Village Still Looking For New Special Rec Supervisor

The Orland Park Recreation Department will likely enter 2011 without a Special Recreation Program supervisor, although village staff say they're still focused on the program and actively seeking a replacement.

"The village is very committed to the program," said Village Manager Paul Grimes. "We're gonna plow ahead with it."

Last week the village's human resources department posted the position, which asks "energetic, therapeutic and recreation minded" candidates with intergovernmental communication skills and grant writing experience to apply.

Grimes said the money for the approximate $50,000 salary was set aside in the recently approved fiscal year 2011 budget.

Kris Rau was fired as head of the village's Special Recreation Program in mid-November. In her absence, the program is running smoothly with the aid of part-timers and assistants, said Director of Recreation Nancy Flores.

"It's a team-effort," Flores said. "The staff members continue to do the daily programming as they did before, so there's really no change for them."

Grimes noted that the recent drop in special recreation events is a reflection of the holiday season, which slows down every facet of the recreation department.

Rau has deferred questions to her attorney, Albert Ferolie, who earlier this month said he's reviewing the details of his client's firing to see whether legal action against the village is justified. He assured that Rau, a 20-year employee of the village, is saddened but touched by the outpouring of support.

"She's very upset about it," Ferolie said the following week after Rau was let go. "It bears out from a lot of what parents and the public have commented on. People were surprised at what had occurred. She gave a lot to that program and the kids that it was servicing."

The attorney could not be reached for an update.

At the Dec. 6 Village Board of Trustees meeting, Marge Quinn and other Rau supporters took the podium to make their disappointment public and question the true reasons for her departure. Quinn believes that Rau's rift with the village began after Flores became director of the recreation department—a position Rau applied and interviewed for in 2006.

"The current issues started with the hiring of the current director of recreation," Quinn clarified in an e-mail last week. "The Village Board heard our concerns but, so far, has made no effort of which I am aware, to investigate or correct the injustice done to Kris Rau, the Special Recreation participants and their families."

Flores, other village staff and the mayor have all declined to comment on what they dubbed "personnel matters."

Since the early December board meeting, the distress of Quinn and her son, a participant in the program, has waned little.

"Last night my son came home and said the (annual Special Recreation holiday) trip would be to a dude ranch in Michigan," Quinn wrote. "He told me he did not want to go. He gave me two reasons (1) they went to the same dude ranch before and (2) Kris would not be with them."