At the debate sponsored by the League of Women's Voters held at the Downers Grove Village Hall on 9/24/12. This debate was scheduled many weeks in advance. All candidates were called and emailed, those that did not respond to either received an invitation via certified mail.

Despite all those invitations the incumbent Forest Preserve Commissioner Joe Cantore District 2 was a no show like he is for many Forest Preserve District meetings. Because he was a no show the LWV rules limit the opposition (me) to only 5 minutes to speak about all the issues like:

•The ongoing FBI investigation of our Forest Preserve District of DuPage County.

 •The extra $50,000+ bonus paid to the FPD Executive Director (Brent Manning) despite the fact that he was in charge during the mismanagement which included a contract for $488,000 that resulted in theft for 6 years and 3 Class X Felonies.

•Their illegal closed door meetings and other issues.

This debate will be shown in Downers Grove on Channel 6 at 7:00PM this Friday 9/28, Saturday 9/29 and Sunday 9/30. FYI if you want to see the debate in your community ask your local community cable TV channel to get a copy of the debate from the Downers Grove Community Channel. They'll send one over to your town's local community channel for free.

SUMMARY: We need all elected officials especially our District 2 Commissioner and all the other Commissioners to answer the questions about these important issues. We need them to participate in the LWV debates and similar debates. I am open to a debate with Joe Cantore and at least one should be held before the election on 11/6/12. If you agree please consider sending a quick email about the need for a District 2 FPD debate to the following email addresses:amanda@patch.com, news@dailyherald.com, letters@tribune.com, letters@suntimes.com, fencepost@dailyherald.com, doingsnews@pioneerlocal.com, QuestPublishing@aol.com, lombardian@sbcglobal.net, publisher@buglenewspapers.com, mcolosimo@mysuburbanlife.com, bsanchez@dailyherald.com and emistretta@dailyherald.com. Please include your name, city/town and phone number which will not be published but will be used to contact you to confirm that you wrote the email.

Thanks again to the League of Women Voters for all their volunteer and nonpartisan work. They have been doing it for 90 years and hopefully will be doing it for another 90! Get more info. here: http://dgwl.il.lwvnet.org/ 

Make sure that everyone knows that President Pierotti of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County is not telling the truth

I have been told to make sure that everyone knows that President Pierotti of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County is not telling the truth when he yells at me at a recent meeting of the FPD of DC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAi8tGrF7KI and charges amongst many baseless charges that I only go to meetings to make critical statements. As many know I have been working hard for decades to help protect the trees including the forest preserves, trails and trail users. For example I served as a volunteer as President of the IL Prairie Path not-for-profit corporation for over 7 years and on the organization's board of directors for 9. I am also the ongoing Voluntary Chairman of the Friends of the Great Western Trails. I founded the Friends of the GWTs group and have been leading it for 12 years to the benefit of the trail, trail users and surrounding communities.
In addition there were many different efforts across DuPage County where I participated in and help lead campaigns to protect our natural resources and quality of life in DuPage County. I am proud of all those successful efforts but there is one in particular that I really liked because it resulted in the preservation of a unique part of DuPage County. I started the campaign and called the parcel the "Special 8." The neighbors, trail users and the especially the IL Prairie Path group helped win the fight for the preservation of over 8 acres of unique forest in DuPage County. This property was saved from a proposed development of 46 town homes with a new street crossing on the IL Prairie Path in Glen Ellyn. This land is now the Glacial Ridge Forest Preserve of DuPage County. It is a unique and some say an important part of DuPage County because it was never developed and offers groupings of trees that they do not even have at the Morton Arboretum. Here are some news stories from Chicago Wilderness about this special and very successful effort. Check the Saving Kame article here http://www.chicagowilderness.org/CW_Archives/issues/winter2002/newswild.html
AND check out a report on the success of  my leadership in saving this parcel of land http://www.chicagowilderness.org/CW_Archives/issues/spring2005/news/dupagekame.html
Thank you again to all that helped us win and save this parcel!

You are encouraged to pass along this news.

When is the Forest Preserve District's procurement policy from the 80's going to be changed?

Today 9/11/12, I attended the meeting of the DuPage County Forest Preserve Commission. At the meeting the President and Commissioners stop and go into a closed session for real estate or litigation discussions. Most  folks in the audience leave because you never know when the closed session is over. Plus folks need to get to work and do all the things we have to do during a weekday. I stayed around for the end of the closed session. They went back into a regular meeting and discussed their procurement policies which "have not been changed since the 80's" per their attorney. Why can't they have these discussions about any policies before they go into closed sessions so the folks that attend the meeting can learn what is or isn't being done? And how can they have a procurement policy that has not been changed since the 80's?

Note at today's meeting Steve Leopoldo expressed some excellent concerns and ideas during public comment about their "antiquated" (my word) procurement policies.

President Dewey Pierotti of the Forest Preserve District breaking the rules for public comment and decorum.

This video was taken by Steve Leopoldo because the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County is one of the last governmental agencies to record and broadcast any meetings. After you see the outburst by President Pierotti this may be why they don't record or broadcast their meetings.



Don Kirchenberg
Candidate for Forest Preserve Commissioner, District 2, DuPage County