Wendy Duvall Plans To Resign This Week

The customary empty seat.

Treasure Island Commissioner Wendy Duvall sent notice to the village administration on Friday that she intends to resign her post..   Duvall has been on the commission for 3 years and really has no record of note, seldom speaking and generally voting with the consensus of the other commissioners, notably the Mayor and the Vice.  Overall it was an undistinguished tenure and I doubt that most Treasure Island residents were even aware of her presence.   

The last year has been hard on Duvall, a new mother with a professional career and who lost her father a few weeks ago.  Her absence from the commission meetings were understandable and now she's made the decision to leave.  It is time.  

That leaves an open seat.  There are two paths to filling that.  

1.)  The remaining 4 commissioners appoint a resident of Treasure Island to take on the position.   

2.)  If the commission chooses not to or is not able to within 30 days, the charter calls for a special election to be held.  

This is not a crisis, yet, but the commission is showing signs of the deep divisions created by our mayor.  Kreps is currently conducting an effort to fire the village manager.  The Mayor's stress level and increasingly frantic antics have hobbled the commission and she has mostly alienated even her staunchest supporters.   Commission meetings are so poorly chaired that time after time resolutions are left unvoted on and the agenda is lost in the non sequitur of her odd questions,   

Kreps is the heart of the problem. 

• Kreps pushed through the appointment of her then good friend and ally Richard Chervony to the commission, then Kreps turned against him when he showed signs of thinking differently from her.  She now does everything she can to undermine him.

• Kreps pushed through the appointment of Stuart Blumberg to the commission, hoping for a staunch ally and instead got someone who took his position seriously.  When Blumberg questioned some of the ways village money was being spent, she refused to engage with him and was rumored to be behind an effort to personally intimidate him from running for the elected seat.  

• In addition to her commission appointments, Kreps's closest ally at the onset of her tenure was Eddie Lim.  So close in fact that she and Lim were nicknamed "The Twins" and now she will barely allow him to speak because he has ideas he would like to promote.

•  Kreps vigorously supported Robert Daniels as police chief, praised him effusively as interim village manager, and then orchestrated his firing earlier this year, at a cost to the village of over $150,000

• Kreps led the commission in hiring Dennis Kelly as Village Manager and then led the commission in firing him a year later at a cost of around $100,000

• Kreps claimed that after more than a decade of not being in touch, current village manager Rollason contacted her with an offer to help as "interim" manager after Kelly was fired.   She pushed this through and now after Rollason failed to provide her with note cards on time, is orchestrating an effort to fire him.

 We can expect the commission led by Kreps to dither while trying to find a candidate to fill the position.  If Kreps pushes through someone she believes will be suited, she will turn against him/her in a matter of time.  But I think the commission will try to fill the position rather than hold a special election.  If they fail to fill the position in 30 days, the village must hold an election, although they did not do so when Paul Vogel died and the seat sat illegally vacant through the rest of his term. 

If they do hold a special election, that will get interesting.  Almost all the involved people in the village have been forced out of the municipal processes and elections here are vicious.  I don't know how this will work out.  

Kevin Vericker

September 27, 2015