partial list of Proviso candidates for local elections

West Suburban Journal has a list of candidates for local elections including District 209 (but not other school districts), Proviso Township and the villages of Bellwood, Broadview, Maywood and Melrose Park.

Was the DelGaldo Group beneficiaries of statements about Sterk on Proviso Insider?

Forest Park Review (Josh Adams):

In an expanding war of words being waged online and in court, District 209 school board President Chris Welch won a temporary restraining order against a Forest Park man, forcing him to remove allegedly slanderous material from an Internet site.

The judge's July 16 ruling was handed down just two days after Welch filed a lawsuit against Carl Nyberg, claiming that he is the victim of libelous statements posted on Nyberg's blog. Welch, who is being sued by the school district's former attorneys for slander, filed the paperwork with the Cook County Circuit Court.

If you haven't seen the Forest Park Review coverage of Welch's lawsuit against me, follow the link.

I thought it was odd that Michael DeBartolo, the District 209 lawyer from the DelGaldo Group, makes the claim that District 209 is paying for part of Welch's defense in the Odelson & Sterk v. Proviso Insider case and implies that the district isn't paying for the counter suit. This claim seems non-sensical to me. Also, note DeBartolo picks his words carefully.

As a point of clarification, DeBartolo said the $22,400 paid by the district does not cover any of Welch's expenses for the counterclaim filed by the school board president in January. The money expressly pays for Welch's defense in the Odelson and Sterk case.

What I think DeBartolo is saying here is that Welch hasn't submitted his bills for the counterclaim lawsuit. Those are yet to come.

If the logic behind paying Welch's legal bills is that the case is intertwined with his duties as a school board member--a bullshit claim, but let's pretend for a little bit--then the one part of the suit that touches on Welch being a school board member is the countersuit, about Welch getting fired from Roche & Associates because he stopped giving taxpayer money to James Roche's buddies, Odelson & Sterk.

The part of the lawsuit DeBartolo says taxpayers should pay for revolves around Proviso Insider making statements about Mark Sterk and Melrose Park police officers. How is the responsibility of District 209 taxpayers that Welch and Emily Robinson wrote probably slanderous statements about Mark Sterk on a blog? Welch had his identity concealed. What part of the case involves District 209?

One conflict-of-interest that might not be immediately apparent is the role of the DelGaldo Group. The claim Proviso Insider (Welch and Robinson) made was that Sterk was coaching Melrose Park police officers to lie to the federal grand jury that subsequently indicted seven, including the chief of police and deputy chief.

Someone familiar with Village of Melrose Park politics speculated if any law firm was involved in coaching these cops it was the DelGaldo Group. The firm is very close with Melrose Park village president Ron Serpico. If the feds indicted Vito Scavo, the chief of police, he would be tempted to give them a bigger fish to reduce his sentence. (I'm a bit of a contrarian on the issue of who is the big fish in Melrose Park. Scavo was chief of police before Serpico was village president. I think Scavo has his scams going and ran the patronage in the police department and he agreed to bring in Serpico as his flunky. The counter argument is that Ralph "Babe" Serpico, Ronnie's dad, was a big fish when Scavo was just a kid.)

We don't know if any lawyers were involved in coaching those police officers to lie. But it seems a potential conflict of interest that a lawyer from the DelGaldo Group is deciding whether Welch was acting in the scope of his D209 duties while anonymously spreading gossip, if not lies, on his blog.

Jewel Osco front office to move from Melrose Park

Frank of Florida/Melrose Park drew attention to this story in Sun-Times (Sandra Guy):

Jewel-Osco will relocate its headquarters to Itasca from Melrose Park this summer and will include in its newest Chicago store a chef’s station and a wine steward, the company’s president said Monday.

The retailer will relocate 400 employees, but will keep its distribution center, with 1,500 employees, in Melrose Park.

shooting in Melrose Park Monday

Monday, there was a gang related shooting in Melrose Park. Eric Torres, 19, of Northlake allegedly shot a Hillside resident. According to police Torres is a member of the Imperial gang and the victim a member of the Latin Kings. See Proviso Herald.

