Cleaning Up McGuire's Mess

Dozens of black garbage bags stuffed with refuse and an 8-foot-by-20-foot Dumpster brimming with trash now sit outside the house state Rep. Jack McGuire and his wife abandoned years ago.

Neighbors say two men have toiled for three days to clear out the house that has been left vacant and neglected while McGuire and his wife Patsy live a mere five miles away on Glenwood Avenue in Joliet.

McGuire failed to return messages left at his Joliet office and home. He also did not answer the door to his house in Joliet, where he is said to now live.

When first questioned about the state of the house in Shorewood, McGuire's wife commandeered the conversation and refused to let him speak. Patsy McGuire explained that she let the house fall into disrepair because she is "not one of the rich people in Shorewood.”

“If I’m guilty of anything,” Patsy McGuire said, “it’s of being poor.”

Jack McGuire, D-Joliet, receives an annual salary of $81,953.40, according to the payroll database on the Better Government Association’s website. He has been in the Illinois House since 1991.

McGuire's term is up in 2012. He failed to respond to questions about whether he would seek re-election.

Neighbors said the two men cleaning out the McGuires' house went into the dwelling with white masks over their faces. But the safety masks didn't stay that way for long.

They're black," next-door neighbor Tim Montgomery said of the masks. "It's disgusting."

Mitchell was also concerned about the material the men were hauling out of the house.

"Is that just trash, or is it something worse?" he asked.

Mitchell said he saw the men remove two bathtubs, a stove, refrigerator and freezer, along with countless pounds of refuse.

"At least our property value will increase," Mitchell said of the cleanup operation at the McGuires' house next door.

Patsy McGuire said earlier this month that she and Jack McGuire lived together in the house at 105 Shorewood Lane after they married sometime around 2001.

About five years later, Mitchell said he witnessed an unidentified man ambush McGuire outside the house and confront the representative about residing outside his district.

The McGuires left soon after and never returned, Mitchell said.

The village declared the McGuires' house uninhabitable in January, said Shorewood Building Inspector David Myers. A permit was obtained and placed on the residence Tuesday allowing "interior residential demolition" in the basement due to water damage, said permit clerk Kathy Buczko.

Mitchell, along with another neighbor who asked not the be identified, noted that neither McGuire nor his wife were present for the cleanup of the house.

"Wouldn't you want to be here when they're throwing your stuff out?" he said.

The neighbor who asked not to be named said the men cleaning out the house told him the dumpster would be in the driveway "for a couple weeks" and added that he was "so glad" the McGuires were finally doing something with the neglected house.

Mitchell wondered whether McGuire and his wife got away with letting the house fall into such bad decline due to his status as a state representative.

"My whole thing was to make them be accountable ," he said. "Why should they be different than you and I?"