Editor's note: This story was originally published in the Belleville News-Democrat.
Washington Park trustees say Mayor Leonard Moore has been locking them out of a building where they want to meet to conduct village business.
“When we call special meetings, he doesn’t attend and won’t open the door for us to hold a meeting,” said longtime Trustee Ferris Williams, speaking for all six board members.
Moore says trustees are welcome to attend regular meetings scheduled monthly in the building — Washington Park Senior Center — but can’t use it at other times because it is temporarily housing the police department.
“We have prisoners in and out of the building. We have important information in there. That is our one and only location for all of these things. No one will have free will to go in and out of there as they please,” Moore said.
The dispute is just a snapshot of the contentious nature of village government in Washington Park. The mayor and the six trustees don’t get along, and point fingers at each other about who’s to blame.
If it sounds familiar, a similar dispute with a few of the same cast of characters happened two years ago. It ended up in court.
There’s been another election since then, and some of the board members have changed since the 2021 dispute. Former allies of Moore are no longer on the board, with three new trustees replacing them.
Now it’s basically the six trustees — Carlene Tucker, Geneva Dotson, Ferris Williams, Mary McKinney, James Madkins and Juliette Gosa - on one side, versus Moore on the other.
And between the two sides is Washington Park Village Attorney Mark Peebles. He works on behalf of the town, and is the official, legal representative for its government.
Peebles said he wishes he could do something to bring the trustees and mayor together to work out whatever personal differences they have with each other.
“I just feel like right now, things are not moving in a positive, constructive way,” he said in an interview with the BND. “If there’s anything that I can do in my capacity as village attorney to help move it forward, I would certainly do it. I don’t have a vote. All I can do is just give advice.
“I’d like to see if there is any common ground between the elected officials where they can come together and deal with some issues that are pressing in the village right now.”
When you listen to both sides today, it is hard to imagine them coming together.
Trustees, mayor fight over meeting agenda
The six trustees say the mayor wants to run the city his way and not work with them.
“We’ve tried to put items on the agenda and Mayor Leonard Moore is not allowing any items we want on the agenda to be put on the agenda,” Trustee Juliette Gosa said. “We are elected board members and we have a right to put items on the agenda.”
Moore says the trustees don’t want to do things the right way. “When the six of them come to the regularly scheduled meetings, they try to override my agenda that was already posted properly,” Moore said. “They stand up and object to everything on the agenda to disrupt the flow and not deal with city business.”
And trustees don’t even attend all the regularly scheduled meetings, held on the third Tuesday of each month, Moore said.
That’s because "there’s no point in going. He sets these things up and says it’s my way or the highway,” Eric Evans, a lawyer who represented the six trustees, said in an interview with the BND. Evans passed away in early July.
Trustees said they call separate special meetings and are forced to meet at local churches because the mayor won’t let them use a government building. They complain that the mayor does not attend those special sessions.
Moore said they can call special meetings if they want, but he is not obligated to attend nor are any of their actions official.
“...No decisions can be made, and they can’t pass anything,” he said. “Resolutions or whatever have to be signed by the clerk and the president of the board (the mayor) at a regular meeting.”
Evans disagreed, saying the trustees can call separate meetings and take actions.
“He views it that he is the boss and everybody works for him,” Evans said. “The board can call a meeting as long as they follow certain procedures, which they did. His response was ‘Well, I’m going to lock you out.’ Well, you can’t do that.”
In response to a BND question about the trustees’ special meetings, Peebles said he believes two trustees can call a meeting, if they so choose. “I’ve seen some of the agendas and they look like they comply with the law, but I have no idea whether they have been noticed properly under the Open Meetings Act,“ he said. “If they are not, any actions that are taken at those meetings are not valid.”
The list of grievances and the mayor's response
Besides the meeting situation, the six trustees have a list of grievances about the mayor. Here is a sampling:
- The trustees say Moore has kept them in the dark about village business, from finances to grant applications. “The mayor is not informing us about anything that is going on in the village or with village business,” Williams said. "We don’t know how much is coming in or going out."
- The trustees allege the village ended up losing a $500,000 government grant for a summer youth employment program because the mayor didn’t work with Treasurer Carla Randolph to get it.
- Some trustees are concerned that some police cars were moved off of village property and onto a residents’ land. The trustees say Moore has not explained why.
- The trustees say Moore is keeping his wife, Debbie Moore, on as the village clerk in Washington Park, even though “he knows we don’t want this.” Moore is a former trustee who lost her seat in the April election.
Moore disputed the trustees’ allegations and grievances, and addressed each one in a BND interview.
- He said he doesn’t keep the trustees in the dark about village business. He said the trustees, before every regular meeting, get a statement on village bank accounts down to the penny. The account statements are included in their agenda packets available before every regular monthly meeting. “They see whatever money is going out and coming in,” Moore said. The packets are available every Friday before the Tuesday monthly meetings.
- Concerning the village clerk, the mayor said he has the right to appoint whoever he chooses and that is what he did.
- Moore said the trustees’ statements about the jobs grant are spurious: He did not lose the grant. He said he did not accept the grant money — $500,000 — because the village would have been required to spend all of it employing local youth within 30 days. "The $500,000 grant will be available for us to use next year for the summer youth program,” he said. "We know what to do now. We applied for the grant too late to be able to spend it all in the required time. Everything I do is going to be above board.” (Randolph confirmed the grant was approved but by the time they received approval there was not enough time to spend it.)
- Moore said the old police cars were moved from village property because they were a nuisance. “People were complaining about them being an eyesore” he said. “They were moved to a yard where they are under surveillance. Now, that area is clean. We’re going to make the area where the cars were into a park like it used to be.”
Court order issued in 2021 dispute
This isn’t the first time the mayor and the board of trustees have been battling over how to run the village. Three of the current trustees filed suit against Moore two years ago over a number of complaints.
St. Clair County Circuit Court Associate Judge Julie Katz issued an order that said the parties in the lawsuit are ‘’strongly encouraged to work together for the betterment of the Washington Park community … to consider team building exercises, ideally led by a trained professional … to form subcommittees, and utilize these subcommittees in a constructive manner to more efficiently accomplish city business … to agree on a process whereby proposed agenda items which were not taken up at a meeting be given priority at the next meeting.”
But two years later, the trustees and the mayor are still going at it.
The trustees say they are trying to do their jobs for the citizens of the town, but the mayor is not working with them.
“We would be behind him 100 percent if he was representing the Village of Washington Park,” said Madkins, one of the trustees. "His leadership is mostly for family and friends, but not for the citizens.”
Moore said he is following the law and trying to do what’s right as he leads the village.
“The blame goes to so-called politics and politicians with personal agendas rather than the people’s agenda,” he said.
For Peebles, the village attorney, the entire situation is frustrating, especially since the community has so many issues that need to be addressed.
“One or two meetings a month is not going to accomplish much. I think the mayor and the board need to find some common ground,” he said. “This is just not in the best interests of the residents of Washington Park - all of the elected officials disagreeing and not holding meetings. I don’t know what the answer is.’’
