I missed the September Dorr Township monthly meeting, but I have heard that the trustees were griping about the $5,300 spent in legal fees to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests from residents.
Hello? Hey, trustees, here's how to lower your legal fees. Listen up.
When a FOIA Request is received in the office, respond to it. Answer it. Provide the information.
Stop running to the township attorney with every little question. Stop asking the attorney to respond to the request for you. Stop asking the township attorney for an opinion about responding. Stop asking the township attorney to write a letter denying the request, which then prompts an appeal and causes you to spend more money.
Have you figured it out yet? The township attorney doesn't work for free. He charges you for legal work. You pay him for legal work. Instead of asking him how you can stonewall the voters, do your jobs and provide the information to which the public is invited.
How much did it cost you to avoid telling me that Quinn Keefe's former employer for six years was the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce? Now that was a really stupid thing to do - to deny that part of the information in answering my FOIA request. You (the office) sent me a copy of Quinn's resume with the Chamber of Commerce name redacted. Did you think I wouldn't question it and force you to answer?
Do you think there was anyone in Woodstock who didn't know where Quinn had worked?
And why would you withhold the name of whoever or whatever awarded Quinn the 2009 Citizen of the Year Award? Was there some secret you were trying to keep? I had begun to wonder whether it was the Quinn Family Reunion that had given him the Award. Instead, you later informed another resident that it was the Woodstock Moose Lodge.
How much did that little excursion toward secrecy cost you?
Who is costing the township these excessive legal fees? You, the men elected to run the township, are. Not the public.
See you in October, fellows.
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They are complaining because the next tricks they want to pull besides
1. Banning together and getting the governor to sign a bill bypassing the need to go to referendum for township building projects,
and
2. Pulling the wool over the township residents eyes that it would have cost to much and generate to much work to refund 1 million dollars to them. That could have easily been done in several ways,
are
getting legislation passed to exempt them from FOIA requests and the need to go to referendum for tax increases.
Prediction: the school system will follow that course of action when they see it is do able.
It never ends........
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