Joliet mayor gives update on city manager search

A search firm has interviewed 14 applicants for the Joliet city manager position and more interviews are underway.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy said 14 applicants were interviewed by Korn Ferry, a global executive recruitment firm, and more applicants will be interviewed as well.

“We have stopped all applications as of today,” D’Arcy said.

D’Arcy said Wednesday that the city received more than 30 applications and at least a third of them didn’t qualify for the position.

D’Arcy told the City Council there is a plan to comb through the applications “that absolutely have no business in there.”

“Then we can start getting the applications to each one of the council members and start moving along that way,” D’Arcy said.

D’Arcy’s update on the city manager search was in response to an inquiry from council member Jan Quillman. At first, she had directed her question at Rod Tonelli, who is serving as the sixth city manager since 2017.

“Since I’m not allowed to talk to your staff, Mr. Tonelli, what’s the update on the Korn Ferry? Because I would like to call them. This is taking entirely too long for a city manager search,” Quillman said.

On July 5, the City Council approved in a 7-2 vote to hire Korn Ferry to conduct a search for the next city manager. Quillman and council member Larry Hug were the two dissenting votes.

After D’Arcy answered Quillman’s question, she once again said the search process was “taking an awfully long time.”

“I agree,” D’Arcy said.

“This has never, never been this long before,” Quillman said.

When former city manager Dave Hales left the city in 2018, it wasn’t until 2021 when another permanent city manager, James Capparelli, was hired. He then resigned last June.

While there have been six city managers since 2017, only Hales and Capparelli have served in that role on a permanent basis since that year.

After a City Council workshop meeting on June 19, Kathy Franson, the city’s human resources director, said Korn Ferry estimated it would take at least 16 weeks to recruit a city manager.