Smith Called Meeting to Order at 3:15P.M

Carlinville Park District
Board Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, April 4, 2017 @ 3:15 p.m.

Members Present: Larry Smith,Michelle Tiburzi, Bob Duckels, Lori Hopping. Administrator Regie Byots, Maintenance Supervisor Jeff Bates and Randy Link. Guest: Enquirer/Democrat, Matt Turley, Abby Kunz, Mendi Tieman, Heather Heater, Logan Turley and several HS students. Not present: Dale Chapman (arrived 10 minutes before meeting ended).

Smith called meeting to order at 3:15p.m.

Motion was made by Hopping and 2nd by Duckels to accept the minutes from the regular meeting on Tuesday, March 7, 2017.

Correspondence: Abby Kunz was present regarding the 10-12U girls softball team regarding the accusations of the coaches. Kunz stated that Heather Heater sent Byots an email in February stating she wanted to coach and that she didn’t hear back from Byots. Byots did respond to Heater’s email the same day informing her that the Park Board Commissioners prefer that parents get first rights to coach before non-parents. Byots had the emails that were communicated between Byots and Heater. Kunz stated that Byots didn’t want Tieman and Heater to coach so she went and got Stewart and Murphy to coach. Stewart and Murphy had marked on their daughter’s registration forms that they wanted to coach their teams. Byots had received a couple complaints regarding Heater from last season and was informed by commissioner Tiburzi that Tieman didn’t want to have to deal with her so therefore Byots didn’t contact Tieman. Byots reached out to Stewart and Murphy and did inform both of them that Tieman and Heater wanted to coach so therefore if they wanted to all work together that they could manage the 10-12U team together. Tieman and Heater didn’t want to do that. Therefore they and a few other parents wanted to pull their daughters out of the league to form a “select” league and they were requesting a refund. It was voted 3-1 to refund the parents the money. Yes votes were Tiburzi, Hopping and Smith. No vote was Duckels. Commissioner Duckels did explain his reasoning for voting no. To his knowledge this is the only time anything like this has ever came up before. The park board identifies and determines who the coaches will be. The park board administrator is empowered with that authority which is why the form states please let us know if you would like to coach. The reason I vote no is not because of this particular circumstance. I don’t believe that we should have a precedence as the park board going forward to not refund parents because they are not happy with who the coach is. Taking all the emotion out of I don’t agree with the park board refunding because the parents aren’t happy. My nay vote is about procedure going forward in the event that this comes up again. In the future if this comes up again that parent will not get their money back. It puts the power in the hands of the parents to upset established teams over a preempted status of teams. I don’t like that we voted this way. I understand why the people in this room are upset for all various reasons so for future reference I hope this makes it very clear why the park board should not refund.

Motion was made by Duckels and 2nd by Tiburzi to approve the Treasurer’s Report for March 2017. Duckels questions the $3,300.00 charge under maintenance and it was for the new gate at LP.

