Chief’s wife runs for C'ville Trustee

The natives are restless in Carpentersville!

In its upcoming Village election set for April 7, there are three contenders for the Village President position and there are eight candidates in the race for Trustee. The pecking order on the ballot has been determined, but here's the fly in the ointment.

The petitions of every - that's every - candidate have been challenged. Last Monday evening the Carpentersville Electoral Board met to consider the challenges, and on Friday at 6:30PM the Board will meet again. Somebody, make some extra coffee!

One of the candidates for Trustee is Debra Lowen, wife of Woodstock's Police Chief Bob Lowen. Mrs. Lowen's baking skills are well-known to Woodstock residents who attend the monthly Coffee with the Chief, because she bakes the goodies and sends them into Woodstock as treats for the Monday evening program each month. And they are delicious! Thanks, Mrs. Lowen.

Challenges filed by two objectors listed many irregularities on the signed petitioners submitted for this election. Somebody went to a lot of work to check each name and figure out why the person should not have signed the petition. (And some people say that I have a lot of time on my hands!)

But get this! Only one irregularity was presented in regard to Mrs. Lowen’s petition. According to Verified Obfector (sic) Frank Stoneham, Nominating Papers for the April 7th election are, by State law, to contain at least 148, but not more than 225, signatures of qualified, registered and legal voters.

Mrs. Lowen committed the unpardonable sin, in Frank Stoneham’s mind, of presenting petitions signed by 241 voters. Shame, shame, shame…

First of all, what could possibly be the reason for such a limit imposed by State law? Why should there be any maximum limit at all?

All the Board has to do is find a minimum of 148 of the signatures to be of “qualified, registered and legal voters” and stop counting. Pretty simple.

Will it throw out her petition because she presented 16 signatures too many? I certainly hope not! Usually, there are numerous collectors of signatures. And heaven help the candidate who discards a petition containing signatures; right? So she did the right thing by submitting all the petitions. Good luck, Mrs. Lowen!

Perhaps the Board will throw out all the objections of Frank Stoneham, who was brash enough to list VERIFIED OBFECTOR (sic) in bold print on his otherwise very official looking objection forms. What is an Obfector? There may be such an animal, but I didn’t find it in my dictionary.

Mrs. Lowen’s candidacy for Trustee in Carpentersville does bring up an interesting local question. The Woodstock City Code requires all sworn officers of the Woodstock Police Department to live in McHenry County. Their address in Carpentersville is in Kane County. And I thought I had read somewhere that the City of Woodstock required its police chief to live in Woodstock.

I would guess that the depressed real estate market might have something to do with the Chief’s not having moved to Woodstock. And 17 miles isn’t all that far, should he have to come back in the middle of the night on business. But the residency requirement is in the City Code. Who can make an exception to that? Only the City Council?

Got a legal question?

Need a lawyer for a quick legal opinion? First of all, there probably isn't such a thing as a "quick" legal opinion. Just have a question without many "ifs, ands or buts", or so you think? Want the short skinny and not a law-school education? Did you get a traffic ticket and wonder if you need a lawyer? The person to ask is a lawyer! Not your neighbor, not your co-worker, not your sibling.

OK, so you can ask me. Ask away. I'm not a lawyer, but I'll give you a good answer.

You can call a lawyer-member of the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) and have a 30-minute telephone consultation for $25.00. Call (800) 922-8757. Since the going rate these days for many lawyers' time is $250-350/hour, this might be a nice bargain, if your question doesn't require research.

You may get what I'll call a "preliminary" opinion. And that might be good enough. But, if you have a real legal problem, then you want thorough advice from an attorney with skill in the specific area of the law pertaining to your question.

Consider these two questions:

Does a new Will revoke all prior Wills?

What are the possible answers? Yes. No. Maybe. It depends. I read a Will in Missouri in 1993 that carried the standard boilerplate language in the first paragraph which declared that the new Will did indeed revoke all prior Wills. The new Will was an excellent document, professionally drawn and thorough. So were all the other estate-planning documents.

But what the lawyer failed to do was actually read the prior Will. In that case the prior Will was one of those seldom-used Joint Wills (drawn up by a country lawyer) and in it each (of the man and wife making the Will) gave up the right to make a new Will after the first of them died. The purpose was to prevent the survivor from making a new Will and disinheriting the child(ren) of the first who died. And so all the fancy and expensive estate-planning disintegrated because the new Will was no good.

And another example - this one closer to home. Is my old Will still good?

