Time To Oust Joliet's City Manager: Ferak

JOLIET, IL — It's been more than four months since I wrote my opinion column suggesting Joliet may need to consider parting ways with David Hales, who became the new city manager last fall. Hales is the highest paid employee at the city of Joliet. He began with Joliet the week after Thanksgiving, and he has been a huge disappointment ever since.

There were lofty expectations and Hales didn't live up to them. Hales came to Joliet with 25 years of experience as a city manager in several different states. He spent the previous eight years in Bloomington. With Joliet, Hales got a three-year employment contract, a $215,000 starting salary and $250 every month as a vehicle allowance afforded by the taxpayers of Joliet.

We're now about seven weeks away from the one-year anniversary of his employment running the state's third-largest city, and I believe it's now apparent to most of the city's politicians that Hales is not a good fit.

Joliet's successes are happening in spite of him, not because of him.

Key issues Hales was expected to provide leadership and fix aren't being addressed.

City hall continues to shell out millions of dollars in totally unnecessary overtime pay at the Joliet Fire Department. These costly payroll expenses have nothing to do with paying Joliet firefighters extra to put out dangerous fires or provide life-saving measures at the scenes of multi-vehicle crashes. These overtime costs are mostly tied to making sure the city's 10 fire stations are staffed at optimum levels 24/7.

Fire department overtime costs are on pace to be around $3 million for 2018. A couple years ago, when Jim Hock was city manager, the overtime costs were around $1.3 million.

Besides being unable to cut unnecessary payroll costs at the fire department, Hales has been unable to lead the city's efforts to hire a new police chief.

In August, when police chief Brian Benton announced plans to retire in November, Hales decided to hire a consulting firm to oversee the job application process to hire a new chief of police rather than oversee the process himself as city manager.

Hales signed a professional services agreement with an outside group for about $10,000. This, for a job, that Hales should be able to do himself. Hales hired the consulting firm without the city council's input or approval.

If there is one thing Hales has shown he's good at, that's hiring consultants and retaining professional service contractors. Hales has no reluctance to spend city funds on paying people who don't work for the city to do extraneous and unnecessary tasks for the city of Joliet on the taxpayer's dime.

The following documents and contracts, all signed by Hales, are three examples. These contracts did not need to go before the Joliet City Council because they were under a certain dollar amount.

In recent days, I tracked down the following documents from the city through the Freedom of Information Act.

In late May, the city had representation in Las Vegas at the Global Retail Real Estate Convention, thanks to Derek Conley, the city's new economic development specialist whose much-needed job was created last year to help Steve Jones, economic development director, who is constantly busy.

As it turned out, Hales booked a separate flight to Las Vegas for the retail convention, too.

He even stayed overnight one day longer than Conley. Hales racked up about $1,875 in travel expenses for the opportunity to get away from City Hall that week. It is completely understandable for Conley to be at the convention, but Hales' appearance was questionable. Incidentally, Hales never gave a report at a city council meeting explaining how the city benefited from his appearance in Las Vegas, on the city's dime.

When you watch Joliet City Council meetings, you can't help but notice a disturbing pattern that exhibits a lack of leadership. When pressed routinely for answers to a question by somebody in the audience or someone on the city council, Hales constantly dodges the question.

He calls upon other department heads at the meeting to respond or to provide their analysis to the issue.

When Hales does give his regular city manager's report to the council, it's often shallow.

After nearly a year on the job, I think it's now becoming apparent that Hales realizes his days with Joliet are numbered and drawing to a close.

A short article published this past weekend in The Joliet Herald-News newspaper included comments from Hales acknowledging he may not be staying on the job much longer.

The article mentioned Hales' job status has been talked about recently in closed session by the Joliet City Council and that discussions are underway surrounding an exit strategy to break his current three-year contract.

Hales "was aware of rumors regarding his future but would not discuss whether he has intentions to leave. “I just don’t have any comment on that,” the newspaper quoted Hales as saying.

Hales has proven to be a city government type who represents bloated local government.

He's the type of guy who can't make tough decisions.

He's the type of guy who is afraid to ruffle feathers. He's shown an inability to offer solutions, to fix problems and offer new ideas with Joliet.

For someone getting paid a $215,000 base salary, Hales hasn't been worth that kind of compensation.

Joliet, as the third largest city in the entire state, deserves better than David Hales.

Like a famous rock star who stayed on tour a summer too long, Hales may have lost his zeal or his motivation to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work that's needed to make Joliet a more efficient and more financially prudent local government.

Starting in 2019, Joliet needs a new face sitting behind the desk in the city manager's office.

Over the next seven weeks, the Joliet City Council needs to work out a severance arrangement with Hales, even if that means the city's on the hook for paying Hales to go away. This has to be done.

Joliet cannot endure another full year with a major leadership void at City Hall, especially heading into an election year.

The city manager needs to be the table setter, the goal setter, the task master.

As the highest paid employee at City Hall, the city manager needs to be the face of Joliet.

As it stands, Hales is just another face in the crowd.

Getting rid of Hales will be an addition by subtraction either way.

A Joliet native and former investigative reporter and editor with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, John Ferak is Patch Editor for Joliet, New Lenox and Bolingbrook and Patch coverage for Shorewood and Channahon-Minooka.

Images via John Ferak/Joliet Patch Editor