Park Forest Can Track the Money, But Says It Can’t Track the Mayor’s Miles (Park Forest, IL) — The Village of Park Forest can produce general-ledger entries showing municipal money disbursed for travel, gasoline receipts from neighboring towns, and invoices showing thousands of miles accumulating on administrative SUVs.
What it officially claims it cannot produce is any record showing where Mayor Joseph Woods has actually driven.
That revelation stems from an extensive Freedom of Information Act inquiry into Woods’ use of Village-owned vehicles, fuel accounts, and municipal credit cards between September 2025 and September 2026. The request sought vehicle assignment documentation, beginning and current odometer readings, trip logs, records of out-of-town travel, after-hours usage records, and cardholder statements.
The Village’s item-by-item responses were abrupt.
When asked for vehicle mileage logs, trip logs, GPS coordinates, or dispatch records, the Village answered:
“N/A.”
When asked for records documenting mayoral trips taken outside municipal boundaries:
“N/A.”
When asked for records showing vehicle use outside official business hours:
“N/A.”
And when asked for starting and current mileage for the vehicles tied to the administration, the Village offered a blunt admission:
“See link, some documents have mileage listed, we do not track mileage.”
Under Illinois FOIA, a public body generally is not required to create a new record simply because a requester asks for information that was never documented, but that makes the underlying records practice itself a legitimate public question.
Park Forest can document fuel purchases, vehicle repairs and reimbursements. Based on the records it produced, however, it cannot reconstruct where the Mayor traveled, why a particular trip was made, how many miles were attributable to Village business, or whether a particular trip occurred during or outside normal business hours.
How Park Forest Can Track the Money and Still Miss Key Details
In response to Item 1, which asked for records identifying vehicles currently or previously assigned to the Village President, Park Forest provided an internal fleet inventory sheet listing two vehicles under the Administration department:
- A red 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, license plate EQ91639
- A black 2016 Ford Explorer, license plate EK31177
The document does not identify Woods by name. It contains no assignment date, vehicle transfer agreement, term of custody or record distinguishing Woods’ use from use by other administrative personnel.
When asked in Item 7 for ordinances, resolutions, agreements or policies specifically governing elected officials’ personal or after-hours use of Village vehicles, the Village directed the requester to the records it produced but did not provide a vehicle-use document specifically identifying what an elected Village President may or may not do with an assigned municipal vehicle.
That leaves basic questions unanswered: Does Woods have a take-home Village vehicle? Are both SUVs pool vehicles shared by administrative staff? Who is authorized to drive them? Can they be used after hours? And what documentation is required when an elected official takes one outside Park Forest?
The records provided do not answer those questions.
The $635 “Car/Mileage Allowance”
While the Village says it does not track the Mayor’s mileage, its accounting ledger does track money paid to him under a travel-related account.
Municipal accounts-payable records list recurring disbursements directly to JOSEPH WOODS under a budget line labeled:
CAR/MILEAGE ALLOWANCE
Between September 2025 and June 2026, those entries total $635, generally in increments ranging from $25 to $40. Park Forest’s adopted 2025-26 budget includes $1,100 for “Car Mileage Reimbursement/Allowance” in the Board of Trustees/Elected Officials budget. The accounting category itself does not establish anything improper, however the Village’s response leaves unresolved what, precisely, those payments represent.
If they are mileage reimbursements, the Village says it has no mileage logs documenting the miles, destinations and business purposes being reimbursed.
If they are reimbursements for gasoline, the receipts do not consistently identify which vehicle received the fuel or the public purpose of the trip.
If they are a flat automobile allowance, the tax treatment depends on whether the arrangement satisfies federal accountable-plan rules. IRS guidance generally requires a business connection and adequate substantiation for reimbursements to qualify under an accountable plan; payments under a nonaccountable plan generally are treated as wages.
The FOIA production does not establish how Park Forest classifies the payments for tax purposes.
What it does establish is that the Village has a record of the money leaving its accounts while saying it does not maintain the travel records that would explain the mileage behind it.
