Not working for the better of the community

Dear Editor,

Village Board of Trustees are elected officials that are supposed to be working toward making the community better, not try to destroy the community they serve.

They should be working with the community members/citizens in making the community/village a better place to live, not walking all over some of the citizens' rights, especially at board meetings.

By state statutes, a citizen should bring to the attention of the board of possible violations of the Open Meeting Act, but it is hard for a citizen to do this when a board member denies them the right and does not let the board president do his job properly.

Notifying the board by a formal letter of complaint of rights being violated and the possibility of the open meeting act being broken by closed meetings by board members only gets a person nowhere, except a letter from their lawyer, which has not been received.

The letter was voted on 9/11/13 and the next board meeting is 10/09/13. Now on the lawyer end, it was explained to the board in the formal letter of complaint that they could not use their lawyer since he is also the county attorney and is by state statute supposed to be investigating violations of the Open Meeting Act along with the State Attorney General. Oh, but the board and the lawyer say there is no conflict of interest for him.

In all my years, I have never seen anything like this attorney. Still has his private practice, represents citizens of the county and a village within the county where he is county attorney. I grew up in a small county in Kansas and this kind of practice was unheard of. Yes, the county attorney still had his private practice, but it mainly dealt with clients from other counties around ours, so there would never be any conflict of interest on a major scale. Just how much money does this county have to payout for special prosecutors, if one of his clients comes up that he has to prosecute or if he even steps aside as he should?

With some of the ordinances and resolutions, governing this village right now, there is no way for this village to grow. Actually, they are trying to kill this village by trying to limit where trucks can park and where they can drive at in town by saying they are tearing up the village streets. If that is the case, why is the village just hiding the areas that need fixing by paying over $40,000 to armor coat the streets instead of fixing the problems? You can see where on some of the streets where the armor coating only created more problems on the streets that needed repaired than what was there originally. To justify their decision on the truck issue, they made a survey up that should have been passed out to the citizens of the village not just to the households and it should have been limited to one answer not multiple answers like they allowed saying their lawyer says it was a legal survey. They forget that the trucking industry is what is keeping this village alive and at times, these trucks have to drive on residential streets to get to the businesses to do their deliveries or to get work done on their trucks. Sometimes the trucks parked on village residential streets are from out of the area/state.

This village used to be a "farm ing/animal and children-friendly community" in a livestock-friendly county. However, the kicker is an ordinance that states what animals are allowed in town and which ones are not.

In this ordinance, where it lists what animals are not allowed, it also states all other animals. So legally, they really do not want humans in town, since we fall under the all other animal definition.

They say they want the village to grow and prosper, but will not let any types of new business start up. There are ordinances that restrict business growth and lots of them that contradict themselves and others. So with everything listed above does this really look like the Village Board of Trustees is working to make this village a better place to live or are they just trying to kill the village off or just trying to get in the people they deem fit for their lifestyle?

Danny R. Wallace,

Maywood, Nebraska

College class, 1957