Unable To Hire City Manager, Joliet To Start Over

JOLIET, IL — The Joliet City Council may vote on Tuesday to spend at least $20,000 in taxpayer money to hire a recruiting service to help the city's elected officials find a new permanent city manager to lead the state's third largest city.

The city of Joliet has been without a permanent city manager since October 2018 when David Hales was given his walking papers after less than a year on the job. Marty Shanahan was poised to become the permanent city manager after eight months as interim city manager, but the Mudron 5, following the election of Sherri Reardon last April, had different plans.

Reardon wanted Shanahan gone from his job as city manager, even though she did not campaign on that platform. In any event, Shanahan was ousted as interim city manager, and when he re-applied for the job, the Mudron 5 did not find him worthy of making the list of three finalists.

Instead, the council went with Joliet private practice attorney and city planning commission member Jim Capparelli, of Castle Law, Mark Rooney, a current town manager in Rhode Island, and Will Jones, city administrator in the affluent Milwaukee suburb of Mequon, population 25,000.

The Joliet City Council did not find any of them to be a clear favorite, and Cappareli was later dropped from consideration.

In an effort to buy more time, Reardon convinced her colleagues to make Rooney and Jones undergo a $1,600 psychological personality test.

Both men agreed to take the test, but the council, after reviewing the results, chose not to extend an offer to either finalist.

On Tuesday night, the Joliet City Council will consider spending in excess of $20,000 to hire a professional recruiting firm to help the city find more viable candidates for city manager.

The proposal on the agenda includes price options for four firms:

• SGR - Strategic Government Resources — full-service recruitment, at $26,500.
• Moulder & Associates — full-service recruitment, at $21,500 plus expenses.
• Novak Consulting Group — full-service recruitment, at $23,000 to $28,000.
• Slavin Management Consultants — full-service recruitment, at $24,200.

A memo submitted by current interim city manager Steve Jones, informs the City Council that the ad-hoc city manager search committee met on Friday, Feb. 21, and requested information be obtained from select recruitment search firms for finding a permanent city manager.

"It is recommended that the City Council approve a motion to conduct an executive search for city manager for the city of Joliet through a consulting firm to be selected," Steve Jones wrote in his memo.

At his annual State of the City speech on Feb. 24, Mayor Bob O'Dekirk drew a few hearty laughs from the luncheon crowd of 260 gathered at the Joliet Renaissance Center when O'Dekirk's first slide of his presentation showed recently released prison inmate Rod Blagojevich in a meme that read: "Unemployed with Extensive Government Experience. Joliet City Manager?"

Obviously, the Blagojevich slide caught the Joliet business community by surprise, so O'Dekirk was quick to inform everyone that he was just kidding.