Burr Ridge Official Misses Most Meetings Since Fall

BURR RIDGE, IL – Burr Ridge Trustee Joe Snyder has not attended a Village Board meeting in person in the last 161 days, or more than five months.

Of the last six regular monthly meetings, Snyder, who was elected in 2017, Snyder has missed four. He connected to two others remotely. His last in-person attendance was Oct. 23.

In 2021, Snyder submitted a piece on Patch criticizing then-Trustee Zach Mottl for missing 26 percent of meetings for the previous three years. He called that a "failing grade."

In the last year, Snyder was absent from five of the 14 regular meetings. That's a rate of 36 percent, a higher absence rate than Mottl's.

The year before that, Snyder's attendance rate was considerably better. He attended all but two of the board's 19 regular meetings. (Last spring, the board started meeting once a month, with exceptions.)

Snyder has not returned three of Patch's messages seeking comment over the last week.

In his 2021 piece about Mottl, Snyder minced few words. He published it three weeks before the Village Board election, in which Mottl lost to Mayor Gary Grasso's allies.

"Trustee Mottl obviously does not take his Trustee responsibilities seriously," Snyder said. "Otherwise, if he did, he would attend most, if not all Village Board meetings like the five other Trustees."

Snyder was an ally of Mottl after voters elected the pair in 2017. But Snyder joined other trustees in backing Grasso's candidates in the 2021 election.

It's unclear why Snyder has missed the meetings. For one of the sessions, the meeting minutes state Snyder was remotely attending because he was out of town. The minutes did not say where.

Many suburban residents have homes in warmer climes. Snyder, an insurance broker, owns a home in a gated subdivision that is about a half hour south of Fort Myers, Florida.

There, the temperature was 80 degrees Monday afternoon, compared with Burr Ridge's 47.