The Odometer Paradox: The Miles Exist Even If the Logs Don’t
The statement that Park Forest does not track mileage becomes more complicated when compared with the documents it actually produced. Maintenance records contain odometer readings. So do the Village’s WEX fleet-fuel records.
The WEX system includes fields for Current Odometer, Previous Odometer, Distance Driven and Fuel Economy.
The WEX records produced show one Administration vehicle, described as “14 Jeep Grand,” progressing through readings including:
- 42,484 miles
- 42,678 miles
- 42,866 miles
- 43,023 miles
- 43,218 miles
- 43,335 miles
- 43,486 miles
- 43,683 miles
- 43,896 miles
Those particular WEX transactions identify Village Manager Jon Kindseth, not Woods, as the driver.
That means those WEX records should not be attributed to Woods.
But they demonstrate something important about the Village’s recordkeeping system: Park Forest’s fleet-fuel platform is capable of collecting odometer readings, calculating miles driven and associating transactions with individual drivers.
The question is why comparable records apparently cannot be produced for the Village President’s vehicle use.
More Than 3,000 Miles — and Receipts Beyond Park Forest
The maintenance records add another dimension to the issue.
The 2016 Ford Explorer was documented with approximately 91,197 miles on August 29, 2025. By October 27, 2025, a Ford service invoice recorded 92,237 miles. That is an increase of approximately 1,040 miles in 59 days, which is roughly 123 miles per week.
The 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee shows a similar pattern.
An October 6, 2025 oil-change record lists approximately 39,045 miles. A January 30, 2026 repair record lists approximately 41,069 miles. That is another 2,024 miles in approximately 116 days, which is roughly 122 miles per week.
Taken together, those two documented intervals account for more than 3,000 miles of vehicle use.
Mileage alone cannot establish where those miles were driven. A vehicle can accumulate substantial mileage while remaining in and around Park Forest, despite the village’s small size, but the fuel receipts supplied by the Village establish that at least some travel connected to the reimbursement records occurred well beyond Village boundaries.
One of the clearest examples is a $40 Speedway receipt dated October 12, 2025, at approximately 5:15 p.m. at 3956 Guthrie Street in East Chicago, Indiana.
The Village ledger then records two payments to Joseph Woods on October 21, 2025: one for $30 and another for $40.
The FOIA documents do not explicitly cross-reference each ledger entry to an individual receipt, so the records alone do not conclusively establish that the $40 Woods payment was reimbursement for the East Chicago purchase, but the amount matches exactly, the receipt was included among the fuel-reimbursement records produced in response to the Woods request, and the transaction occurred nine days before the $40 payment was posted to Woods.
At minimum, it raises an obvious question that the Village’s records cannot answer:
What Village business required fuel to be purchased in East Chicago, Indiana?
Other receipts in the production document fuel purchases beyond Park Forest as well.
The significance is not simply that an elected official or Village vehicle may travel outside Park Forest. Official duties can obviously require travel elsewhere.
The significance is that the requester specifically asked Park Forest for: Records showing trips taken outside the Village’s municipal limits, including the date, destination, purpose of the trip and mileage.
The Village’s answer was:
“N/A.”
So the Village possesses financial records demonstrating that fuel was purchased outside Park Forest, while apparently maintaining no corresponding trip record identifying where the vehicle was headed, why the trip occurred or how many municipal miles were associated with it.
That distinction becomes particularly significant when thousands of miles were accumulating on the vehicles during the same general period.
The Village can show that the odometer moved, it can show that gasoline was purchased, it can show that Woods received reimbursements, but what it says it cannot show is where the vehicle went or why.
A 9:25 P.M. Gas Slip in Chicago Heights
One of the most sensitive queries in the request was Item 8, which asked for records indicating whether Woods was occupying a Village-owned vehicle on August 6 or August 7, 2024.
The dates correspond to an incident Woods publicly discussed involving a physical confrontation in downtown Park Forest.
