Buffalo Grove can't find audio record of 2005 executive session

The audiotape of a 2005 executive session of the Buffalo Grove Village Board - specifically requested by Trustee Lisa Stone for review - is apparently missing.

The meeting was held April 18, 2005, and the discussion was related to the village's anticipated annexation of the Land and Lakes Landfill.

Stone was elected to the village board in 2009 but has repeatedly focused her attention on the landfill and the odors emanating from there.

Stone's first request to hear the tape was through a Freedom of Information Act form she filed with the village clerk on June 4. The request was formally denied in a June 9 letter, in which Village Manager William Brimm referred to the Illinois Open Meetings Act section that says the "verbatim record of a meeting closed to the public shall not be open to public inspection."

Stone, however, also made a more informal request for the tape to Village President Elliott Hartstein.

On June 10, village attorney William Raysa wrote Hartstein, saying he believes trustees should have access to verbatim records of closed meetings.

He added, however, that no one can find it.

"I have been advised by the village clerk that it appears to have been misplaced or lost," Raysa wrote, adding that he, Clerk Janet Sirabian, her staff and Brimm all looked for it.

"At this point in time, it has not been found," Hartstein confirmed this week. "We have always taped them (executive sessions) and we have always kept them."

Illinois law requires public bodies to make audio or video recordings of closed meetings.

According to the regular meeting minutes, the executive session on April 18, 2005, lasted from 8:05 to 8:40 p.m.

Hartstein said he doesn't think the tape would reveal much.

"It was about a 20-minute executive session, and there was some litigation discussed and a land acquisition issue was discussed," Hartstein said. "In 20 minutes, I know that we wouldn't have talked about too much."

Through research, Stone said she discovered the topic of the executive session was the environmental review of the Land and Lakes Landfill, on Milwaukee Avenue south of Lincolnshire's CityPark development.

The landfill, which operates as a transfer station and composting facility, was annexed into Buffalo Grove in 2008, with the expectation the facility would move its operation across Milwaukee Avenue, leaving the former landfill property to be redeveloped. But the stalled economy halted progress on the development, and in 2008 composting resumed after a three-year hiatus.

Sirabian, meanwhile, said the tapes are the responsibility of the village clerk's office and are stored there.

"They are kept in a box that was locked until last Tuesday, in a file cabinet that was sometimes locked and sometimes not, in the village clerk's office, which is locked," she wrote to Stone.

The clerk lost her complete set of keys, including the key to the box, in May 2009 in Chicago. The box was not accessed since then, until village officials broke the lock on June 8 to get at the tape requested by Stone, only to find it wasn't in there.

When Stone asked whether an audiocassette of an executive session has ever gone missing, Sirabian said that to the best of her knowledge, no one has ever asked to review a tape.

"An inventory and cross check of the tapes and the executive minutes will need to be taken to verify that all tapes are present and accounted for," she wrote.

Audiotapes have only been used since a change in the law on Jan. 1, 2004. Hartstein confirmed Tuesday night that no tapes have ever been destroyed, although the Open Meetings Act allows municipalities to destroy them or tape over them 18 months after the minutes are approved.

Meanwhile, Stone was able to review the written minutes of the 2005 executive session Monday night with Sirabian.

Hartstein said those minutes were approved but not authorized for release to the public. Their release, he said, would be placed on the agenda of the next village board meeting.

Stone was irritated that the village has apparently lost the only verbatim account of the closed session.

"The audiotape is the minutes," she said. "That is why (they are) so critical to have."

On Tuesday, Sirabian confirmed the tape should have been stored in the clerk's office in a secure cabinet under lock and key.

"Nobody has the key but me," she said, adding she will inventory the tapes to make sure every tape is there.

Stone has asked Deputy Village Manager Ghida Neukirch to prevent any audiotapes from being destroyed until the issue of the lost executive session tape is resolved.