Carmi City Council meetings have evolved over the last few months. What has emerged has been a contingency of individuals who are increasingly distrustful of officials primarily targeting the mayor, city attorney, city administrator, and the city clerk. What began as a controversy surrounding Illinois American Water’s interest in purchasing the city’s wastewater treatment plant has now permeated into a potential ordinance setting decorum boundaries and even legal action related to a move by leaders to hire a law firm to assist with Freedom of Information Act requests. In total, elected officials (minus Mayor Bill Stendeback who was out of town due to a pre-planned trip and councilman Jeremy Courson), a few city leaders, and a crowd of nearly three dozen onlookers spent more than two and a half hours wading through government business Tuesday night.
A fair portion of the visitor business and comments, which took more than an hour alone, centered around the code of conduct ordinance and trying to level with the audience on why an outside firm was needed to assist with FOIAs along with the process of securing that assistance. A dozen folks including Richard Cook, Landon “Rudy” Rudolph, Cody Fulkerson, Brenda Robinson, George Wood, Mandy Sparrow, Cliff Goff, Sandy Hogue, and two individuals who have signaled their intention to run for council positions Greg Fischer and Chantel Sullivan took turns asking questions and making statements.
Cook urged the council not to ratify the legal services agreement with Lashly & Baer on two counts.
Earlier this morning, the court finds that plaintiff Rudolph has demonstrated A substantial question at this time concerning the authority under which the August 31st, 2026 agreement was executed. That’s not me. That’s Judge [Denton] Aud saying there is a substantial question about this.
If that wasn’t a big enough red flag Cook says, he also offered this.
But there’s a bigger problem than the timing. I don’t think this agreement can be ratified as written. Section 3 of the contract states the term is unlimited until either party terminates the contract. Under Illinois law 65 ILCS 5/8-1-7B, the exact same statute this resolution cites as its own authority says a municipality may contract with outside attorneys and others for a term exceeding one year but never longer than the term of the mayor currently in office. This agreement has no end date at all.
Cody Fulkerson used his time attempting to rectify just how the relationship between local government and its people got to this point.
Fulkerson: Like this could all just stop if you would just answer a question. Just answer. You know how bad this looks on you guys? Like I’ve tried to get away from these meetings because this (expletive) is consuming. It is. And I’m not up here to badger you guys, but you guys look terrible, terrible. And I know there’s some good people up here. I do know there’s some good people, but I know there’s some snakes up here as well. And I’m not name calling. I’m not doing none of that. I’m just trying to figure out what in the (expletive) is going on, dude.
Mayor Pro Temp Doug Hays: Nope, I understand. And I share your feelings on the, how did we get here on this waste of time and money? I mean.
Fulkerson: But is it a waste of time? You’re acting like nothing is wrong. You guys are not answering.
Hays: Well, that’s why I brought a minute ago because I didn’t understand myself why everything should go through a lawyer. I didn’t realize there were so many things that cannot be put out.
Since the Illinois American Water debacle began in late June, the city says it has seen a massive uptick in FOIA requests. Hays says…
There’s been 42 FOIA requests. Now a request can be more than one page. So those 42 FOIAs totaled 141 pages. The 141 pages of request generate answers, which is 1600, and this is approximate. This was the ladies in office adding this, adding this, because one FOIA alone was like 300 pages long. So, 1634 pages was the response, which gets printed, scanned, emailed, e-mail back, printed, scanned, emailed, so.
Some in the audience remain frustrated alleging their FOIAs didn’t return satisfactory results or were ignored completely.
After public comment, council voted down adopting a new section of the municipal code regarding standards of conduct instead opting to go by Robert’s Rules of Order, already in place with council agreeing they simply needed to enforce it and stick to it.
Other business Tuesday included appointment of Jennifer Foote as a Library Board Trustee to fill the remainder of Cathy Seiler’s term. Council also passed a pair of ordinances which will result in the installation of stop signs to create four-way stops at the intersection of Rice and Webb as well as 9th and Fackney. Police Chief Jason Carter says it will take probably a few days to get those signs installed.
Financially, the council agreed to a quote from Brownstown Electric Supply for a capacitor bank in the amount of $22,723.10. Additionally, council approved a NAAS quote amounting to $19,947.50 to replace a tap changer in Transformer A. A pay request from Brown and Roberts for work on the Jessup Street storm sewer as approved in the amount of $5,888.69. A second pay request from Brown and Roberts Engineering for Digester Rehab was approved for $3,592.57. Alderpersons also approved a pay request from Kieffer Brothers Construction for the wastewater treatment plant digester rehabilitation amount to $77,813.80.
Before recessing into executive session, council also approved street closures for the upcoming Corn Day festivities surrounding amusement ride placement and the group also voted to reinvest the $9,786.54 CD at Peoples National Bank at 4.15% for 13 months.
Leaders then spent the next 40 minutes behind locked doors discussing litigation before emerging at 7:48pm and discussing ratifying that agreement with Lashly & Baer. Ultimately, council unanimously voted to accept that legal services agreement, but only for a term of 364 days.
Council adjourned for the evening just after 8pm.