Buffalo Grove manager calls Stone 'delusional,' asks for no more contact

Bill Brimm, the soon to be retired village manager of Buffalo Grove, called Trustee Lisa Stone "delusional" and asked her to stop contacting him, in a June 15 e-mail.

Brimm sent the short note in response to Stone's call for all of Brimm's deleted incoming and outgoing e-mail from May 27 to June 10 be recovered so she can read them.

"You are delusional and please do not communicate with me anymore," Brimm wrote. "Your ability and desire to rewrite history as you believe it should be written is beyond the belief of a rational person. Thank you."

Brimm is retiring after 32 years with Buffalo Grove, the last four as manager. His last village board meeting was earlier this month and he's currently using vacation time until his official retirement at the end of June. He declined to comment Tuesday night, writing in an e-mail: "I am not responding, I have retired and am on vacation. Find your story somewhere else."

Stone said she wants to access Brimm's deleted e-mail to see if the messages include any information to the whereabouts of an executive session audio recording from April 18, 2005, which has disappeared.

The executive session included discussion of the Land and Lakes landfill, which the village later annexed.

Stone's request for the tape under the Freedom of Information Act was denied, but the village attorney offered his opinion that a sitting trustee should be able to hear the tape of an old executive session.

But when the village clerk went to retrieve the tape from storage, it was missing.

The executive session lasted 20 minutes, according to the written minutes which didn't offer detail about what was discussed, but did confirm that the board had been briefed on an environmental report on the Land and Lakes landfill.

Stone said she still wants to find the recording, calling it "a very important document in government."

"I rather that manager Brimm stop calling me names and rather him give me answers," Stone said Tuesday. "That's all I'm looking for."

Stone wrote that she can't trust Brimm, charging he has been behind the "incredulous deception and spin" over the annexation of Lake and Lakes. Among a number of complaints against him, she charges that a Dec. 14 e-mail from Brimm to Land and Lakes was altered by the time he forwarded a copy to her an hour later; and that he said the landfill was only a waste transfer station when in fact it was the largest composting facility in Lake County.

Prior to his e-mail dismissing Stone as "delusional," Brimm in an earlier round of e-mails called her request "a terrible waste of village staff and system resources and time." The same e-mail stated the request was intrusive and called Stone's actions retribution for disagreeing with her.

"I hope that reading or going through hundreds of trash or duplicate e-mails is enlightening reading," Brimm wrote.

Buffalo Grove's director of information technology estimated Stone's request would take 10.5 staff hours to complete. Village staff is working to provide Brimm's deleted e-mails to Stone, Hartstein said Wednesday.

He called the name-calling unfortunate and said there is no pattern of mistrust, as Stone charged.

"It's academic at this point since (Brimm) is retired," Hartstein said. "It's time to move on; it would be one thing if in fact he was still here."