THORNTON TOWNSHIP, Ill. (WLS) — Thornton Township residents are trying to figure out if they’re experiencing the shutdown Supervisor Tiffany Henyard warned of.
The doors of the township building are locked and residents said they have no clue what’s going on.
The lights are off here, the doors are locked and there’s a sign on the building that says it’s closed. For how long, neither residents nor employees know at this point.
“I’m the only one, and I don’t even work here and I’m here,” resident Tom Olejniczak said.
Olejniczak showed up first thing Wednesday morning to hand in important paperwork for an assistance program due Friday, but was met by a closed sign.
“OK, here I am and they disappeared now,” Olejniczak said. “So now what? What do you do now?”
“We are still during our busy season, and I come in and the staffs here and we can’t get in the building,” Thornton Township Assessor Cassandra Elson said.
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The township assessor and her staff also came to work as usual, uninformed the building would be closed.
“We got no notification, no warning or anything,” Elston said. “Nothing.”
Township Supervisor Tiffany Henyard warned of a government shutdown Wednesday after a fifth meeting had to be canceled Tuesday because two board members failed to show up.
Their aim is to block Henyard from appointing someone to a vacant trustee position who could provide tie-breaking votes.
“Our job is to govern, to provide a way, provide services, and we’re not doing that because they’re stalling government, gridlock me because they can have their way come on. It’s not high school,” Henyard said.
Unable to conduct business, Henyard said the township can’t renew its insurance.
A shutdown, she said, means ceasing assistance programs for seniors, and after-school programs for children, potentially laying off more than a hundred township workers.
“Our hesitation is that if there’s a person in there that will just say yes to everything, it will set us back,” Thornton Township Trustee Carmen Carlisle said.
Trustee Carmen Carlisle is one of the board members who has been absent from meetings.
She said the board has not been part of insurance renewals in the recent past and believes insurance could’ve been decided months ago.
“It was to get us in the building, we’ll dangle the insurance over their heads so they can get here so we can get this appointment,” Carlisle said. “But you can’t play with these things, you have to do what’s responsible.”
Henyard has not returned ABC7’s calls Wednesday morning to confirm what services might be halted Wednesday.
All this comes as she is also suing Township Democrats for their caucus vote earlier this month that left her off the April ballot for supervisor.
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