East Dundee drops request for trustee repayments

The East Dundee village board likely will drop a request for current and former trustees to pay back hundreds of dollars they received as part of a computer technology reimbursement program.

Most trustees at Monday's committee of the whole meeting said they were in favor of rescinding a request for repayment made in January.

The request asked former board members Dan O'Leary, Kathleen Mahony and Jim Carlini, as well as current trustee Jeff Lynam, to repay between $200 and $300.

In a show of hands, Village President Jerry Bartels and Trustee Paul vanOstenbridge opposed pulling the request, but four other board members supported it. Lynam abstained.

No official action was taken at the committee of the whole meeting, but trustees are expected to vote on dropping the request at its next board meeting.

The computer allowance was approved in November 2007, giving elected officials up to $50 per month for technology expenses.

Payments were applied retroactively to May of that year when newly elected officials took office. O'Leary, Lynam and Carlini received payments backdated to May. Mahony was appointed to the board in July 2007 to replace O'Leary who took over as village president when Bartels stepped down from the post.

Bartels, who was elected village president last spring and criticized the program as a pay increase for trustees, said he was disappointed.

"It is clear that overpayments were made to several former village officials and a current village official, and I felt we had an obligation to request that money back," Bartels said. "If this was money that was paid to a consultant or anybody else working with the village, the same request would have been made."

All four officials had refused to repay the amounts requested, arguing the reimbursements were for legitimate expenses incurred to conduct village business.

"It could be easily shown, and it was never disputed, that these were legitimate expenses," Lynam said. "There were no monies given to any of the trustees that were not backed up with documentation. It was more of a timing issue of when the payments were made."

"With or without the ordinance, these were still expenses and we were still entitled to be reimbursed," O'Leary added. "We all spent much more than we ever received reimbursement for."