Tinley Cancels Board Meeting Amid 'Flu,' Ugly Political Season

TINLEY PARK, IL — There’s an old adage about how laws are like sausages — you don’t want to watch how they’re made. But if Tuesday’s canceled board meeting is any indication, then Tinley Park’s elected officials for the next several weeks will be must-see TV.

Two board members, Michael Glotz and Michael Pannitto, showed up at the village hall for the meeting. Clerk Kristin Thirion was on her way.

But the lights were off. Doors were closed. And all three said they were caught off guard.

In fact, many people appeared to be. A village spokesman said he found out that all of the meetings scheduled for the night were canceled at 7 p.m. That’s when the finance, public works and economic development and marketing committees were to convene, and 30 minutes before the board meeting was supposed to start. At 7:09 p.m., the village posted an official notice of the cancellation. Members of the public had been lined up at the door.

Meetings do get canceled and advance notice is usually given. But in this case, the official reason was given after Patch, the trustees and other members of the public asked for it. Officially, they were canceled because of a lack of a quorum, meaning there would not be enough members there to legally conduct village business.

However, the unofficial reason was something akin to the “blue flu.”

Blue flu refers to when police call in sick as part of an unofficial strike. Tinley’s officials appeared to be suffering from a similar ailment, three board members and those close to several elected officials told Patch. An unsavory political scene was going to be played out during the public comments section and several board members did not want to be part of it, they said.

Neither Mayor Jacob Vandenberg nor trustees Brian Younker, Cynthia Berg, William Brady, or John Curran attended the meeting. Manager David Niemeyer was out sick, but he does not vote. Berg, according to an email forwarded by Deputy Clerk Laura Godette, said she was sick. Brady could not be reached in time for publication. None of the others responded to requests for comment about why they did not attend.

Both Pannitto and Glotz found out shortly after they arrived at the village hall. Glotz later discovered the email from Godette in his government account. He had come from work, so he didn’t check his email, and no one called him ahead of time, he said.

Thirion, the village clerk, said her deputy had been notified and contacted her at 6:51 p.m. as she was on her way back to the village hall for the meeting. Thirion said she was forwarded an email from Vandenberg, who canceled the meeting and sent staff home.

“In my opinion, it's an injustice and breach of the public trust when meetings are cancelled at the proverbial last minute,” she said in an email to Patch.

Glotz, for his part, apologized on behalf of his colleagues and recorded his comments outside of the village hall.

“Public meetings are for the people,” he said. “We owe it to the taxpayers of Tinley Park to be present and accounted for. When hidden agendas are more important than running the village, it’s time for those people to move on or resign.”

Yes, it’s election time.

Thirion and Glotz founded the One Tinley Park party, and their slate of candidates is running for Tinley’s three open seats against candidates from Vandenberg’s party, Concerned Citizens For Tinley Park. That’s part of what the “move on” comment refers to.

Hidden agendas? That is a little more complicated, and where the blue flu comes in.

Last week, a local paper called The Regional News reported that trustee Younker, who also is the highway commissioner for Orland Township, is accusing Glotz of making sexist and racist remarks in electronic communications with him and others.

Patch obtained hard copies of the correspondence and could not verify their authenticity. Younker did not respond to repeated requests about the verification or to comment for this story.

Some of Glotz’s remarks highlighted in the article included an email from an iCloud address bearing the name “Michael Glotz” that appeared to refer to Tinley’s Freedom of Information Act Officer Terica Ketchum as a “bitch.” In another, it appeared as if Glotz referred to former trustee Kevin Suggs, who is black, as “Huggy Bear,” a Starsky and Hutch television character who was a flamboyant informant. Some say he was a pimp.

Glotz said that he did not make sexist, misogynist or racist remarks about anyone to Younker. He said that he does own an iCloud account and did not recall referring to Ketchum by derogatory names. “I don’t believe I would,” he said. He also did not verify whether that email came from his legitimate account.

As for the reference to Suggs, Glotz said he did not refer to him by that name, although other village officials did. He added that he did not know until recently who the Huggy Bear character was on the show and did not know he was black.

“I am not a racist,” he said.

Glotz said he believed that the messages Younker provided were faked and came from a “spoofed” phone number that resembled his. Spoofing is when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to a caller ID to disguise an identity. He added that he believed Younker had a history of forgery. In 2011, Younker had been held on forgery charges, but was charged instead with misdemeanor charges of theft from his ex-wife instead.

In a twist to the printed allegations about Glotz, dozens of copies of The Regional News were hand-delivered to Tinley residents’ doors, leaving many people puzzled. The Regional News does not deliver papers to Tinley. An editor with the paper confirmed that an individual paid for hundreds of extra copies to be printed so that the person could deliver them door-to-door. The organization did not disclose the name of the individual.

All of these incidents and others were to be brought up during the public-comment section of the meeting by supporters of Younker, who is an outgoing trustee and member of Concerned Citizens for Tinley Park, and of Glotz. Others planned to talk about grievances, such as the board’s role in the 2018 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over a failed low-income housing project, which they contend cost taxpayers millions of dollars and are an embarrassment to the village. Some of those comments were aired on Facebook instead. It was time, several of the speakers said, everyone saw how Tinley’s decisions were being made.

Since then, Glotz and other officials said they were concerned that the canceled meeting would hold up public works projects or payments. The agenda has since been removed from the village’s website and manager Niemeyer did not specify what those issues were.

However, he said, “we will be meeting April 10 and will be finalizing all of the contracts that were scheduled to be approved on Tuesday.”

That’s a little more than one week after the elections.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

Also see: Tinley Mayor Vandenberg Explains Why Board Meeting Was Canceled