Capparelli gets another year as Joliet city manager

Joliet City Manager James Capparelli was rehired for another year when the City Council voted, 6-2, Tuesday to approve another one-year contract at $198,000.

The vote reflected continued council division over the city manager office, which went more than two years without having a permanent occupant until Capparelli was hired in January.

Council members Bettye Gavin and Sherrie Reardon voted against the contract.

“I didn’t think he deserved a raise,” Gavin said Wednesday when asked why she voted against the contract, which gives Capparelli a $6,000 increase over his current salary. “We didn’t get a chance to evaluate him as we were supposed to do.”

The contract approved Tuesday provides for an evaluation of Capparelli if the council chooses to do so before the contract is extended for another year.

Reardon could not be reached Wednesday for comment, although both she and Gavin have been publicly at odds with Capparelli over his refusal to bring to the council for approval a policy regulating partial alley closures. A council committee voted in February to send the policy to the full council with a recommendation for approval.

Council members did not comment on the vote during the Tuesday council meeting.

The council in January voted, 5-3, to hire Capparelli at a time when the city was on its third interim city manager over the course of more than two years. Voting against Capparelli at that time were Reardon, Pat Mudron, who voted for the new contract, and Michael Turk, who is no longer on the council.

The last permanent city manager before Capparelli, David Hales, left in October 2018 in the first year of a three-year contract.

Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who did not vote on the contract but supported Capparelli for the job, said he believes he has done well.

“I think he’s done a really good job stabilizing things at City Hall,” O’Dekirk said. “After the parade of city managers, the Mudron Five and all that nonsense, he’s brought stability.”

The Mudron Five was a label tagged on a council majority that included Mudron and four other council members who voted to remove interim City Manager Marty Shanahan from that position at a time that O’Dekirk wanted to make him the city manager on a permanent basis.

The majority wanted the city to conduct a candidate search for the job. Capparelli was one of three finalists in the first search when the council majority decided not to hire any of the final candidates. A second search had reached the interview stage when then-interim City Manager Jim Hock announced he was leaving and Capparelli, who was not among the new group of candidates, was given the job.