They have more attorneys than the Cook County States Attorneys Office. When you are involved in illegal activity you need to surround yourself with a lot of attorneys.

LArry has the power to select, but not to award contracts. This, like many other things, could've been much better handled. Tom, you look tired by your slouching and disinterest. Do yourself and your District a favor by not running again. Nice seeing you at st Catherine's men's night, oh wait, you weren't there.....

Carol, you don't want low bidder for this type of work. Leave it at $20,000, the meetings are long enough!

How about update on investigation? What's billing at? Expected timeframe to wrap it up? Anything new with fed subpoena?

After all of the past issues related to hiring attorneys in the Village, complete transparency is needed. Deetjen's tactics are anything but transparent. And if Tom Phelan doesn't want to sit through competitive bidding process, then he does not belong in government.

If the attorneys handling our affairs are moving, and keeping the cost the same, what's the problem? They are already up to speed on the cases and have our best interest in mind. I think the action makes sense. It's hard to say if the trustees could have been informed earlier if everything moved so quickly. It is important that they be in the know at all times.

The parallel behaviors between this Manager's reign and that of Mr. Faber are more numerous as time goes on. And remember, that was not a great time for us citizens.

You don't go out to bid for legal services, you solicit "Request for Proposals." The Village would receive informational packets from interested law firms that would like to represent the Village and whittle that batch down to a few as to how they would fit with the Village. The Village would only have to interview the best fit law firms from this RFP. Going out to bid and choosing the "low bidder" is NOT the way to find your legal representation!

Faber was the lead henchman for the VERY corrupt, old board. They set Oak Lawn back by maybe a dozen years in some regards. Deetjen is not near perfect, and he continues to make questionable decisions, either disregarding on purpose what he has done because he feels 'safe' or blindly doing dumb things and not learning from them. Either is bad, and the jury is still out on how the current board will pull the K-mart property and the lumber yard site plans out of the fire they themselves set. Nobody seems to really listen to the residents in this village, certainly not after an initial re-election. They all act like little warlords, fighting for 'their' own little spot of territiory, instead of working for the whole town's prosperity. That or their very own prosperity...which would put us right back to where the old board and mayor had us. what clamor is/was there for a new mall? A nine story office tower? "If you build it they will come" only works in the movies.

Not to change the subject, but it almost seems as if Phelan is hungover and irritated next to Carol. He may not realize that he comes through rather abusive.

Tom has looked more run down in the last two meetings. I wondered if he was ill.

Not for nothing, and I certainly don't know Tom Phelan aside from some cursory conversations after meetings, but he was the first one I ever spoke to who told me the town had met with developers who had an 'ala carte menu we could pick from' of stores. "They gave us a menu of stores and places we could put in there." Now, this was a few years back, when the first rumblings of eminent domain were beings made regarding the pancake place, then Harley-Davidson's, etc...things may have changed, but he was WAY too self-assured about it, to me. I remember wondering, "How can this guy know which stores will come here, JUST because the town 'allows' it?" At the time it wasn't so long after the old board of thieves and liars was mostly voted off. It instantly worried me anew.
If a mall is really a great solution, show the residents a LOT of research proving it. I don't want to hear of the success of developers in previous locations until they can prove the demographics work at THIS location. Same with whatever they decide to put at the lumber yard. We have WAY too much empty retail now to trust Mr. Groebe or whomever else Mr. Deetjen goes golfing with that the best and highest use of the properties will actually come to be. I'm from the center of town, I care about the whole town, because we are ALL neighbors. The mayor seems to get it, I'm not sure how many of the trustees do, or how consistently they remember that fact.
Instead of pitting areas against each other, work together!

OLG, I agree with all of that, especially the part about residents having their voices heard.
I do wonder why they are all fired up to move forward if they DON'T have a plan for likely tenants, though...that is just as troubling as them blindly believing in 'the menu'. I keep hearing people bemoaning the want/need for 'high end' stores...how high end can they want? We aren't Orland Park. Those stores are out there because the people make more money. The people don't make more money because the stores exist...there has to be a solid demographic call for such stores, and they can't be the ones already in the area malls. What is left that isn't alreasy at Chicago Ridge, Ford City, Evergreen Plaza (ghost town that it is), and Orland's shopping metroplex? CR is already always in a state of turnover, there are already vacancies at 95th and Cicero, which is probably running at ten times the drive by traffic as 111th, as well as on 95th heading west where they still haven't filled the debacle that was 'needed' when they tore down Cook School and Veli's et al. Could more be developed at that site? Sure. How much is the real question, and all I'm asking (not that you are debating this) is that we have better answers this time around than last time, when nobody cared what the residents thought or wanted, and we got more TIFs without businesses in the place of perhaps smaller, but at least established places that contributed to both the tax base and the community.

Why 111th Street was not developed in 8 years has everything to do with demographics and buying into a marketing ploy. If it was developable, it would have been developed years ago in similar good economies (1988,1999,2002). Fact is you cannot develope across from a cemetery unless its marketing flowers (for graves), restaurants for funerals, bars for grief stricken people, and maybe a warehouse/union hall. A 4th grader could figure that out.

You are wrong.
First, Nobody wants a park like Playland at the site.
Secondly, Nobody will develop any land without a TIF.
Thirdly, 79th and Harlem was prime land 25 years ago