Public Comment: Matt Turley – does the board have copies of the minutes he is referring to? Minutes dated Thursday, August 4, 2016. I want to start out acknowledging good things that have happened with the Demuzio Sports Center – Regie is doing a great job out there. My son plays 3rd and 4th grade soccer I help coach his team, I have coached basketball with Bob and learned a lot. I think it is great that a board member gets that involved. Apologizing in advance Lori Hopping all of this that is about to be discussed was before your time. I want to thank Dale Chapman for going to the City Council meeting and using common sense facts. I am here to discuss the conduct from the August 4th meeting. I don’t have the documents for the FOIA request since there was an extension requested. Turley: here we are during work hours very odd time for a public meeting but here we are. This is about me today. Does anyone want to state what happened at that meeting? Bob Duckels sometimes with the volume that is entailed in meetings some things do not get stated. There is one line in here that I need to find “Park District would like to close the account at CNB and move the account to UCB”. What transpired at that meeting was it was raised to discuss and in fact never did happen so this statement is no accurate. Regarding your FOIA request I believe when you do receive the response to your FOIA request you will see and by the way I am the one that is going through everything to make sure that we produce to you what you need to be getting from us. I believe when you receive the audio what you will hear is that the issue was raised and the members of the park board unanimously that because of a certain member at a business was not an appropriate way to make a decision but we did want to see if UCB offered better rates that would give us more money so that we could spend it back into the parks. If there was a financial reason for moving it then it would be voted on. It was determined in the October meeting that it wasn’t any more beneficial for the park district to move the accounts. . “There has been an employee with CNB that has been bashing the CPD and the City on FB. The police have went to them and asked them to stop. This employee is still posting and some of this has been done during work hours. Park District would like to close the account at CNB and move account to UCB”. Did everyone understand the exact details as to why the officer showed up at CNB. Duckels wasn’t aware of the officer going until one of the meetings. Turley: Did you know that it involved two civil rights violations Larry? Smith: No. Smith don’t remember who told him about it. Smith told Turley if he remembered he would be man enough to tell him. This is not something that should be spread around. Smith asked Turley if he remembered why it happen and Turley said yes and he was going to be getting into that. This was a post made on an employee’s lunch break this was nothing done on bank time. It was not violating FB polices. PD in Indiana did something similar and ended up having a settlement with ACLU. I have already submitted this to ACLU. They say it takes two weeks. There was some negative comments made on a private message with the PD. There was an officer that then came in uniform to the place of business – did you know that is what he did Larry? Smith: I just knew that he went into the bank and asked the person that made the comment to remove it. The officer made it to the place of business about the same time the employee was returning from lunch so the timeline doesn’t make sense. Turley is very angry that his comment was removed by the PD. What kind of social media post would warrant this type of action from a police officer? Duckels: something that would potentially warrant violent or threatening conduct. Smith told Turley he agrees with Bob and that once Turley gets the audio from all the meetings he will get a better understanding of the park board’s directive with the bank accounts. The park board did not know about the officer attending the employee’s place of employment. Turley will find proof of that in the audio for that particular meeting. Turley: This city is under scrutiny now this stuff has to stop. Duckels: This was something that came up last year when you were here. The video that a former park district employee had taken. The video was taken and reviewed then many months later it was deleted. Turley: I am salaried and was still posting on CNB time. Larry if somebody disagrees with you; you have a tendency to use your power. Have all of you been trained on OMA? Smith: Yes Turley: discussed when the minutes and agenda needed to be posted. Duckels: we are not going to answer your questions because there is a particular procedure for this. Turley: I don’t care what you think of the Watch Dogs – they mean business. If this was proven that you didn’t comply with OMA some of your actions could be null and void. My family many families are less safe every time we drive to the school and Wal Mart. The people on Locust and Pine Street have been affected as well. Turley: What I would like to ask for is a public apology for all these actions. If you guys feel you didn’t do anything wrong then we will leave it at that? Smith: Are you done Matt? Ok let’s look at the big picture. Can you say there has been a lot of good things done by this park board? Turley: I said that. Smith: ok I just wanted to reiterate that.

Logan Turley: It is my understandingthat I am here today because there is a vacancy on the park board coming up and I would like to be considered for it. I understand you already have Dr. Reid lined up for it but I am here with this proposal. I am here with the people behind me. They have concerns about what is going on at the park. Employment, people are not happy with the way the gate is there, people are not happy with the way leagues are being ran soccer leagues, softball leagues. It is mostly people that is my age. I want to be able to represent these people. Smith: The only thing I want to say is that if these people do have a problem they need to come to our meetings and present it to us. This is all new to me that you are talking about. Duckels: The answer to your request is yes we will consider your request to become a board member. In the future always encourage people that have complaints to come to our meetings and express their concerns to us. We may not accept them/or accept them. They could challenge us to brainstorm and improve. Logan: Kids my age are not aware that they can come here, that is why I am here today. They are busy. David Serrano: Spoke on behalf of supporting Logan as a potential board member.

Michelle Tiburzi: Matt I want to apologize to you. I feel like I should have done more. I am on this board today but as of the end of this meeting I am resigning. I feel like I have handled it unprofessionally. I have talked behind your back. I am talking personally. I am not talking for any other board members. I shouldn’t be like that. I should have pushed for a compromise with the gate. I like that gate. I think it is very pretty. It is for the safety of the kids. I was one that complained. It was back when Anne was here. I had a little girl run out in the street when I was coaching soccer. The little girl chased her ball and almost got hit. I did not report it because she did not get hit. I yelled at the woman because she was flying. “I yelled at her to slow her ass down” and she flipped me off. I want to apologize to you ladies to. I shouldn’t have become the middle person. I should have let you guys handle it. I just want to apologize to everyone. I have had a great run here. I love the board but I just can no longer do this.

Maintenance Report: Jeff Bates we are trying to get the fields ready but the rain isn’t helping. Smith asked if we were going to get more dirt on CNB field. Yes as soon as it dries up and we can get the truck to deliver it.

New Business: We have received two FOIA request from Matt Turley and John Kraft, report for the Edgar County Watchdogs. They compliance will be made on Thursday. Duckels informed Turley he is welcome to come back after he hears the video recordings of the meeting. Smith stated it is hard to find good members. We have really tried to move this district forward. I have always said that when people are thinking about moving to Carlinville the two main things that they look at is the school district and the parks. We put in a handicap swing at LP. The Lions Club has really helped us out. Tom Gazda has donated some property to us by Tom Thumb Park. We hope to find good people to replace Michelle and Dale.

Randy Link – When Dale and Larry got on this board there was no money in the bank and they had to borrow money to make payroll. I want to commend these two for straightening out the park districts. Jeff is the maintenance supervisor and I am the second in command and I have noticed a big change in the parks because of them two.

Next CPD meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 3:15 p.m.

Meeting was adjourned at 4:37 p.m.