"I will be making appointments. So you don't need to worry about that."

The committee chair asked directly whether the village would post the open positions: administrator, building inspector, and the front-office role. The answer, verbatim: "As village president, I will be making appointments and I will talk to our village attorney about this and do it in the legal and correct way. So you don't need to worry about that." ⚠

Pressed on whether that extended to the front-office vacancy as well: "I don't plan on appointing an administrator right now. Maybe an interim. But anybody who leaves, yes, I will appoint people." ⚠ And: "Anybody in the village hall is appointed other than the department heads." ⚠

The trustees' objection was practical, not procedural at first: "like a secretary, I feel like that's a job we could post… I feel like they should all be posted… that's how you get quality people." ⚠ The same point Trustee Zimbelman made the night before, when she pointed to Bourbonnais advertising for its administrator with a salary and a job description.

The exchange on the tape, one after another.

Trustee: "Well, actually, it probably is [a problem], because any appointments need board approval." ⚠
Mayor: "Yeah, that's a tough thing to get these days, isn't it?" ⚠
Trustee: "Well, not if we work together." ⚠
Mayor: "Oh, really? Good to know." ⚠ And later: "Once again, as mayor, I'm working together with a lawyer to make sure it's done correctly." ⚠

What the statute says. Under 65 ILCS 5/3.1-30-5, a village president appoints officers "by and with the advice and consent" of the board of trustees. That is the same provision the September 8 appointment turned on, and the Village's own agenda that night carried the item as a Motion to Appoint, put to a roll call. So for anything that is an office, the trustee's statement is the correct one.

What was genuinely open is which of these jobs are offices. The mayor's formulation, village-hall staff appointed and department heads not, is the reverse of the ordinary Illinois arrangement, where the president appoints officers and department heads with consent and rank-and-file staff are hired. When this page was published we had not read Manteno's own code and would not call it wrong without doing so.

Updated September 22, 2026: we have now read the code, and it answers this. Manteno creates its offices one chapter at a time in Title 1, and each one is appointed the same way. § 1-5-5(A): "all appointed officers of the village shall be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the board of trustees." § 1-19-2, village administrator: "appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the board of trustees." § 1-22-1, director of building and zoning: "appointed by the village president with the advice and consent of the board of trustees." § 2-2-2, chief of the fire prevention bureau: the same. And the staff the mayor described as appointed are hired by somebody else entirely: § 1-19-5(H) makes it the village administrator who shall "appoint and when necessary, suspend or remove all employees other than department heads and officers appointed by the village president." So the ordinary Illinois arrangement is Manteno's arrangement, and the September 9 formulation has it backwards. The mayor's own September 21 statement is much closer to the code: she told the board the administrator "is that of another village officer and therefore this is a position that per Illinois law will be appointed by the mayor with trustee consent," which is right. The September 21 page works through all of it, including the appointment of a building inspector that the code does not have an office for.

Sources: 65 ILCS 5/3.1-30-5; meeting stream; the same question on September 8.

On the volunteer and temporary-staffing item, before the argument started: "I would prefer that we get an interim in the administrative position because there's going to be an election in seven months and we're going to have new trustees and I think we can pick somebody when that happens." ⚠

Said plainly, and worth sitting with. Manteno's next municipal election is in April. On this plan the village runs its day-to-day operations on an interim administrator through Oktoberfest (September 24 to 27), the winter, the budget cycle and the election, and the permanent hire is made by a board that does not exist yet. That is a defensible position, since a new board arguably should pick the person it will work with, and it is also a decision to leave the job unfilled for seven months during the most contested period in this village's recent history. Both of those are true at once.

