Village trustees in suburban Dolton are pushing for a better look at the community’s finances, but are meeting resistance from Mayor Tiffany Henyard after she vetoed a resolution calling for an outside investigation.
The resolution was passed during a Feb. 11 meeting that the mayor was not in attendance for. The measure called for an outside investigation over allegations of misuse of public funds, with allegations that Henyard made payments without village board approval while refusing to pay others, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Henyard vetoed the measure during a regularly scheduled board meeting on Monday, pointing to the positive actions of her administration.
“We help pay your light bill, gas bill, water bill,” she said. “We even did a mortgage-on-rental system.”
During the contentious meeting, Henyard said that the resolution was illegal, and that she defends her administration’s actions.
“We are under attack,” she said. “I will be victorious when the dust clears.”
Dolton Trustee Brittney Norwood says she welcomes the fight, and that she’s confident the board will prevail despite what she calls the mayor’s obfuscation of the facts at hand.
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“We can always expect for the administration to use a lot of smoke and mirrors,” she said.
Norwood had voted for the resolution calling for an investigation.
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“We feel that it’s extremely important to have the authorities come in and force this administration to provide us with the information needed so that we can provide it to the residents regarding how the money is being spent,” she said.
While Henyard insists her actions have been in support of the village’s future, trustees expressed concerns over debt. Norwood says the village was $7 million in debt at last check, and suspects the number has grown.
She says that some vendors have been coming to the village board asking for payment, including one from a vendor that had been contracted to craft posters bolstering Henyard’s image.
“The mayor plans to post these around town with her picture on it, and with cute sayings, and we’re saying ‘hey, how can we afford this if we’re in a deficit,’” she said.
