Trustee defends attendance record

Belgium Trustee Dale Pfeifer on Monday defended his absences from Village Board meetings and offered to step down if the village president requests it.

Last month, Trustee Don Gotcher had asked that the issue be discussed after Pfeifer was appointed to the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Committee, which Gotcher chairs. He said he wasn’t interested in scheduling committee meetings on Saturdays so Pfeifer could attend.

Not counting Monday’s meeting, Village Board minutes show Pfeifer has attended three of 24 Village Board meetings since 2017, a 12.5% attendance rate.

Pfeifer said he was moved from third to second shift at work, which prevents him from regular board meeting attendance.

He said one reason he doesn’t come is the length of board meetings.

“As you can see right now, it’s 7:30 (p.m.). It doesn’t pay for me to take a full day of work off and waste a day of vacation for a half-hour meeting, and there’s nothing really that important going here that I had to be here,” Pfeifer said.

He said he told former Village President Vickie Boehnlein that if she had a problem with his attendance, he would step down.

“She always said there was no problem because I could make my other committee meetings,” he said.

Pfeifer said he makes the same offer to Village President Pete Anzia.

Pfeifer said if he would resign, there would only be a “couple months left” on his term.

Gotcher interjected, “There would be eight months.”

Pfeifer said he had resigned from the board once before because he worked second shift.

He rejoined the board in 2015 without even putting his name on the ballot or running a write-in campaign.

“I wasn’t even running and I was elected,” he said.

Pfeifer was on the ballot in 2017 — he had been moved to second shift by then — but he said he “waited until the last second” to file nomination papers in hope that someone else would run.

“Nobody else was, so I would have been elected probably whether I put my papers in or not,” he said.

Village Attorney Gerald Antoine said in order to remove a public official from office, verified charges — a sworn statement — would have to be filed and an evidentiary hearing held in front of the board during which both sides would present their cases and the board would make its decision.

Village Clerk Julie Lesar said as of Wednesday morning, nobody had approached her with paperwork to start that process.