Melrose Park making case for new TIF district

Chicago Tribune (Steve Brosinski) (scroll down to second part) covered a recent Melrose Park meeting about a proposed new TIF district.

Some members of the community are concerned the TIF money will be used to displace Latino families.

There are other general concerns about TIF districts.

1. Will current politicians borrow money against the future and make bad decisions about how to spend it?
2. Will TIF funds become a slush fund with less accountability than the normal village budget?
3. Will the TIF divert too much money from the schools?
4. Will the TIF district force the other taxing bodies (schools, library, park district, etc.) to raise taxes sooner and more frequently? Is the village putting too much of the tax base in TIF districts?
5. Will the TIF spending actually increase the tax base in the TIF district?

As Illinois law stands, there is too little accountability for local politicians creating TIF districts.

feds take Melrose little league investigation from state's attorney

Chicago Tribune (Joseph Sjostrom):

Information from a probe by the Cook County state's attorney's office into the loss of at least $42,000 from the Melrose Park Little League treasury has been turned over to federal authorities investigating official corruption in Melrose Park.

About $42,000 went missing when Lisa Zito was treasurer of the Melrose Park little league. Zito's husband was a police lieutenant. Lisa Zito claimed Terry Serpico, the brother of Village President Ron Serpico, was responsible for the missing money.

An FBI agent involved in investigating local stuff said that five more indictments will be announced in the next few weeks. I wonder if they will be connected the little league investigation.

BTW, I'm also wondering if the feds will be looking at the possibility Dick Devine's assistant state's attorneys deliberately did a shoddy job on the investigation as a political favor to power brokers within Melrose Park.

CBS rehashes Melrose Park little league story

CBS2 (Dave Savini) has a new story on Melrose Park's missing little league money. It doesn't seem like there are many new facts.

The Cook County State's Attorney had the Little League case for years, but just two weeks ago passed it on to the Feds as part of a bigger investigation into other Melrose Park corruption. They wouldn't say why they waited so long. The office dropped the 1993 felony forgery case against Zito.

Earlier in the story:

The [Illinois AG's] office is also investigating past little league board president and brother of the mayor Terry Serpico. Zito has pointed the finger at him the past, he maintains his innocence and says he passed a polygraph.

Melrose Seven becomes Melrose 6+1?

I attended the arraignment of the seven Melrose Park Police Department personnel indicted by the feds this morning.

Two things seemed most significant.

Six of the seven were arraigned together as part of the 9:30 docket. Ric Cervone was arraigned separately as part of the 10:30 docket. All seven pleaded not guilty and had the same conditions imposed on them by Judge Joan B. Gottschall.

One of the conditions was that the defendants are not to have contact with potential victims and witnesses. I got the impression that the court was trying to allow at least Cervone to continue working as a police officer. How can Cervone or any of the others continue to work for the Village of Melrose Park and avoid contact with potential victims and witnesses?

One of the arguments in the indictment is that these private security companies run by the defendants diverted policing resources from the Village of Melrose Park to private contracts. If the U.S. Attorney takes this allegation seriously, it seems hard to reconcile allowing any of the defendants to continue on village payroll if the judge has ordered them not to be in contact with potential victims or witnesses.

A07, what happened in District 89? [D89]

Going into last Tuesday's election all District 89 (Maywood & Melrose Park elementary schools) school board members were allied with either Melrose Park village President Ron Serpico or Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore. None of the school board members were aligned with State Representative (and Democratic Committeeman) Karen Yarbrough or Charles Flowers, EdD. Flowers was elected Cook County Regional Superintendent of Education in November and will begin his term in July.

Yarbrough and Flowers ran a slate against a slate backed by Serpico and Moore. Five seats were up for election: four four-year terms and one two-year term created by the death of Jose Montoya.