The mayor asked the question herself: "And as a question I do have, Sheila, why aren't we paying Vasselli?" ⚠

Treasurer Sheila Martin: "It has not been board approved. It was on the agenda for the special committee meeting and that meeting didn't have a quorum and all the agenda items were never voted on." ⚠

Corrected September 22, 2026. An earlier version of this card drew "a direct line" from the treasurer's answer to the August 17 board meeting, "the one that ended with an order to send the police after an absent trustee." That was our inference, and it does not hold up. The treasurer said the invoice "was on the agenda for the special committee meeting." The 5:00 p.m. body on August 17 was the Finance Committee of the Whole, and its posted agenda has no legal-bills item; the 6:00 p.m. board meeting is the one that failed for want of a quorum and ended with the police being sent. Which meeting she meant is not established, and we have stopped tying the unpaid bill to the police order. What stands: the bill sat unpaid because no quorum had voted on it, and that is an ordinary administrative consequence of the standoff.

The mayor then turned to a trustee by name, "So Joel, maybe you can answer that," and Trustee Gesky stated the board's position: "As I've told you and I've told him, I think three different times, we don't recognize him as our attorney. We did not approve him." ⚠ The mayor: "Well, then you are not recognizing the right I have as mayor to appoint somebody… because I dismissed Mr. Cainkar." ⚠ Gesky: "You dismissed Mr. Cainkar and we overturned your dismissal." ⚠ That is the whole dispute in three sentences, and it is the question this site has been tracking since June.

When a trustee argued that appointing rather than posting would generate more legal cost, the mayor answered: "I don't worry about legal charges. Hell, we're paying for two lawyers right now." ⚠ A trustee: "We're not paying for two, though… because we're paying bills to…" and then, from the table: "Well, you're right. We are paying for three, actually." ⚠

Unsettled: who the three are, and what they have cost. The claim in the room is that a village of about 9,200 people is carrying three sets of legal bills out of a single dispute over who its lawyer is. We have requested every legal invoice submitted to the Village in 2026 and their payment status.

A trustee asked it directly, "Can I ask how you found Mr. Miller or the Vasselli Law Firm?", and the mayor answered "Yes, through friends from another community." ⚠ No follow-up was asked.

This is the first answer of any kind to a question that has been open since June. It is also checkable: Vasselli Law appears as counsel for a number of Illinois taxing bodies, and "another community" is a finite list. We are not naming one until we can show it.

Addressing Trustee Boudreau, who had missed the September 8 vote for a high school golf match: "we did not hire a code enforcer last night. And I'm so sorry you couldn't be here, CJ. But that was a priority for us… He doesn't have a job anymore because when he found out you were going to vote for him." ⚠ Later: "He had told me he would put in his two weeks once he's approved… I asked him to do that, to wait until it actually passed." ⚠ And: "there is no reason he could not have been appointed last night. That was pathetic." ⚠

We are reporting this narrowly and no further. The candidate is a private individual who has not spoken publicly. What is on the record is what an elected official said about his employment at an open meeting. We have not verified it, we are not naming a former employer, and we have sought comment. If he wants to correct any of it, the form at the bottom of this page reaches us directly.

On September 8, the mayor told the board that Trustee Boudreau had met the candidate, approved of him and intended to vote yes, but could not attend or join by Zoom from a golf course. We reported that as her account of his position.

On September 9, Boudreau was in the room and disputed it: "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 mayor: "[I was] confident that you approved of him because you told him you did." ⚠ Boudreau: "I did, but he's only one person, and I told him that I couldn't be at that meeting." ⚠

Both statements are on tape and we are not adjudicating between them. The distinction Boudreau draws, that he told the candidate he thought well of him, not that he would vote to appoint him, is a real distinction, and his stated objection, the money, is the same objection Trustee Crockett made on the record the night before. The September 8 page now carries a pointer to this card.

Raised by Trustee Vaughn: "we had that lady last night that seemed really concerned about it… and I've been having some citizens come up to me." ⚠

This settles the part of Tuesday night's public comment we said was wrong. The cameras are not three weeks old as a village program; the chief put the department's use of them on the record himself. That matches the Village's own FOIA production to us, which included the department's ALPR policy and a 24-page roster of agency sharing relationships.

What is still missing is the same thing that was missing before: a board vote. Nothing said at this meeting identified an ordinance, an agenda item or a roll call authorizing the program, and nobody at the table asked for one.

