Trustees for the Orland Park Fire Protection District voted Tuesday to increase restrictions on public participation in board meetings, dividing the board between trustees elected in 2023 against those elected in May 2025.
Tina Zekich and Angela Greenfield, both elected in 2023, voted against the policy change. Zekich said the policy comes after the public voiced concerns at a June meeting about an ambulance being taken offline. She said the board is seeking to silence the public after residents “finally” spoke out this year.
Greenfield said that before Tuesday night, the policy had not been changed in over a decade.
But board member Bridget Tolan, elected in May, voted for the policy, saying it was a matter of upholding decorum following recent meetings where public comment went on for hours.
The new policy limits the public comment period to 30 minutes, which can be extended by a majority vote.
“The public is absolutely welcome to come and voice their opinions, but in a manner that displays decorum and respectfulness, so I think we’re just trying to narrow that down a little bit,” Tolan said.
The policy also prohibits members of the public from discussing political matters or having noisy outbursts, such as applauding, cheering or booing during public comment, which Zekich called subjective.
The board president can remove people from the meeting for not following these rules, and an attendee removed for disruptive behavior can lose their right to attend meetings, under the policy.
The board also added a sign-up form to be completed before someone can speak, and reduced the time each person has to speak from five to three minutes.
Zekich said two police officers started attending the board meetings in July as a means of security, following the June meeting with high public participation about the ambulance coming offline.
“Instead of encouraging people to come out and speak publicly, now we’re going to discourage them,” Zekich said. “I would be so embarrassed to watch somebody be physically removed from the meeting for applauding. We should be listening to people.”
Dan Fagan, president of the Orland Professional Firefighters Local 2754 Union and an Orland Park firefighter, said the policy change affects the firefighters ability to get the public to help them improve the community. He said firefighters on-duty don’t talk politics, so if residents raise an issue, firefighters encourage them to speak at a board meeting.
With the new restrictions, Fagan said the board will have a narrower view of what’s happening.
He said the union “just doesn’t think it’s right to silence the taxpayers who pay for these services, who you’re supposed to be representing,” noting some who spoke at the June meeting had a disability and relied on the ambulance services.
“Imagine if you’re an 85-year-old lady, who’s already nervous, there’s some trepidation to come to a meeting and speak out, and now you get told if you speak out of line, you’re going to get subjectively cut off by the board president or get banned from a meeting and you have those two giant police officers sitting in he back, staring everybody down,” Fagan said.
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The policy also gives the board chair the authority to deny a trustee’s request to place an item of discussion on the board agenda, specifically if the request is similar to a matter the board addressed in the last 12 months.
Board members are required to provide the requested agenda item on the Wednesday before the agenda goes out, and the board has the right to review it, under the policy. Previously, board members could add agenda items by noon the Friday before the meeting.
Zekich said this rule comes after she, along with Greenfield, requested the meetings be livestreamed at two meetings this summer. When the board refused, Zekich requested an investigation of the district’s finances, which the board also denied.
As for the ambulance issue that brought the public outcry in June, the board unanimously voted July 22 to put it back in operation for 12 hours each day, after taking if offline in June. Fagan said the district awaits approval from the Illinois Department of Public Health for the vehicle’s license, which he said could take a week to six months.
The district added the ambulance to its fleet last October. Fagan said the district needed it for the past 10 years due to rising ambulance calls.
The district recorded 1,176 calls in the past month, according to data announced at Tuesday’s meeting, which Fagan said he believes is the highest the district has received.
To accommodate the high number of calls, Fagan said the district started using ambulances from neighboring districts, which delays response times.
“If a person down the block has a stroke, you have minutes to get to the hospital before that starts to set in and you have irreversible harm done to your brain,” Fagan said. “If you have to wait for an ambulance that comes down from 6 miles away, that’s a problem for people in the area.”
Fagan said he is glad the board moved forward with appointing a new chief Tuesday. He said the district has been “stagnant” for a few months since the chief, deputy chief and operations chief retired in May. Since then, John Purtill has been interim fire chief.
The board voted Tuesday night to authorize its president to negotiate an employment agreement with Kevin Doyle, the current fire chief for the Homer Township Fire Protection District, as fire chief administrator for Orland.