Capparelli Runs For Joliet Council, Finalist For City Manager

JOLIET, IL — Last week brought several big names to take out nominating petitions for Joliet City Council including Joliet Park Board member and retired Joliet detective Joe Clement and retired Joliet Police Sgt. Lindsey Heavener. Monday marked the announcement of another big-name candidate. Joliet private practice attorney Jim Capparelli obtained a petition from the city clerk's office to run for one of the three open seats in the April 6 elections.

The seats of Jan Quillman, Mike Turk and Don Dickinson are up for election. Only Quillman has filed her paperwork. She is seeking a fifth term.

Capparelli told Joliet Patch on Monday that he does not want to see Quillman lose her seat in the April elections, saying she has done a good job representing the interests of the citizens of Joliet during her time in office.

Capparelli is hoping to fill one of the two seats currently held by Turk and Dickinson, two men who are known as being political adversaries of Mayor Bob O'Dekirk.

Capparelli said he wants to bring an end to the state of dysfunction that has been a regular presence at Joliet City Council meetings since around May 2019.

He also blamed the council members for failing to hire a permanent city manager. He said he can't believe the council chose to oust Marty Shanahan after eight months in the role without having any solid plan whatsoever to replace him.

It's now 17 months later, Capparelli told Joliet Patch on Monday afternoon and still Joliet remains without a permanent city manager, the most important full-time job at City Hall.

Capparelli was one of the finalists for the city manager's position earlier this year even though he has no prior city manager experience. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army who worked as Illinois Assistant Attorney General, Bureau Chief, from 2005-2007. He was also appointed to Joliet's planning commission in 2019. Capparelli is usually inside the Will County Courthouse practicing law several days a week. He works at the Castle Law Firm on Joliet's West Jefferson Street.

The other two finalists were Will Jones, the city administrator in a Milwaukee suburb, and Mark Rooney, a former Illinois city manager who now works in Rhode Island.

In the end, the Joliet council's Pat Mudron coalition eliminated Capparelli from consideration and later chose not to offer the job to the two remaining out of state finalists, scraping the entire hiring process for city manager altogether.

Jim Hock, the former city manager until April 2017, recently came out of retirement from Michigan to serve as Joliet's interim city manager through the end of this year.

Capparelli said that the city's finances are important to him. He would make sure Joliet had a balanced budget and that projects deemed as priorities were funded and moving ahead on schedule, he added.

"You can see the dysfunction in the City Council meetings and it's at the expense of people working with people," he said. He said that city projects "are being short-shrifted by the infighting on the City Council."