When asked specifically for vehicle logs, GPS information, mileage records, security records or other documents sufficient to determine whether Woods was using a Village vehicle during those two days, the Village responded:
“See link.”
Among the records supplied was a gasoline receipt dated August 7, 2024, at approximately 9:25 p.m.
The receipt shows:
- Location: Shell, 2035 Western Avenue, Chicago Heights
- Amount: $30
- Notation: Handwritten “Joe Woods”
That receipt links Woods to a fuel purchase outside Park Forest late in the evening. It does not establish that Woods was driving a Village-owned vehicle. There is no license plate, VIN, vehicle number, odometer entry, destination listed, no stated business purpose, and no record indicating whether the fuel went into a personal vehicle or a municipal vehicle.
Despite being specifically asked to produce records capable of resolving that question, the Village says no vehicle log, GPS record or other tracking documentation exists to provide the answer.
Missing Statements and an Oversight Void
The credit-card portion of the response raises similar recordkeeping questions.
The FOIA request sought Village credit-card and purchasing-card statements for cards issued to, assigned to or used by Woods from September 1, 2025 through September 1, 2026.
The production contains statements identified for only limited portions of that period, including September 2025, October 2025 and May 2026.
When separately asked in Item 11 to identify cards issued or assigned to Woods, including the cardholder’s name, card type and last four digits, the Village answered:
“N/A.”
The Village also produced a corporate credit-card policy with an effective date of February 1, 2026, five months after the requested period begins.
No earlier policy was included in the production.
The policy that was supplied is framed largely around employees, supervisors, Department Directors and the Village Manager.
Park Forest officially operates under a council-manager form of government, with the Mayor and six trustees serving as the legislative and governing body. The Village currently identifies Joseph Woods as its Mayor/Village President.
That leaves an important oversight question:
Who reviews and approves the Mayor’s own expenses?
The records produced do not clearly identify that person or process.
An Audit Trail That Stops Where the Questions Begin
Nothing in the records released by Park Forest proves criminal misconduct, falsified records, or unlawful use of a Village vehicle by Mayor Joseph Woods. The mileage figures alone do not establish that thousands of miles were driven for personal reasons, and the East Chicago fuel receipt does not, by itself, prove Woods was driving a Village-owned vehicle in Indiana. Likewise, the August 7 receipt from Chicago Heights does not identify which vehicle was being fueled.
What the records do show, however, is a pattern of public expenditures and vehicle activity that the Village says it cannot fully account for.
During two documented periods, more than 3,000 miles accumulated on Administration vehicles. Fuel was purchased outside Park Forest, including at least one transaction across the Indiana state line. Woods also received $635 through an account labeled CAR/MILEAGE ALLOWANCE.
Yet when the Village was specifically asked for records documenting trips outside municipal limits, trip logs, GPS information, and after-hours vehicle use, its response was repeatedly the same: “N/A.” When asked for mileage records, the Village acknowledged that some documents contain odometer readings but stated plainly, “we do not track mileage.”
That is where the larger accountability issue emerges.
Park Forest can document when fuel was purchased, when a vehicle was serviced, how much money was reimbursed, and, in some cases, what the odometer read. What it says it cannot provide is a record tying those pieces together and explaining where the Mayor traveled, when the travel occurred, why the trip was necessary, or whether it was connected to official Village business.
The issue is not whether a mayor should ever travel outside Park Forest in a municipal vehicle. Official responsibilities can reasonably require travel throughout the region, across Illinois, or even beyond the state. The issue is whether a government paying for the vehicle, fuel, maintenance, and reimbursements should also maintain enough documentation to distinguish official travel from personal use.
In Park Forest, the financial trail, vehicle mileage, and out-of-town fuel receipts exist. What appears to be missing is the record that explains how those things connect.
And when publicly funded vehicle expenses extend beyond municipal boundaries while the corresponding trip records do not exist, that missing audit trail becomes a legitimate public-interest question of its own.
Park Forest Can Track the Money, But Says It Can’t Track the Mayor’s Miles
