More on Palatine

By Kevin Robinson in News on May 1, 2008 4:40PM

As announced, Todd Stroger passed on last night's meeting with residents in Palatine. Palatine Mayor Rita Mullins took some of the blame for his absence, saying she understood why Stroger might be put off by the change of meeting format that came Monday. After a heated debate about the format of the meeting, Palatine Councilman Jack Wagner lost his temper.

"He was yelling at us about paying the county more money," county spokesman Eugene Mullins (no relation to Rita) said. "They don't know who's running the show out (in Palatine) and we were the brunt of that."

"It's incredibly disappointing and sad for the people interested in why we have the highest sales tax in the nation," Rita Mullins told the Daily Herald. "But we made an uncorrectable mistake." Mullins also cited several missteps at the village level that might have scared Stroger off as well. But those mistakes haven't kept Mullins from weighing in on secession. "It is not inconceivable that it could happen," Mullins told CBS2 in an on-air interview. "If you got 100 of the 120 communities outside of the city of Chicago, they could petition to disannex, and they could merge with adjacent counties or form their own."