The slate backed by Serpico and Moore won all five seats.

The Yarbrough-Flowers slate ceded Melrose Park. Of the slate's five candidates none were from Melrose Park. The slate hardly campaigned in Melrose Park. And Yarbrough failed to use her power as committeeman to replace polling place judges loyal to Melrose Park village president Ron Serpico.

Yarbrough's team probably saw the low Melrose Park turnout in 2006 and assumed Serpico had lost the fire in the belly or was pre-occupied with the federal investigation of the village. In 2006 Serpico was trying to pass a tax increase referendum and may have wanted low turnout. In 2007 Serpico's trustee candidates were being challenged by a slate backed by Jesse Martinez, a trustee in both Proviso Township and Stone Park. Serpico flexed the muscle of the Melrose Park machine. The large turnout in Melrose Park overwhelmed Yarbrough's advantage in Maywood where her husband Henderson Yarbrough is the village president.

This entry has a macro analysis of the election.

A07, what's up in Melrose Park? [MP]

I figured there would be more noise out of the campaigns running for the Melrose Park board of trustees.

What have you heard?

CRIME, U.S. Attorney to announce charges

Capitol Fax Blog (Rich Miller):

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has scheduled a 2 o’clock press conference for today “to announce new criminal charges in an ongoing public corruption investigation.”

Participants will include: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Kenneth T. Lag, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago; and James Vandenberg, Special Agent-in-Charge of Investigations for the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General in Chicago.

Hmmm....

Wasn't the Department of Labor a participant in the raid of the Melrose Park police department?

[UPDATE: It was Al Sanchez of the Hispanic Democratic Organization. See Capitol Fax Blog.]

[UPDATE2: The Hispanic Democratic Organization is associated with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and is not active in Proviso Township as far as I know.]

A07, Freedom Party on ballot in Melrose Park [MP]

Chicago Tribune (Steve Brosinski):

Without debate, a Melrose Park election panel Thursday dropped challenges that could have kept an upstart party [Freedom Party] off the ballot next month.

Mayor Ronald Serpico and Village Clerk Mary Ann Paolantonio Salemi voted to dismiss charges filed by residents Roger Bastin and Elizabeth Battaglia.

A07, list of candidates running in April

Proviso Herald has a list of candidates running in...

• Bellwood, village (uncontested) and library (contested)
• Berkeley, village (uncontested), park district (contested), school board (insufficient candidates)
• Broadview, village (contested)
• Hillside, library (insufficient candidates)
• Maywood, village (contested)
• Melrose Park, village (contested)
• Stone Park, village (uncontested)
• Westchester, village (contested), library (uncontested)
• District 209 (contested)
• Veterans Park (uncontested)

SPORT, Ralph "Babe" Serpico Memorial Field to be resurfaced [MP]

Chicago Tribune (Steve Brosinski):

Synthetic turf will be installed at Ralph "Babe" Serpico Memorial Field after the Village Board on Monday approved a $363,000 contract with FieldTurf USA Inc.

The ballfield, at 1000 N. 25th Ave., should be resurfaced in time for the Taste of Melrose Park celebration over the Labor Day weekend, Mayor Ronald Serpico said.

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections neither FieldTurf nor its employees have contributed to elections in the last six years.

Maybe when the field is resurfaced it can be renamed after someone who wasn't, y'know, a career criminal.

SPORT, state champ dad has state champ daughter [MP, D209]

Last night Lauren Nelson, 20, of Oklahoma was crowned Miss America. See Lake County News-Sun (Kathleen Hennessey, AP).

Pictured on the right is Heidi Ekstrom, Miss Illinois. Photo from Serendipity Publishing. Ekstrom graduated from Mundelein High School and Northern Illinois University.

Heidi is the daughter of David Ekstrom, a Melrose Park native, who was on the Proviso East state champion hoops team in 1974. (Pictured, far right front row; photo from MarchMadness.org.) He went on to coach at Mundelein 1981-88.