Joliet council will hold special meeting as city manager decision nears

The Joliet City Council will hold a special meeting Monday as a decision on the next city manager approaches.

The agenda for the meeting was not posted Wednesday when the city put the meeting on the council schedule. But council members had been called to check their availability for a special meeting on the city manager decision.

Mayor Terry D’Arcy last week said he hoped to have the city manager opening resolved by Nov. 1. The next regular City Council meeting is Nov. 7.

D’Arcy could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The council has interviewed four candidates for the job.

The city is operating under interim City Manager Rod Tonelli. He replaced James Capparelli, who resigned in June as the council was about to open up the job to applicants.

Tonelli is among the four people under consideration for the job.

Council member Pat Mudron said he learned Wednesday that the special meeting had been scheduled, but he had been contacted last week regarding his availability for a meeting to discuss the city manager issue.

Mudron said the council has not yet discussed the merits of the candidates after meeting them and did not believe it was ready to make a decision without more discussion.

“There was no conversation about the four people,” he said. “People could need some time to think about it.”

Any discussion about the candidates would likely take place in closed session. Whether the council will consider a decision on the next city manager during open session on Monday will be known when the agenda is posted.

Joliet operates under a city manager form of government, which makes the city manager, not the mayor, the chief administrative officer.

But the council chooses the city manager, and the job has been unstable since David Hales left in October 2018 with a separation agreement after less than a year on the job. The city has since operated under four different interim city managers. Capparelli was hired as a permanent city manager in January 2021 but worked under two one-year contracts. He was in a six-month contract that was set to expire in July when he resigned with his own separation agreement.