Elmhurst Changes Course, No Longer Outsourcing

ELMHURST, IL — The Elmhurst City Council decided last year to outsource its finance director and assistant director positions, saying the move would save $70,000 a year.

But the city is apparently moving away from that approach. On Thursday, it announced it hired Christina Coyle, Glen Ellyn's finance director, for the same position in Elmhurst. She is set to start Feb. 14.

Last summer, the council voted 10-1 to hire Naperville-based Lauterbach & Amen to provide a finance director. The city did so with its assistant finance director position a few months earlier.

The decision on the finance director occurred shortly before the retirement of director Tom Trosien, who had been with the city for more than three decades.

City spokeswoman Kassondra Schref explained the decision in an email to Patch.

"The decision was made under the City Manager’s discretion to revert the Finance Director position back to a full-time city employee," she said. "This was discussed at the committee level as the City Manager determined that having a full-time staff employee in this position is more suitable to the City’s needs at this time."

The only alderman opposed to outsourcing was Mark Mulliner. At the time, he said he understood the savings, but thought the job was so important that it needed to be in-house.

"I understand that by outsourcing it, they will still be directly responsible to the city manager, but there will be a different ownership level when you are a member of a team versus somebody who is paid as an outsourced consultant to come in and assist us," Mulliner said.

Coyle, a certified public accountant, has been the village of Glen Ellyn's finance director since 2014. She was the assistant director before that.

Before her government experience, Coyle managed governmental, nonprofit and federal compliance audits for several organizations.

In a statement, City Manager Jim Grabowski said he was confident Coyle would thrive as finance director in Elmhurst.

Elmhurst has a population of 47,000, while Glen Ellyn is nearly 29,000.