Sycamore considers making elected city clerk appointed position

SYCAMORE – Should Sycamore switch its city clerk from an elected position to an appointed one? The Sycamore City Council debated that question Monday, with some arguing the change could benefit city operations.

Sycamore Mayor Steve Braser – who’s part of the Northern Illinois Mayors Association – said he believes that organization is 100% behind making the city clerk job an appointed position.

Braser said his support of the plan has been influenced by other municipalities, too.

“It’s best to have a person of competence in there that can step right in and do the job. I mean, you’ve seen it in surrounding areas and the problems they’ve had with this position. So, it’s kind of a goal of mine and Michael [Hall] was on board with it, so he’s done the research. That’s why we brought it to the agenda,” Braser said.

No decision has yet been made.

Sycamore City Manager Michael Hall said the consideration is not to say anything unbecoming of current Sycamore City Clerk Mary Kalk’s performance. Instead, he said, is a reflection of his desire help the city create succession plans for leadership across the city’s different departments.

“When I first came here, one of the things I wanted to do is succession planning. We’ve done a lot of succession planning and created some positions in the fire department, for example. We’ve done that in the finance department, when I first came here it wasn’t a finance department and now we have some succession planning,” Hall said. “We did change a deputy clerk from a part time to a full time position, again for secession planning.”

Kalk, who was first elected to the office in 2017, declined to comment on specifics of the proposed change to her full-time elected job.

“As Michael [Hall] said this isn’t about me, this is going to be about the office and the future of the office. I’m going to leave it at that,” Kalk said.

Fourth Ward Alderwoman Virginia Sherrod said she thinks Kalk is professional, efficient and doesn’t see how anyone could have a problem with her being appointed.

“But you know there’s going to be some nay sayers. So my thing is, to keep it all on an even playing field, take it to the referendum and let the voters decide,” Sherrod said. “If it was up to me, it would have been a done deal, but we started it out as an elected position so the public, some of the public might want to know why are we changing it.”

If the City Council approved posing the question of the clerk’s office – elected or appointed? – as a referendum, it could appear on Sycamore voters’ ballots as early as the Nov. 5 election.

“If this is something that is of interest, then we have to pass that ordinance – and the ordinance will encompass a couple of things. It’ll say we’re interested in going to referendum to change [the city clerk position] from elected to appointed, and then the second thing is the structure of how the position, or that person would be hired,” Hall said.

Hall suggested that an appointed clerk position be filled at the recommendation of the city manager. Final approval for hiring and firing would then be required by a majority of the City Council.

“Similar to what my contract is,” Hall said. “And that would also give that extra layer of, I don’t know, checks and balances as you could call it for that clerk position.”

What does Sycamore City Council think?

Sycamore City Council members offered mixed reaction Monday on the proposal.

Second Ward Alderman Chuck Stowe said he felt torn over the idea because he likes the separation of the clerk’s office from other city officials that naturally comes with having the position filled through an election.

“I like the separate autonomy, where if something’s going on they don’t – the clerk would see and they don’t like – well they’re not beholden to the Mayor, the city manager, City Council, they’re beholden to the voters to bring something up. But then again, I’ve also seen other city’s not too far away have a major problem with this,” Stowe said. “I’m torn, maybe the answer to being torn is letting the voters decide.”

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In neighboring DeKalb, controversy surrounding former City Clerk Lynn Fazekas came to a head in 2019 when the DeKalb City Council took up a vote on whether to make the elected clerk – part-time in DeKalb – an appointed one.

DeKalb residents have twice before voted in referenda to leave the position an elected one. The DeKalb City Council voted in August 2019 to keep the clerk elected. The controversy continued, however, with current DeKalb City Clerk Sasha Cohen who was censured by the DeKalb City Council from his duties in 2023 after catching flak from city of DeKalb leaders, who said he repeatedly flouted his responsibilities and did not show up to work.

DeKalb’s part-time elected city clerk makes $8,000 annually. Sycamore’s City Clerk has a budgeted salary of $65,050, according to Sycamore’s city documents. Sycamore also pays a budgeted salary of $56,646 for a deputy clerk, a full-time appointed position.

“Yes we do have a deputy clerk that’s being trained, but is that what we want to do, have a deputy clerk training an elected person to do something?” said Hall.

Hall added that if a city clerk stopped attending meetings – another issue that plagued DeKalb clerk’s office after repeated absences – there’s nothing that could be done about it until the next election.

Second Ward Alderman Pete Paulsen and 1st Ward Alderman Alan Bauer said they believe the decision should be put to the voters on a referendum.

First Ward and 3rd Ward alderwomen Alicia Cosky and Nancy Copple were absent from the meeting.

Third Ward Alderman Jeff Fischer said he thinks the job should be appointed.

“Just because I think there are certain positions that don’t need to be elected, and I think this could be one of those, so it makes sense to have that as an appointed position,” Fischer said.

Fourth Ward Alderman Ben Bumpus said he also was leaning toward having the position appointed. He expressed worry, however, that having the role appointed is not the most efficient use of city staff labor.

“I’m sure it’s not like laborious, laborious, but it bugs me when I hear that we’re going to get something on the ballot, that we’re going to go through the work and I think we needed our attorneys to weigh in. It’s like, I worry at times that we spend these calories on these things and does the city truly benefit from all this? Like, is this the right way to spend our time tonight,” Bumpus said. “It’s a lot of work for something that I’m not sure if we’re going to really reap the overall benefits from.”