It’s not often that this staid Oak Park Board of Trustees gets heated.
But at the Feb. 6 meeting, it was different.
Two trustees pushed back at allocating money for migrant assistance to a new task force – which led to a heated discussion. It marked a seeming escalation in the tensions among the board that appear to emerge during discussions about handling the migrant crisis.
The village was awarded $1.9 million for asylum-seeker aid. According to village officials, $300,000 of the grant will go toward short-term rental assistance. To apply, staff were required to identify partners for each service and listed the Oak Park Resettlement Task Force as a potential subgrantee, although an agreement has not yet been finalized. It is a new organization supported by the Community of Congregations looking to resettle about 140 migrant individuals.
But trustees Cory Wesley and Lucia Robinson questioned how the task force was chosen as a partner, why other organizations had not been considered and expressed frustration, saying this action was not communicated effectively.
“I am very troubled by this particular partnership and the process in which it was communicated to this board,” Wesley said at the meeting. “I don’t feel like we were given a sufficient heads up.”
Oak Park Human Resources Director Kira Tchang explained that village staff chose the task force because they are actively engaged in the work with migrants and are immediately able to perform the work.
“We had to make some very quick decisions,” Tchang said. “[The task force was] the biggest and most organized effort within the community at the time when that resettlement funding was contemplated.”
Wesley said he did not recall being informed that the task force would be a partner. He pointed out that the task force has been in existence for only about a month, and therefore had only been in existence for a couple weeks when listed as a partner on the grant application, without other organizations being considered.
Robinson said the board did not approve the application and the listed partners before it was sent out for approval. Now that the funds have been awarded, she said she’s not sure if changing partners would require revising the grant application.
Records show the board had been informed about the possibility of that task force partnership.
At the Jan. 23 board meeting, which is recorded, Tchang reported that the $300,000 for short term rentals could be administered by the task force with the Community of Congregations acting as a fiscal agent. The task force meets on a weekly basis with village staff, Tchang said.
Robinson later said she was upset the potential partnership was not officially confirmed and the board did not have time to properly vet the task force.
However, trustee Susan Buchanan and Brian Straw and village president Vicki Scaman were taken aback by their fellow board members’ concern, all expressing their support for a partnership with the task force at the Feb. 6 meeting. Straw defended the Community of Congregations, saying it has a long-standing tradition of standing up for the community in times of crisis.
But Robinson later said there should have been a request for other organizations to be considered in an open bid process.
“I also felt quite blindsided for them [task force members] to be called down by trustee Straw in the middle of the [Jan. 23] meeting,” she said. “That is not the proper way to have a group present to the board.”
If an agreement with the task force is not finalized, Robinson said she would look to village staff to find a replacement partner. There are other resettlement efforts and nonprofits in the city of Chicago and in the surrounding suburban area that could be examined as partners, she said.
Amid the heated debate, Tchang said that any lack of communication on this partnership was a failure of staff and not a reflection on the partners.
Scaman said she felt the dialogue around the topic could have been more respectful.
“I am a little distraught at the conversation that happened earlier tonight,” she said at the end of the meeting. “I do care very much that all members of the board feel as if they are getting all of the information and so I will continue to support everyone equally.”