McHenry City Council approves plan for hiring replacement city administrator

The McHenry City Council hopes to have up to five finalists to choose from as it seeks a replacement for City Administrator Derik Morefield.

Morefield, who has been with the city since April 2012, informed the council in December that he plans to retire in January 2024.

The council Monday night approved, with one dissenting vote from 2nd Ward Alderman Andy Glab, a plan on how the next administrator will be found.

“There has never really been a process in place” for how the council would go about hiring a new administrator, McHenry Mayor Wayne Jett said. Council members asked for a formalized process, including whether the hiring would be done internally or via an outside consultant, he said.

Under the approved plan, the city would work with a consultant to solicit applications. That likely would be Northbrook-based GovHR USA, but a contract has not been finalized with the recruiter, human resources director Ann Campanella said.

New is good, versus coming in and doing things the same way. I would like to see that.”

—  McHenry Mayor Wayne Jett

A panel – including Jett, Campanella, one council member and the consultant – will review qualified applicants before presenting them to the entire council.

Glab, who voted against the plan, asked that council members be informed of all candidates who apply.

“The council should be aware of who is being interviewed and looked at, who is interested, and a little bit on who is picked and a reasoning why,” Glab said.

The consultant is firm that the applications need to remain confidential and only the top candidates are presented to the council for consideration, Campanella said.

“The people who are going to apply for this job are employed already [and] not telling their current employers they are applying for those jobs,” she said.

The council also will be interviewed by the consultant on what they would like to see in the next administrator, Campanella said.

Confidential emails listing who applies, as suggested by Glab, would not work, Jett said.

“That leaks out. I strongly disagree with that [idea],” Jett said.

The council also could rank the final candidates anonymously, 7th Ward Alderwoman Sue Miller said.

In a recent executive director hiring she was involved with, the names and identifying information about candidates was removed to prevent personal biases from coming into decisions, she said.

“It really make the processes perfect, basing it on the qualifications and the criteria” for the job and not the person, she said.

Campanella said the plan is to bring three to five finalists to the council for final interviews.

Once the candidates are identified, the mayor, City Council, Campanella and the consultant would meet and interview them in a special meeting held in executive session.

Plans are to start advertising for the administrator post on or close to June 1, Jett said, giving the council six or seven months to get the next person in place. The new council members will be sworn in May 1 and will be a part of that discussion, he said.

Jett said he trusts staff and the consultants to guide the process, adding that he’d like to see someone come in with new ideas.

“New is good, versus coming in and doing things the same way,” he said. “I would like to see that.”