Interim City Manager On When He'll Leave Joliet

JOLIET, IL — The last time Joliet began and ended the year with the same city manager was 2016. The following May, Jim Hock retired and city corporation counsel Marty Shanahan served as interim city manager for six months.

Hock's permanent replacement, David Hales, did not last a full year on the job. In October 2018, Shanahan returned for a second stint as interim city manager. Then, the Joliet City Council's Pat Mudron coalition ousted Shanahan last June.

Efforts by the Mudron 5 to bring Hock out of retirement did not pan out. And that's how Steve Jones, the city's economic development director since 2015, entered the picture. Jones signed a six-month contract Aug. 6 to serve as interim city manager until the end of February.

Actually, Jones retired from the city of Joliet at the end of February. On Feb. 29, Joliet gave Jones a retirement payout of $18,062 for 196 hours of unused vacation time he still had on the books.

That same month, Joliet's council rejected both of its out of state finalists for the permanent city manager's position, suburban Milwaukee's Will Jones and Rhode Island's Mark Rooney.

Although Steve Jones went off Joliet City Hall's books as a city employee, his Feb. 29 retirement was just on paper.

Jones remained on the job in March, April and again this month. He will be in attendance at Tuesday night's regular city council meeting.

His job title remains interim city manager, and he still has an office inside the City Manager's Office, even though he is now considered an independent contractor.

The one-of-a-kind agreement allowed Jones to begin collecting his Illinois municipal pension at the same time he remains in the work force at Joliet's City Hall.

In February, the council's Mudron 5 approved a contract with Northbrook-based GovTempsUSA, LLC "for the placement of Steven Jones as an independent contractor with the city of Joliet as interim city manager until the hiring of a new full-time city manager," the document reads.

Joliet agreed to pay GovTempsUSA $135.10 per hour with a maximum of 40 hours per week, which is more than $281,000 annually, Patch has previously reported.

Last week, Jones told Joliet Patch he hopes to remain in his current month-to-month agreement as interim city manager until the next Joliet City Council elections in April 2021.

Jones also told Patch he does not plan to remain with the city as a consultant in his previous role as economic development director.

In April 2021, Jones plans to leave his job with Joliet, this time for good.

"I think spring of next year is time. It's probably the end of my rope," Jones said. "I think I'm doing a decent job, and I'm willing to do it a little longer. Keep in mind I have been a city manager in other places for about 30 years."

Before coming to Joliet, Jones had been a manager or administrator in Lemont, La Grange Park, Oak Forest, Glen Ellyn and Oswego. Jones served as Oswego village administrator from 2012 until 2015.

Jones does not live in Joliet.

He resides in suburban La Grange Park and commutes to Joliet for work.

In his role as interim city manager, Jones often finds himself at odds with three-term council member Larry Hug. On other occasions, Jones finds himself at odds with Joliet's two-term part-time Mayor Bob O'Dekirk, who ran unopposed in 2019.

"I think the team respects the work I'm doing ... I know the majority of the city council does," Jones told Patch's editor last week.

O'Dekirk maintains the city council's majority erred by rejecting all the candidates who were vying for the city manager's job earlier this year. He said one of the two out of state finalists who was required to take council member Sherri Reardon's last-minute personality tests scored exceptional, yet the council chose not to offer him the job.

O'Dekirk maintains that allowing Jones to double-dip: collect his Illinois municipal retirement pension and still collect a City Hall salary through a third-party company - is a terrible precedent that infuriates Joliet's taxpayers.

"The guy calling the shots doesn't even work for the city," O'Dekirk said Monday.

If Jones truly wanted to retire, O'Dekirk said, he should have retired and left the city rather than take advantage of an employment loophole.

"Whatever you think of how he's doing, he should have (stayed) retired ... He never should have been allowed to stay around for the city as a contractual employee of GovTemps," O'Dekirk said.

On Monday night, Joliet City Councilman Pat Mudron told Patch he believes Jones has done an admirable job of filling the void in the city manager's office.

Mudron can envision a scenario where Jones would remain as Joliet's interim manager for the next 12 months, until after the April 2021 elections. Council incumbents Jan Quillman, Mike Turk and Don "Duck" Dickinson are up for another four-year term in 11 months.

Quillman often votes with the mayor's coalition while Dickinson and Turk are part of the Mudron 5 along with Bettye Gavin and Reardon.

The Mudron 5 orchestrated Shanahan's removal as interim city manager last June and it had enough votes to award Jones a contract with a huge raise last August.

As economic development director and assistant city manager, Jones made an annual salary of $150,445. To convince Jones to serve as interim city manager, the Mudron 5 raised his pay last August to $192,000.

Jones has helped guide Joliet amid the new coronavirus crisis, a time when both of Joliet's casinos are now in their third month of shutdown, a terrible financial hit to the city of about $1.4 million in lost monthly tax revenue.

The city's finance director predicted in April that Joliet may run out of money around October or November because of the hardships caused by the coronavirus.

"We're going to have a tough 2020 and a tough 2020 budget year," Jones said last week.

Jones was a huge proponent of the controversial NorthPoint Development project.

In March, Jones made several rips from the Lewis University Airport to NorthPoint's Kansas City Logistics Business Park near Interstate 70 in Kansas. Jones facilitated tours for city officials, council members and Joliet news media outlets to showcase the project's merits.

(Joliet Patch article continues below photo.)

Despite vehement opposition from hundreds of residents near Elwood and Manhattan, Jones persuaded Joliet's City Council to approve NorthPoint's nearly 1,300-acre Compass Business Park planned near Route 53 on Joliet's southern border.

The project passed in a 6-3 vote on April 17.

When asked if he thinks Jones has brought continuity to Joliet's City Council, Mudron answered, "I do."

"I think Steve is doing a good job," Mudron told Joliet Patch on Monday night."I think things are progressing in the right direction. He has a lot of city experience, and he understands the inner-workings ... there's lots of challenges there. He is the interim and a city our size needs a permanent city manager at some time."

When Patch inquired whether Jones may stay on a month-to-month contract until after the April 2021 elections determine the City Council's makeup, Mudron answered, "I think that's realistic."