The last City Council meeting was straight out of Seinfeld. Like Festivus, the meeting started with the Airing of Grievances. Over 30 people appeared with one complaint or another about various local leaders.
Some appeared to complain about former council candidate Nag Jaiswal’s social media posts.
Some appeared to complain about Councilman Jennifer Taylor raising concerns about Councilman Benny White involvement in a social service grant award to the not-for-profit that his wife leads.
Some appeared to complain about Israel and asked for a resolution calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza (as if the Naperville council chambers are the United Nations now).
A couple came to complain about former councilman Kevin Coyne … even though he’s been gone from the dais for years now.
Most were there to complain about Councilman Josh McBroom and his sign up proposal for those that might want to house a migrant family.
It went on and on and on. The odd part was that many speakers complained about staff time being wasted by McBroom’s “stunt”. Could his stunt have possibly wasted as much time as this clearly orchestrated parade of dozens of people coming in and making repetitive comments? Their concerns sounded a whole lot more personal then they do sincere.
As a for instance, if McBroom had approved a grant for a charity his wife worked for would these speakers seriously have been okay with that? No.
What if McBroom had used the F word toward a female councilman as White allegedly did after Taylor raised her concerns? There would have been mass outcry.
They complained about a lack of decorum on the dais while themselves leveled one personal attack after another toward others.
So in the vein of George Castanza’s father telling his family as he kicked off his Airing of Grievances, “I got a lot of problems with you people and now you’re going to hear about it”, this tired movie of this same lineup of dramatic and outraged people using up everyone’s time with these pity parties has grown quite old. Do the whole City a favor and save these self indulgent shows and have one person make a statement or better yet leave it to the voters come election time to judge actions like McBroom’s motion. As evidenced by the fact that no councilman made any motion to censure nor did any raise a Code of Conduct inquiry in response to the many repeated requests to do so, this charade has grown stale and its not working anymore.
We beg you all for “Serenity Now!” and to please stop bringing this needless, timewasting drama to our council meetings.
Totally agree. It seems a certain District 203 teacher, Tim Thompson, needs a lesson in civics and constitutional law. He wants the council to “do something” against McBroom for exercising his right of free speech? Is Thompson that clueless? Why is it the left always wants to shut down speech they don’t like? It’s almost as if they don’t understand the 1st amendment. Can someone give Thompson a lesson in constitutional law because his students aren’t getting it where ever, and what ever, he teaches. Oh and BTW, another pet peeve of mine is the City Council rule that public speakers can’t call out city council members by name during their public comments. That is a blatant 1st amendment violation. I’d suggest they change that rule before I sue the city for that stupid rule.
Good to see Nag Jaiswal was forced to step down from his commission.
I look forward to next council meeting with even more speakers. I love when citizens have the opportunity to tell the government whatever they want. Seems that the watchdog is triggered that their golden boy was called out for his stunt by the citizens of Naperville. Good for them.
The fake virtue of the left and their hypocritical platform was on full display. Great recap!!
Lets be clear, McBroom directed city staff to look into establishing a list, that he said on national TV was basically a political stunt. The cost of running a city council meeting is not significantly different if the meeting goes for 10 minutes or for 10 hours. The cost of having the entire city staff looking into establishing a list took several hours if days to complete and the city staff salaries are not an insignificant cost.
There is not only the monetary cost to consider but the opportunity cost as well. Time spent by staff on this list request is time staff could have spent on matters that more directly effect residents and their quality of life. This time can never be recovered!
Decorum on the dais has gotten out of control and does need to be addressed. Chirco had no problem calling out council members that stepped out of line. Our current Mayor seems more interested in not getting involved then in providing leadership on the dais, which is his main duty on the dais.
Accusing speakers of acting in a way that violates dais decorum is ridiculous at best since they are not on the dais and are not elected representative of our city government. They a citizens exercising their right to free expression of their concerns and any attack on them raises questions about the Watchdog’s commitment to free speech and public discourse on issues our community faces.
As to Benny White’s vote, there was no conflict of interest here. His wife does not get paid to lead this organization so voting to provide funds to this organization does not enrich the White’s in anyway. So everyone involved in wasting council time on this matter should be called out for their action, in particular Taylor.
Finally an accusation is not proof something happened. Asking how someone would respond if some else actually did something that another person was only accused of doing is misleading and divisive at best.
Jim, you may not agree with what Jennifer Bruzan Taylor did, but Kim White has been the paid Executive Director at the Career and Networking Center for many years. Why spread false information? You posted this exact same post (verbatim) using a fake profile on NCTV’s Facebook page, and then blocked me when I corrected you. You don’t have to take my word for it, look at the organization’s 2023 Form 990.
You nailed it Ron. Kim White DOES get paid. Not sure what Haselhorst is talking about.
Agree with you Jim. There seems to
be a coordinated attack against Benny
white.
Coordinated attack against Benny? You call transparency an attack? I don’t, I call it good government. Benny should not be upset about this at all. If he is, why? What’s he got against transparency.
A true lack of transparency would have been if Kim’s involvement with this organization were kept, secret or hidden, which is was not.
Also were was your concern about transparency when several members, that had long standing relationship with head of the Century Walk Foundation, voted to give this organization a major chuck of SECA fund not just for one year but an unprecedented multi year grant?
Taylor was just as aware of these connections in the SECA grant funding and said nothing but implied all sort of impropriety with Councilman White’s vote for a much small single year grant for this wife’s organization.
One can only conclude the real reason behind her initiation of this attack of Councilman White is political not conflict of interest.
James, so because people know that Kim White is involved with the Career Center, it’s okay for Councilman White to allocate City funds to her organization? That’s a really strange position to take. your reference to Century Walk is also odd, as they don’t really have anything to do with this discussion. No City Council member had an immediate family member who was a paid employee of Century Walk. As far as I know, no one on that City Council ever served (or had a family member who served) as an unpaid, volunteer Board member with Century Walk. Century Walk is a great organization that struggled for years to get any funding at all from SECA or the City Council for projects such as the Firefighter’s Memorial (Ladder of Light).
Talk about lack of transparency, century walk never wanted to do an audit. They also got way too much money.
Naperville conservative republicans are hypocrites. They say they love free speech until citizens use that free speech to stand up to the Republican leaders.
Totally agree. I’ve noticed this my entire time I have lived here. It’s not just Naperville conservatives who are hypocrites, conservatives are hypocrites across the country, especially the “libertarians”.
Interesting take Mr Jackson. Of all the speakers the other night it was only the leftist that wanted to shut down Josh McBroom’s right of free speech. I didn’t see a single conservative speaker that wanted to shut down anyone’s right of free speech.
Nice spin. Citizens speaking out against government officials is hardly stopping said government officials free speech. Citizens thought the government official broke the code of conduct and have every right to request accountability to the code.
Nice spin? Did you watch what I watched? Tim Thompson wants the council to censure and stop McBroom from exercising his right of free speech, and the list goes on and on. You can’t deny it, try as you might. It’s a common tactic you use all the time. Don’t like what some says while exercising their right to free speech and you lefties want to shut them up. The code of conduct is unconstitutional and would never hold up in court and you know it. The same about citizens not naming City Council members during their 3 minutes of speech to the council. Challenged in court and it would be thrown out in 2 seconds and the council knows it. Unlike you lefties, I do not care if citizens exercise their right of free speech and call out council members by name, it’s their right.
I agree with you pat. Why have rules and a code if nobody follows them. If mcbroom was censured he can still speak as a citizen.
As usual the righties
are being dramatic and don’t understand what free speech is.
Rich, you described the left perfectly thanks!!