Fifteen years after a good, careful and expensive estate plan was drawn up, the old folks died. "Everything is taken care of." What a wonderful phrase. They trusted their attorney. Well? The bank that was named as the Trustee of the trust had closed its trust department years before. If everything was taken care of, why didn't the bank or the attorney inform the old folks that a new Trustee needed to be named??? After several expensive trips to the courthouse, a new Trustee did get named. A considerable and unnecessary chunk got spend in legal fees and court costs to straighten out that mess.

Also, the new bank Trustee blew far too much money on lawyer's fees for the Estate, because he wouldn't make decisions that were within the scope of his authority without calling the attorney who had brought the Trust through the new bank's front doors. All those excessive expenses further reduced the inheritance to the children.

A smart, young (then) attorney I knew in Colorado defined Estate Planning as "Getting what you have to whom you want to get it, when you want them to get it, and in the manner in which you want them to receive it - and then, if you can also save some taxes, you do that, too."

Addressing these types of problems won't get done for $25.00, but a small fee could get you started.

Legal Defense Fund

Island Lake resident Greg Kachka has been charged with Disorderly Conduct for wearing this t-shirt to an Island Lake government meeting and allegedly waggling his finger at a Village trustee. Please read other recent stories just below.

Greg is a veteran, 60 years old, and he refuses to pay the $75.00 fine. Apparently, the village trustee was making faces at him, and she says he pointed his finger at her and moved his thumb as if cocking a pistol. Don't you just have to wonder what caliber finger Greg has?

If you would like to contribute to Greg's legal defense fund, send your check, cash or money order (payable to Greg Kachka Legal Defense Fund) to Gus Philpott, P.O. Box 1222, Woodstock, IL 60098. I'll deliver 100% of the money received to Greg.

If you contribute $20.00 or more and want a t-shirt, include a note with the size you want.

If you send $20.00 or more and want a t-shirt but want to remain anonymous, please be sure to include a separate note with your name, email address and phone number and desired shirt size. I'll pick up the shirts and bring them to Woodstock. If you want your shirt mailed, add $4.00 ($20 + $4 = $24) for Priority Mail and include your mailing address. Or you can donate on eBay and get a shirt for $20 + $5 shipping.

Donations/Contributions are not tax-deductible.

The People cannot allow the power of government to be abused in this manner. Had this incident occurred away from a government meeting, I cannot imagine that the Complaint would ever have made it past the filing cabinet. When I picked up my t-shirt this afternoon, I learned that the date of the incident was March 13, not last week.

Just imagine yourself caught up in a mess like this. Every $5, $10, $20, $50 helps. While you are reading this, if you are inclined to contribute, please do so now.

© 2008 GUS PHILPOTT

Hellooooo, Carpentersville...

Remember the woman Carpentersville who yelled at her neighbor's kids while they were shinnying up a little tree. Seems that she yelled at them to stop acting like monkeys, or something like that.

The neighbor took offense, whether any was intended or not, and had the woman charged with Disorder Conduct under a local ordinance of the Village of Carpentersville. Not the State law, mind you; "just" a Village ordinance with a $75.00 fine. In fact, when releasing information, the police department said she "was fined $75.00"; but that was not the case. The charge carried a $75.00 fine.

Today I called Carpentersville to find out when the woman's court date is. You'd think I was trying to get the combination to the lock on the front door at Fort Knox! Somebody ought to know; right? Like, maybe, the police department? Or the Village administrator's office? Or the Clerk of the Village, who also is connected with the local court of the Village?

Ha! It must be the one of the best-kept secrets in town. I left two messages for a police commander who, I was told, would be the contact person. And the Village Clerk forwarded my request to him. How long would it take him to call me back? Sixty seconds?

What's the big deal? The big deal is that the woman charged with Disorderly Conduct is a Village Trustee which, by the way, probably never should have made it into the paper. She didn't yell at the kids because she was Trustee; she allegedly yelled at them because they risked injury if they fell or because they might damage the slight tree they were climbing.

So much for "it takes a village to raise a kid"; right? Maybe she should have just kept her mouth shut, turned her back and, when she heard a thud and screams of pain, just turned up the TV volume a little. But, no; instead, she yelled at the kids. The problem? The kids are black. You'd better not call black kids "monkeys", even if they are acting like monkeys.

I grew up reading Little Black Sambo. Never for a minute did I think of race. It was a story about a little black boy who ate pancakes. Lots of pancakes. Now? You can hardly find a copy of that book. And, if you can, you'd better hide it.

The court date will be revealed. (Or maybe the Village was smart enough to drop the charges.) Court dates are public record. What a waste of everybody's time to have to file a FOIA Request for a court date! But, if they want to play the game that way, I'm in.

© 2008 GUS PHILPOTT