The last Harvey City Council meeting was at the end of October, when residents accused the administration of lacking transparency in the midst of a major financial crisis.
Since then, every one of the City Council’s regular biweekly meetings has been canceled.
Harvey ordinarily has City Council meetings on the second and fourth Monday of each month, for a total of 24 scheduled meetings a year. The most recent scheduled meeting, which was canceled, would have been Monday, and would have been the last meeting of the year.
A spokesperson for Mayor Christopher Clark said it was not unusual for the final meeting in December to be canceled due to Christmas, despite it being listed on the city’s website.
Fourth Ward Ald. Tracy Key said in the past, the city had scheduled around Christmas so that end-of-year conversations could still be held.
“Even with Christmastime, which always falls at the end, sometimes we would have it like the week before,” Key said.
Clark said in a statement that given the city’s state of fiscal crisis, not holding meetings was the financially responsible course of action.
“Canceling meetings in this moment is about responsible leadership, not disengagement,” Clark said. “The City of Harvey is currently navigating staffing shortages and financial constraints, and we are being mindful of how public tax dollars are used. When there is nothing new to report, it is in the city’s best interests to focus our time and funds on the work towards stabilizing finances and bringing our employees back to work. We cannot afford to waste any public resources.”
However, critics of Clark have said that the move feels like avoidance.
At a special City Council meeting Oct. 16, outside the normal schedule, Clark led the audience through an hour-and-a-half long presentation about the city’s debilitating financial struggles, which he said were largely the result of corruption and mismanagement by the administration of the previous mayor, Eric Kellogg.
Under Kellogg, the city diverted water payments owed to the city of Chicago and failed to make required payments to the fire and police pension funds, he said. Compounding problems are Harvey’s high tax rates and correspondingly low collection rates, the third lowest in Cook County.
Due to the financial hole that Harvey had been left in, Clark said, its only solution was to petition the state for financially distressed status, and to partially shut down city functions until help arrived. Harvey’s City Council voted unanimously to declare Harvey in financial distress under the Illinois Financially Distressed City Law, which would allow for the state to step in to oversee Harvey’s finances.
Key said he believes that, especially with the state of uncertainty brought on by the declaration, the city should be required to have at least the 24 regular City Council meetings.
“If not, it’s taking away the residents’ rights to be able to speak and be informed,” Key said. “I’m kind of disturbed with that.”
There has been no visible movement from the state regarding the city’s declaration of financial distress.
In the week following the declaration, Harvey laid off 40% of its city staff, including major cuts to the Fire Department and Police Department. A later round of layoffs brought the Fire Department well below half strength.
Following those developments, there was only one more Harvey City Council meeting, Oct. 27. The last meeting before the hiatus was rancorous, with a resident being escorted out by police from the preceding Finance Committee meeting before the City Council even convened.
At that meeting, Clark and a majority of the City Council voted to approve bill lists for the city and approved the sale of a set of city-owned properties to an entity called Turlington Homes for redevelopment, over objections from Key and 2nd Ward Ald. Colby Chapman.
Turlington Homes was established as a business Oct. 2. Its website remains empty. The resolution approving the sale said that the city was “willing to assist the developer by selling the Redevelopment Property at a discounted sale price,” though a price was not specified.
“You didn’t even say how much you sold our land for,” Chapman said. “It’s ours, because if the city owns it, then it’s mine too, it’s everyone’s who lives in the city. We own it.”
During public comment at that meeting, several residents strongly criticized Clark and the members of City Council for approving expenses as normal when the city was in crisis, and for approving the sale to Turlington Homes with no discussion or debate.
Subsequently, every City Council meeting has been quietly canceled with no agenda posted and, Chapman said, a lack of communication to City Council members. Each of the scheduled meetings appears on the city website, but never occurs.
“I’ve called, I’ve emailed, and I have yet to receive any responses on anything,” Chapman said.
The lack of meetings also means that no bills have come before the City Council for approval since the meeting at the end of October, when invoices from July 18 to Oct. 21 were approved.
Chapman said the lack of meetings and public information makes it hard for Harvey residents to see a future for the city.
“If individuals are seeing increased property taxes, financial distress being called in our city, what is holding them to have a belief that there’s a quality of life, a path forward for Harvey?” Chapman said.
The next scheduled meeting is set for Jan. 12, next year.