Joliet council approves city manager contract, with one objection

Joliet’s new city manager is scheduled to start Dec. 11 after her contract was approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

The vote for Beth Beatty’s contract was unanimous, although her starting salary of $230,000 prompted comments from one councilman.

Beatty was not at the meeting.

Mayor Terry D’Arcy said she is suffering from pneumonia, but a starting date has been set at Dec. 11.

“We feel unanimously that this is the right forward motion for the city,” D’Arcy said of Beatty’s hiring. “We think Beth Beatty is a really great candidate for us.”

Beatty is coming to Joliet from the city of Chicago, where she has worked for nearly 20 years and now serves as deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs.

Councilman Larry Hug said he had “objections to some things” in Beatty’s contract and referred to the salary but did not specify his concerns during the meeting.

Hug described Beatty as the “most qualified candidate” among those brought to the city in a search process headed by the management consultant firm Korn Ferry.

“I’m confident that she can move the city forward,” he said.

Asked after the meeting about his objections to the contract, Hug said it was “the level of pay.”

“I think it was too generous,” he said.

The highest pay among Beatty’s predecessors was a $215,000 salary given to David Hales when he was hired in 2017.

Hales left after 11 months on the job with a buyout. Since then, Joliet has had only one city manager hired on a permanent basis and four interim city managers.

Beatty also is the first city manager hired on a multi-year contract since Hales. Like Hales and typical of city managers before him, Beatty has been hired on a three-year contract

James Capparelli, the one city manager hired on a permanent basis since Hales, came to the city in January 2021 on a one-year contract at a salary of $193,000. He got a pay boost the next year to $198,000 and another one-year contract. Capparelli was working on a six-month contract with no raise when he resigned in June as the City Council prepared to open the job up to applicants.

Interim City Manager Rod Tonelli replaced Capparelli at a pay rate based on a $174,000 annual salary.

The only other council member to comment on Beatty’s hiring at the Tuesday meeting was Jan Quillman.

“We’re ready to get back on track,” Quillman said.