In a letter to the editor July 12, [Administration working to improve Code Dept.], Brookfield President Michael Garvey made several personal attacks and continued to discredit the past VIP administration.

In response to his allegations and misinformation: The people of Brookfield have eyes and can see that the Building & Code Department is really in shambles because there are no full-time inspectors anymore. You read in the newspaper recently that the last inspector just resigned. No angles, no conspiracy, just the cold, hard facts of life, President Garvey. Look around the village and you will see all the blight in the neighborhoods; there are homes and garages that are in disrepair. There are junk cars, litter on the streets and high weeds all around.

Trustee Jane Harps resigned for personal and family reasons. Why would you point that out? You may have to resign one day for the same reasons. You promised the people during the election to hire a professional manager, but when are you going to do that? The person you hired does not have enough experience, and he is very overpaid.

Mr. Ginex only had a few years experience as a village manager of Downers Grove, while David Owen had more than 20 years of experience as mayor of South Chicago Heights. Mr. Owen was paid about $90,000 a year, with no additional no benefits and had no assistant village manager making in excess of $93,000 a year! No comparison, President Garvey. With the village manager, assistant village manager and both of their assistants, it is costing almost $365,000 a year to do what Mr. Owen did for $90,000. For the record, Mr. Owen does have a bachelor’s degree in marketing; he was also former president of the Southwest Mayors and Village Managers Association. Mr. Owen has been a member and past officer of the Illinois Municipal League, all in the last 20 years.

Linda Stevanovich has done a fine job as trustee in the last seven years and is well respected in our community. During the VIP administration, we had Jack Leddin, Bill Kernan, David Glassi and Sam Lodovico working in our Building & Code Department. Now we have no one. The Building & Code Department did a good job during the VIP administration, but there was room for improvement. Wil Brennan had a lot of bones of contention while he was a trustee, but he worked hard with the VIP administration to make Brookfield a better place to live.

Keith Sbiral may have gotten a master’s degree from a college in Iowa in 2000, but he has very little experience in the real world and has bounced around from job to job. Keith is wearing four hats under the Garvey administration; assistant manager, urban planner, director of building and code, and village treasurer. How can we trust an inexperienced person to run four vital departments in our village and handle all those duties correctly? Hey, what does the village manager do?

Wil Brennan will be elected again as village trustee in 2007 because people know he really cares about Brookfield, as I do. People are really seeing now all the broken campaign promises that President Garvey and the PEP Party made during the 2005 election. PEP will not fool the voters again! Very little is getting done in Brookfield; just look around the town.

If the PEP party runs on its record of accomplishments, they will surely lose the 2007 election. With very little actually being accomplished, broken campaign promises and their “closed-door policy” of communicating with the people, they are doomed to failure.

For the record the Russ/VIP administration did not sign-off on or vote on the illegal three-story building that was built at 4500 Maple Ave. The building is in violation of the 2.5-story limit. President Garvey, I think you know which office worker signed-off on that project and are just trying to lay the blame on the VIP Party.

Enough talk President Garvey; the people who elected you want to see some action and results.

Bill Russ is the former Brookfield
village president.