On abuse: "I understand both arguments. You're right. Privacy is a big concern. Is there potential for abuse? Yes. Just like with every tool the police have, whether it be tasers or anything else, there's a potential for abuse. That's why we have 400-page policy manuals and federal and state laws that guide all that stuff." ⚠

Then the exchange that matters most. A speaker at the table (the captions carry no speaker labels): "Where does that data go? Who has access to it besides you? How long is it stored? Do we sell any of that information?" The chief: "No, we don't." The speaker: "Well, you don't know where that information goes." The chief: "Well, we know where our information goes. I mean, now, other people use Flock cameras. Everybody else has access to it, too. So, not our information, but they might have their own information." ⚠

Corrected September 22, 2026. An earlier version cut the chief's answer before its last sentence and read it as the chief conceding, at the table, the finding from our FOIA. He did not. His full answer draws a line: other agencies have their own Flock cameras and their own data; Manteno's data is Manteno's. What shows the sharing is not his answer but the Village's own production: a 24-page sharing roster listing hundreds of agency relationships, including agencies outside Illinois. The chief also said no trustee has access to the system, "just the police department," and described the uses he considers essential: stolen-vehicle alerts pushed to the on-duty officer's screen, Amber Alerts, locating people with dementia who have driven in from out of state, and entering a stalker's plate so officers are notified when the vehicle enters town.

Sources: meeting stream; Manteno PD response to FOIA 26-163 (July 27 and July 31, 2026 productions), on file. A Request for Review of this department's withholding of its ALPR audit logs is being filed with the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Counselor this week (corrected September 22, 2026: this line said "pending"; it had not been filed).

"There's a lot of information out there on Flock. There's a lot of misinformation out there on Flock. So maybe at some point in the future we should address that and bring up the pros and cons of what we do to protect people's privacy." ⚠ And: "If they decide that tool the police should not use, we won't use it." ⚠

That is an open door, and it should be walked through. We are asking, in writing, that the session the chief offered be scheduled and agendized, with the department's policy, its sharing roster and its audit logs available to the public beforehand. We will publish the request and the answer.

Said from the room during the Flock discussion. We cannot establish from the recording who said it, and no evidence was offered for it at the meeting. We are not repeating it as fact. We are checking both departments' records independently, and we will publish whatever we find, in either direction.

Updated September 22. The Daily Journal, September 17 reports that a Bill Barnes "has said he will be running for trustee under the Manteno Freedom Party, which is [Mayor] LaMore's caucus," and quotes him addressing the four trustees at the September 16 special meeting. The speaker below was identified in the room only as Mr. Barnes; he appears to be the same audience member who earlier described Monee's business videos (card n18) and, asked "Do you have a process in Mon[ee]… of hiring?", answered "we have an HR." We have not confirmed the Daily Journal's Bill Barnes and this Mr. Barnes are the same person and are not treating them as one. If they are, the political affiliation is context a reader of this card should have. We are still not adopting the $1.6 million figure either way, and are still pulling the budget and the audit.

A member of the public who described himself as working in municipal government elsewhere made a series of points at the end of the meeting: that not having a certified code enforcement officer could expose the village legally; that an outside firm will cost "two or three times more" than a full-time employee and will come "when they can"; that projects are being held up. Then: "And then, as far as, okay, where are we getting the money? … You're $1.6 million in deficit. So it's another 60 grand to protect yourself and to keep people building." ⚠

Nobody in the room challenged the number, and we are not adopting it. A figure like that said in a public meeting and left standing is exactly the kind of claim that becomes a fact by repetition. We have requested the Village's FY2026–27 budget and appropriation ordinance and its most recent audit, and we will publish what they show, whether they confirm it or not.

The same speaker asked whether the village has an HR manager. The answer from the table was "No", followed by: "Our village administrative assistant basically handles about six different jobs that most villages have separate people for." ⚠

This is the quiet context under every other item on this page. A village with no administrator, no code enforcement officer, an open front-office position and no HR function is being asked to run a hiring process, an Oktoberfest, a budget amendment and a legal dispute at the same time. Whatever anyone thinks of who is right in the argument, that is the operating reality.

