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Health & Fitness

Palos Hills City Council minutes are frustrating and not useful

In trying to understand what Palos Hills is doing to manage its homeless population, one citizen turned to the Palos Hills website. The result was both frustrating and enlightening.

Before I reached out to my Palos Hills elected officials, I decided I should do a little research by reading my city council's meeting minutes. I found the minutes frustrating as they seem to be transcribed from an audio recording. There were a lot of "inaudible" breaks and words misspelled. Sometimes it's as if a machine transcribed the minutes as a person would certainly know the difference between "due" and "do" or "it's" and "its."

The minutes proved completely useless for finding information about how Palos Hills is managing its homeless population, but enlightening in other ways. Of all the possible committees to address assisting the homeless population in Palos Hills, the Community Resources Committee chaired by Alderman Mary Ann Schultz seemed to be the most likely.

I reviewed six months of minutes (12 City Council meetings). During all those meetings Alderman Schultz had nothing to report, except for this:

Ald. Schultz, I would like to remind everyone of the Palos Hills Annual Health Fair scheduled this Thursday, March 14th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Community Center. 

Six months of meetings and she didn't have a single update. Supposedly there were six months of meetings and there wasn't anything to report? Nothing worth mentioning for the record?I'd like to know what the Community Resources Committee discussed during its meetings, but the minutes aren't on the Palos Hills website.

I learned that the only way to obtain committee minutes is to file a formal request.This leads me to wonder what is being hidden in committee meetings. Both Palos Heights and Palos Park (two communities smaller than Palos Hills) put their committee minutes right on their websites. In Palos Hills we need to file a formal request for minutes? It makes you wonder if Palos Hills City Hall realizes that taxpayers have a right to know what is happening behind closed doors.

Of course when you only have one report during 12 City Council meetings, it's clear there isn't much happening.

Frustrated, I emailed my aldermen, Al Pasek and William Hanson. Here's the text:
Aldermen:

Recently I was walking our daughters to Oak Ridge when a homeless man unzipped his pants and peed in a bush on 88th and 103rd. This is not the first inappropriate incident with a homeless person I've witnessed while walking our girls to school.

During the past year to 18 months, I've seen a steady growth in the number of homeless people in Palos Hills. There are four I recognize immediately.

What is Palos Hills' plan to manage the increasing homeless population?

Best,

Shari Schmidt

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