A standoff between Thornton Township Supervisor Tiffany Henyard and one trustee led to the second scheduled meeting in a row being canceled due to lack of quorum.
While enough of the board had showed up to the Thornton Township Hall in South Holland to call the meeting to order, Trustee Chris Gonzalez refused to go to the upstairs meeting room, saying there was too little space for the number of attendees present. Meeting locations have frequently switched between two rooms of the building, with Henyard preferring the upstairs and Trustees Gonzalez and Carmen Carlisle saying they prefer the larger basement space.
“I wasn’t going to put people in an unsafe environment,” Gonzalez said. “I wasn’t going to make it an argument. I mean, it’s just what should be done. It’s the right thing.”
In an uncharacteristically short monologue, Henyard expressed frustration about the lack of quorum and blamed Trustees Gonzalez and Carmen Carlisle, who was absent, for halting township progress.
“Every time it’s time to do the business and the will of the people, it gets blocked because people don’t come and take their jobs seriously,” Henyard said. “We basically have two scheduled meetings every single month, and our job is to come pay the bills, pass ordinances as need be and make sure that you understand we have been doing for an entire month.”
Henyard also threatened court action, “because this cannot and will not go on.” Later that evening, she created a 90-minute Facebook Live video of herself bashing the opposing trustees.
Erupting tensions during a September meeting that Gonzalez and Carlisle said threatened their safety led to the trustees boycotting the Oct. 8 meeting, saying Henyard’s office had not improved protections. While security has since began checking people before allowing them to enter, Gonzalez said he still thinks more needs to be done and is looking to hire more security officers.
Items on Tuesday’s agenda included a “100% tax refund” for all homeowners in the township and bonuses for all township employees. Gonzalez said he received no information about either proposal ahead of the scheduled meeting.
“There’s no communication that we’ve seen,” he said.
The board is also tasked with filling the spot of former Trustee Jerry Jones, whose resignation was announced earlier this month. Gonzalez said he hopes to bring a candidate to a vote before the winter holidays, but does not yet have a frontrunner in mind.
Meanwhile, filing has begun for the 2025 elections, when the supervisor, clerk and all four trustee positions are up for election. The deadline to file nominating petitions in Monday.
Nate Fields announced he is running for supervisor, saying he hopes to foster community engagement, improve resources for veterans and support youth intervention programs, according to his campaign website.
