Joliet City Manager Capparelli offered 6-month contract

The Joliet City Council next week is slated to vote on a contract renewal of only six months for City Manager James Capparelli.

Capparelli has been working on one-year contracts since he was hired in January 2021 after a prolonged city manager controversy in which Joliet had three interim city managers. His previous two contracts were approved in divided votes.

The short-term contract that goes to a vote Tuesday is due to the upcoming elections for mayor and City Council, council member Pat Mudron said.

“I think the consensus opinion was the next City Council, regardless of what that is, should be the ones voting on the city manager,” Mudron said. “If the next council wants to keep Capparelli, that would be the vote.”

The mayor and five City Council seats will be on the ballot April 4, and Capparelli’s contract expires at the end of this year. The new contract would run until July 12.

“Everybody was kind of in agreement for six months,” Mudron said. “Capparelli was OK with it also.”

Capparelli did not return a call seeking comment.

He gets a raise under the proposed contract, which pays $101,970 over six months. His current contract pays $198,000 a year, which amounts to $99,000 for six months.

Even at one-year, Capparelli’s contracts have been shorter than the usual three-year agreements made with previous city managers.

The last three-year agreement was with David Hales, who left after less than a year with a contract buyout in October 2018.

Then-City Attorney Marty Shanahan became interim city manager, with the council waiting until the next election before making a move to hiring someone. After the 2019 election, Mayor Bob O’Dekirk and a council minority backed Shanahan for the job. But a majority of council members wanted a city manager search and removed Shanahan.

The city then went through two more interim city managers before Capparelli was hired in a 5-3 vote with the mayor’s backing.

Capparelli was a private attorney at the time with previous experience in government management with the U.S. Army, although he had no experience in municipal government. He had pulled petitions to run for City Council in 2021 before being named to the city manager job.

Last year, Capparelli’s contract was renewed in a 6-2 vote.

Council member Sherri Reardon, who voted against Capparelli’s contracts both times, said the six-month term is connected to the April election.

“I think that in the end, we all decided we wanted to let the new council be the deciding factor rather than lock the new council into an entire year,” Reardon said.