About 139 trees, to be replaced in three phases of roughly 50. HR Green quoted $22,000 to facilitate the request for proposals, including the design for all three phases. Replacements would be 2½-inch caliper, roughly 10 to 12 feet, noticeably smaller than what is there now. Public works described the current trees as having "three-quarters dead spurs" and warned that stringing Christmas lights this year will mean "picking up branches." ⚠

The mayor's question ended it: "Where's the money for it?", followed by "Use the trees that are standing with their branches to put up your Christmas tree lights and do this in the spring." ⚠ The committee agreed. One good idea came out of it that costs almost nothing: a small village tree nursery on spare ground by the public works building, so a tree lost to a car can be replaced in kind. Legacy Park was ruled out because it is a partnership with the township.

Of the designs public works prepared, only Option A, adding lanes across Main Street, was judged workable, at roughly $200,000 for a small number of spaces. A caution was added at the table: whatever is done on Main will have to be done on Oak Street too, where there is physical therapy and other businesses with identical parking. Revisited at budget time in February or March. A cheaper alternative was floated: cutting a ramp halfway along the block rather than making people in wheelchairs travel to the corner, "especially come wintertime." ⚠

The league runs Tuesdays and Thursdays and has already had to move from 6–8 p.m. to 5:30–7:30 p.m. because of darkness; players are gathering petitions. The practical news is that conduit was already run around the park for additional lighting, and a fence-mounted directional product made for tennis and pickleball courts, with low light spill and aimed down at the court, was raised as the likely fit. Public works is pricing it.

Not this budget year. Someone at the table asked the two right questions, how it fits the budget and how it affects the neighbours on Rockne Drive (the captions carry no speaker labels; an earlier version credited the mayor), and a trustee suggested going door to door on that block first. Consensus was lights off by 9:30 or 10:00, and that only the six newer courts are in question.

The police department's social-media videos with local businesses have been popular, and other business owners have started asking how to get one. There is no policy; the chief confirmed it is handled case by case. The committee chair: "if we're going to do it for one, we've got to be fair to all… when we don't have it, we don't have a standard of telling people no." ⚠ He asked that the village hold off on more until guidelines exist. The mayor said she would ask the attorney. A visitor described a comparable programme in Monee, filmed by trustees, that runs without a written protocol and has drawn no complaints.

The example that made the point was Gotion. A trustee: "What happens when Gotion comes and says that they want to run an ad and they would like to have us do a little vignette with it?" ⚠ The mayor: "it's not a paid-for thing, so it's not an ad." ⚠ The reply: "It is paid for, with taxpayer money. Our officers are on duty. They're in their uniform." ⚠ The mayor: "that's a contentious issue though… We focus on small businesses." ⚠

Lush Vine's owner asked the committee to consider allowing gaming at her location earlier than the village's policy would normally permit, explaining that the back of the building is uninsulated with broken air conditioning and that gaming revenue would fund the work. She has bought the entire building, including the storefronts either side. It emerged at the table that she already holds a gaming licence; the village's restrictive policy was adopted after, and never applied to her.

The board's reaction is the part worth recording: "I appreciate that she's come to us and has tried to adhere to what we said our policy was… that's the sort of business owner that we want." ⚠ We have asked the Illinois Gaming Board to confirm the licence status.

Unprompted, near the end: "listen, people seem to be angry at us. We want to donate to charity. How do we find a way to do that? … Either put me in a dunk tank or raffle off a pie in the face for me, and I'll donate all the money to charity… I could tell you 20 people that want to pie me in the face, and they'd probably pay good money to do that." ⚠ The suggested beneficiary was Harbor House. Nobody else was asked to volunteer.

We are including this on purpose. A site like this one mostly documents a village at war with itself, and it should be equally willing to record a trustee offering to stand in front of a crowd that is angry at him and turn it into money for a shelter. Oktoberfest runs October 24–27.