Report says Carpentersville trustee living in Indiana

Carpentersville Village President Bill Sarto says a private eye's preliminary findings regarding Trustee Paul Humpfer's residency cements Sarto's call for the board member's ouster.

The two-page report by Ken Wyant, a private investigator and president of Schaumburg-based Business Protection Inc., indicates Humpfer has been staying in Indiana since June 2007.

"He is not eligible to sit on the village board because he is not living in Carpentersville," Sarto said. "I didn't want to go on hearsay or other people's information. I wanted to get confirmation of what I had heard."

Humpfer on Tuesday reiterated his intent to live in Carpentersville.

"I just heard about it," he said of the investigator's report, "and I'm not stepping down. I intend to go back to Carpentersville."

Wyant followed Humpfer for about three weeks and on four occasions tailed the trustee to a home in Hammond, Ind.

Furthermore, the two-page report says Humpfer's, wife, Jacqueline, told the private investigator that her husband moved out of their Carpentersville address on June 25 last year -- the date she was granted an emergency order of protection against her husband.

Sarto says he paid $750 in cash for the surveillance and Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski is named as the client.

Ramirez-Sliwinski refused a request for comment Tuesday.

The report says surveillance began at the April 1 village board meeting, where a photograph was used to identify Humpfer.

When that meeting adjourned at 9:45 p.m., the report states, Humpfer got into a red Ford Explorer and drove to the Village Squire in West Dundee.

The trustee stayed with friends until about 12:15 a.m., and then he returned to the same vehicle and drove to an address in Hammond, where he parked in the garage, the report says.

Wyant noted that the car remained in the garage until surveillance stopped at 5:30 a.m.

On three other occasions, the report says Humpfer left his place of employment and drove to Indiana.

"I would have preferred to get confirmation from Paul Humpfer, but that's not what he chose to do," Sarto said.

At the March 18 village board meeting, Sarto asked Humpfer where he was living. Humpfer refused to respond.

But elsewhere he has acknowledged his temporary living arrangements at his parents' home across the state line, and his intent to reside in Carpentersville.

That intent, some municipal attorneys say, is enough to fulfill the residency requirement for holding public office.