it or anything." ⚠
On the agenda, the law was satisfied. 5 ILCS 120/2.02(c) requires at least one copy of the notice and agenda to be continuously available for public review during the 48 hours before the meeting, and says expressly that "posting of the notice and agenda on a website that is maintained by the public body satisfies the requirement for continuous posting." It was on the Village website.
On the sign-up sheet, he has a point. Manteno 1-6-9(E)(1) says members of the public "shall sign up before the start of the meeting," and 1-6-9(C) says the public participation rules "shall be posted at the area where members of the public sign up." If there was no sheet out and no rules posted, that is the village's own ordinance not being followed, and it is the kind of small thing that makes people feel exactly the way he said it made him feel.
His substantive complaint was about money: that the village had a code enforcement candidate who "only wanted 60,000 a year… he didn't want any health insurance and he wanted a vehicle," against what he had heard the previous officer was paid ("70, 80,000"). ⚠ The $60,000 and the no-insurance point match what the mayor said in open session on September 8 ("Mr. Paicz is asking for $60,000 and he does not need insurance," graded on our September 8 page). The previous officer's pay is unverified and we are not adopting it. It is in our request list. (Corrected September 22, 2026: an earlier version called all of these figures unverified.)
John Martin, in full: "Every meeting I come to, the mayor talks, voices her opinion. I want to hear Mike's opinion. CJ, Peggy, Todd, Joel, and Annette's opinion. We might not agree with everybody, but I still want to hear it. That's all I have to say." ⚠
Worth putting next to the fact that trustee comments are not on the board agenda, and next to Trustee Boudreau's complaint on September 21 that "we don't have a right to speak anymore." ⚠ Two people on opposite sides of this argument are asking for the same thing.
Corrected September 22, 2026, evening. The morning version of this card said "the third speaker was Bill Barnes" and credited him with the candidacy announcement, the FOIA line and the "two of our trustees can't make it" line. On the recording those are two different men. The error was ours.
The third speaker came in late and was allowed to speak without signing up. He is not named on the recording. His lines, at 18:58 to 19:32: "I've been on the fence whether or not I actually want to run for trustee. Actually, what happens here, I got to tell you, I'm doing it." ⚠ "You're telling us we can't afford a full-time code inspector, yet we can afford to hire subcontractors. Have we seen the numbers? Has the public seen them? We haven't seen them. That's a FOIA request." ⚠ And on the timing: "I don't think this meeting was necessary, especially since we know at this time of day two of our trustees can't make it. This could have been done in a regular business meeting on Monday." ⚠ The chair closed him out: "I appreciate your comments. I know you came in late." ⚠
The fourth speaker was then recognised, at 20:03, by first name: "Hey, he's up. I'm out. Bill." ⚠ His lines: "Todd, Joel, what is your endgame?… This is so unproductive, such a waste of time. It's just a joke… you guys are single-handedly destroying it… So, you think you're mayor, you're not. You lost." ⚠ The Daily Journal, September 17 attributes exactly those lines, and only those lines, to Bill Barnes, and reports that he has said he will run for trustee under the Manteno Freedom Party, which is Mayor LaMore's caucus along with Trustees Barry and Vaughn. The paper's quotations match the fourth speaker's words on the recording, so we are satisfied "Bill" is the man the paper names. We are not attributing the third speaker's candidacy declaration to him; whether the third speaker is also a candidate, and who he is, we do not know.
We are naming Barnes and naming his party for the same reason. A candidate criticising the officials he intends to run against is ordinary politics and entirely his right. It is also context a reader needs, and it was not stated in the room. The same goes for a "Mr. Barnes" who told the September 9 committee meeting the village is "$1.6 million in deficit," a number we published as unverified and are still not adopting; we have not confirmed that was the same person.
The third speaker is right that the numbers are gettable, and we have asked for them. A full-time code official's salary and benefits against B&F's fee schedule is an arithmetic question, and the village has never put both figures side by side in public. That comparison is the first thing we will publish when the records land.
During the closing exchange the chair asked Mr. Reichart to leave for interrupting. Manteno 1-6-9(D) permits expulsion for the remainder of a meeting "by the chairman or a majority vote of the public body" where a person "acts in a disorderly manner so as to disrupt the ability of the public body to efficiently conduct its meeting." He left on his own.
At the September 21 regular meeting the mayor vetoed all three items under section 1-5-7 of the village code. On the text of that section and of 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-45, only the B&F contract was within the veto power, because a motion approving minutes neither creates a liability, spends money, nor sells property. The full analysis is here.
And in between, the mayor said she had changed her mind. On Thursday September 17, the day after this meeting, she told The Daily Journal, September 17 that she was reversing course and would back the B&F hiring, that the role is "critical to the village," and that a vote was expected at Monday's board meeting. The paper retitled the story to match: its address still reads mayor-vows-to-block, its headline now reads "After threatening veto, Manteno mayor now favors hiring code enforcement firm." No approving vote appeared on Monday's agenda. The contract was vetoed instead. Graded on the September 21 page.
The date to watch is Monday, October 5, 2026. Under 65 ILCS 5/3.1-40-50 a vetoed item is reconsidered "at the next regular meeting following the regular meeting at which the city council receives the mayor's written objection," and passes over the veto on the votes of two thirds of all trustees then holding office. Manteno has six trustees, so four. The four who voted for these items on September 16 are the four the veto statement names.
The signed call for this meeting and proof of service on each official. The email transmitting the B&F proposal, with its distribution list. Every payment to B&F Construction Code Services since 2018. The minutes of this meeting, once Trustee Gesky's record is written up and approved. The full request list is on the September 21 page.
If you were in the room, or you hold any of these, the form below goes straight to the reporter.
If a verdict here is wrong, if we have put a quote in the wrong mouth, or if you hold any document referenced at this meeting, we want to see it. Name and email are optional.