Questions linger in the Village of East Galesburg surrounding payment to a village trustee.
Mayor pro-tem Darrell Corbin had been bothered by trustee Diane Gilman’s receiving pay for financial book keeping she had done for the village.
Documents obtained by WGIL under a Freedom of Information request show that on July 19, 2013 Gilman began to receive payments for the village’s general fund, starting with one for $803.
The payments then become a consistent weekly payment of $172.70. The total amount Gilman received through early 2014 was $5007.
A community member brought up these payments at the village trustee meeting last night.
Gilman responded by explaining it can be very difficult to recruit trustees and the work in the office was badly needed.
“When I went to work in the office I thought it was going to be a two week job, we’d hire somebody and then we’d all go on our merry way,” Gilman says. “It didn’t work out that way and I ended up working 29 weeks and three days in the office.”
Gilman added that she worked a total of 1,508 hours over the course of those 29 weeks and had asked to get paid $10 an hour for 20 hours a week.
She says “there wouldn’t be an office to come to” if she hadn’t stepped in to do the work.
The Board of Trustees never took to a vote to approve Gilman’s hiring.
